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Terrorismo Religioso. La Guerra del Siglo XXI.
El Ataque al World Trade Center y al Pentágono
Jorge Erdely, Ph.D.
Publicaciones para el Estudio Científico de las Religiones, México City, 2001,
190 pages. Language: Spanish. ISBN: 970-92771-2-X
Reviewed by
Carmen
Almendros,
Ph.D.
Acting on a “moral imperative”, the terrorists who placed
thirteen bombs on four of Madrid’s suburban trains on March 11, 2004, had been
planning an even deadlier attack than that which occurred. The bombs were
synchronized to explode when the first two trains met at Atocha station. Because
of a brief delay of the second train, its bombs exploded one kilometer short of
Atocha. And the failure (or intended delay) of three of the bombs prevented an
even worse tragedy. Only three minutes were necessary to deliver the worst
terrorist attack ever experienced in Spain. The death toll was 192 workers and
students, people whose close familiarity to me will certainly influence the
present review in some way.
Several spontaneous heroes largely reduced the consequences
of the explosive attacks. Rafael [1]
was one of them. The shocking explosions threw him out of the car onto the
railroad at El Pozo del Tío Raimundo. Although not really sure of what he was
doing or where he was, he didn’t follow his survival instinct. Instead of
running away to a safe place, he dedicated himself to assist those seriously
injured, together with others on the same train who were uninjured. No one was
in command, but they were perfectly organized. Employing pieces of marquees or
benches as stretchers, they spent hours pulling out bodies while considering the
chances of survival, in what they themselves perceived as an aberrant but
necessary priority of those who were severely damaged but evidently alive.
Ignoring the enormous risk to their own lives, they manipulated a backpack that,
some hours later, was found to contain lethal explosives. There was an
oversupply of every kind of assistance, professional and unskilled, to such a
degree that a great number of potential volunteers were excluded from helping.
As in the case of September 11, the sacrifice, courage and moving demonstrations
of solidarity of so many different people from around the world, reminded us of
the human individuals' capacity to act as moral agents and carry out what they
consider a humane duty, even at their own peril (Bandura, 2002). It reminded us,
as well, of the collective human capacity to generate spontaneously new patterns
of behavior, including new definitions for such a confusing situation, instead
of being guided by irrational chain reactions (Rodríguez-Carballeira & Javaloy,
2003).
Inevitably, several questions arise when trying to cope
with the consequences of such acts and attempting to understand the nature of
the “sick” or “perverted” minds which have perpetrated so much indiscriminate
destruction. Further details of the lives of the bombers prior to the attacks,
describing normal behaviors and interactions with their targeted society
members, led us to describe those voluntary executioners (Goldhagen, 1998) as
“hidden abnormal people” (Cadena Ser Radio, May 14, 2004), although previous
literature evidenced how “disturbingly normal” most terrorists seem when
interviewed (Hoffman, 1999; Juergensmeyer, 2001).
In such times and scenarios, we, as social scientists, are
particularly responsible for addressing these seemingly incomprehensible
paradoxes, for describing phenomena and offering explanations and, in this way,
giving back to society as a whole what we have learned thanks to its support
(Cialdini, 1997). This is especially important if we are to avoid biased
responses and formulas that could lead us to buy into simple solutions to
complex situations, disregarding the effects of the actions we take or support
and thus perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Dr. Erdely’s book Terrorismo Religioso provides a
prompt and competent response to this need for information. Written shortly
after the 9/11 tragedy, the book’s stated goal is to bring us closer to a
coherent explanation, and it certainly provides tools to understand the growing
incidence of fanatic religious behavior and ritual suicides. According to the
author, 9/11 was not an isolated event that took place in a vacuum, but has a
historical context and a contemporary global dimension that antedates both 9/11
and the more recent Madrid bombings. Hence, he argues, such a topic needs to be
addressed from a multidisciplinary approach if proper understanding of its
causes is to be achieved.
Although many of the abundant essays written on terrorism
and 9/11 talked about “programmed.” Indoctrinated, or deceived suicidal
terrorists, most of them do so superficially and sometimes in a sensationalist
way due, from my point of view, to low skills on cult-related issues. The
author of Terrorismo Religioso is a person whose focus over the last
years has been the study of religious manipulation in totalitarian groups. Dr.
Erdely avoids repeating many of the descriptions of 9/11 widely spread by
commercial media, focusing instead on relevant aspects to achieve the above
mentioned purpose, as well as explain the foundations of such behaviors.
Dr. Erdely is a member in good standing of the Latin
American Association for the Study of Religions, the regional chapter of the
International Association for the History of Religion (IAHR). His academic
credentials include a degree in Biological Sciences with a concentration in
Psychology. He also holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a three year graduate
specialization in Semitic languages. In 2001-2002 he was a postdoctoral Research
Fellow in Theology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He is the author
of several books and research papers on cult-related topics and edits
Revista Académica para el Estudio de las Religiones,
an indexed, peer-reviewed journal focused on the study of religious
globalization and human rights in Latin America.
In the first two chapters of the book, Dr. Erdely
introduces the issue of “collective suicide rituals” and “suicide-homicides” as
a relatively recent phenomenon, starting well into the 20th century.
He offers a concise review of the several “apocalyptic scenarios” (title of his
second chapter) that have occurred since Jim Jones’ mass suicide/assassination
in Guyana in 1978. He describes also violent attacks on society at-large, such
as that of the Aum Shinrikyo sect releasing nerve gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995.
The “apocalyptic scenarios” end with the terrorist attacks against the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.
He provides a detailed description of the events
surrounding the massive murder-suicide that took place at Kanungu, Uganda, on
March 17, 2000. About 530 members of the “Movement for the Restoration of the
Ten Commandments of God” lost their lives when their church was set on fire.
Approximately the same number of people was found in several mass graves
in and around the homes of cult leaders during the following
days. An offshoot of the Catholic Church, the
movement was an apparitionist cult which had predicted that
the world would come to an end on December 31, 1999. When such a revealed
prophecy failed to occur, a new date was announced: March, 17, 2000. Part of the
valuable information provided by the author, discusses whether to describe the
events of March 17 as ritual suicide or as mass murder. He describes evidence
supporting the first, and concludes that what took place at Kanungu was a
religious ceremony that aimed to usher followers into a different dimension of
existence, leading to the subsequent church inferno. The author underlines the
secrecy factor among members and non-members that permitted such an atrocity as
the systematic and seemingly unnoticed disappearance of hundreds of dissident
members and their families prior to March 17, actions that must have been
carried out with the collaboration of some followers. This was achieved “by
merely using words.” The author concludes by advising us not to underestimate
the power of religious ideologies and discourse that can turn people either into
“human torches” or “suicide warriors”.
The third chapter introduces us to the “theology of ritual
suicide.” It explores several possible reasons that could drive individuals to
commit suicide, and does so taking into account clinical aspects as well as
historical events and cultural traditions. The most frequent cause of common
suicide is clinical depression. Suicide may also be employed in war contexts to
escape capture or torture by an enemy. In some cultures, suicide is used to
avoid facing public disgrace, or as an individual act to protest publicly
against political or military oppression. The author differentiates between
individual actions of self-immolation, like the above mentioned, and suicides as
rituals within a given belief system, behaviors that are carried out as an end
in themselves to achieve a religious goal, frequently on the “way to the
everlasting paradise.” He explores the mechanisms through which critical
judgment can be inhibited and provides useful references and examples of
psychological manipulation. Especially interesting is the author’s explanation
that there is no religious tradition exempt from being twisted to end in a
suicide ideology. This observation prevents us from unfair generalizations that
end up blaming a particular religious faith or even culture as the root cause of
the actions of terrorists groups. Reinforcing that observation is the diversity
of religious backgrounds of notorious groups in recent history which have
engaged in ritual mass suicide and/or religiously motivated terrorist attacks
against society. Thus, this phenomenon of violence goes far beyond the concrete
theologies from which they are supposedly derived. The author concludes the
chapter by describing what he has found to be the necessary factors present in
such episodes:
- A messianic leadership;
- A group of people ready to obey unconditionally;
- A trigger event.
The next three chapters define and elaborate on those three
factors. Then the author applies this analytical framework to Al Qaeda and the
Taliban to see if they fit the model. Chapter Four focuses on messianic
leadership, providing a linguistic, historical and theological analysis of
Messianic features, in both Western and Middle East cultures. It also deals with
the issue of cultural perceptions and what might be called “perceived or
functional Messianism,” both in individuals as well as in organizational
structures.
The phenomenon of unconditional obedience is addressed with
a concise and clear explanation of the manipulative psychological and
physiological processes by which followers of messianic leaders or entities can
have their critical judgment impaired and their prior moral values distorted so
as to allow leaders to act unchecked. Dr. Erdely enriches this remarkable
chapter with examples extracted from texts of Sun Myung Moon and Mormon and
Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders’ teachings, as well as with an analysis of the
letters left behind by Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers. Chapter Six
discusses how a suicide-inducing discourse is just part of the trigger event,
which could arise one day or another without warning signs, once the other two
factors are present. The author points out the element of surprise always
present in past ritual suicide episodes to support this assertion, thus
preventing us from rejecting that possibility in the absence of a
suicide-inducing discourse. At this point, his primary emphasis is placed on
prevention, providing indicators that could help us better understand the
“process” and circumstances under which these actions take form, instead of
merely analyzing the end results.
Chapter Seven is an easy-to-read description of the
“Islamic World,” useful to inform readers unfamiliar with the very basics of
this religion. With the stated purpose of preventing misperceptions, the topic
of Islamic pluralism is introduced, as well as basic definitions of faith and
creed. To compensate for our adaptive, but sometimes inappropriate, human
tendency to generate simple labels and generalize them to describe different
realities, the author of Terrorismo Religioso explains the differences
between the “Islamic world” and the “Arabic world” and acknowledges the diverse
ethnical origins and varied religious expressions within the different
geographical locations where Islam is a dominant faith. He even reminds the
reader that “not all of those who consider themselves Arabs practice the Islamic
faith,” underlining what he thinks to be a common generalization of Westerners
talking about “Arabs” when they really mean “Muslims.”
Chapter Eight explains basic Muslim doctrine in relation to
the primary concept of Jihad or Islamic holy religious war. It concludes that
the West is currently facing a distorted, expansionist version of classic Jihad,
what Dr. Erdely calls “the new Jihad” carried out by Islamic sectarian groups
that have radicalized and redefined ahistorically many of their core religious
concepts. Citing several of these groups and giving details of their beliefs and
behaviors, he talks about the several training camps where new generations of
suicidal terrorists are indoctrinated and provided with a rationale for mass
murder. Accordingly, violent actions are divinely sanctioned
means and “holy warriors” who give their lives away for an allegedly
transcendent cause as martyrs acquire the direct right to enter paradise,
bypassing Judgement Day. They perceive the “Western world,” especially the
United States, as a morally perverted and corrupting entity that with its
hedonism and crass materialism threatens to defile the “Muslim world,” enticing
Muslims to become religiously and morally lax. Dr. Erdely asserts that
the enemy in the “twenty-first century war” is not Islam, “but destructive cults
that do not represent Muslims.” His conclusions could be summarized citing
Zimbardo’s (2001) call to acknowledge “how religiously-based value systems can
be perverted to justify and reward the most horrendous of human deeds”.
In a particularly impressive postscript, Dr. Erdely notes
how 9/11 and subsequent events have impacted our own security concerns and
perceptions of the value of human life and compares the attack on the Twin
Towers in New York to those daily, insidious and equally brutal acts that have
affected and continue to affect since long ago anonymous people in
underprivileged countries and places that are far away from our attention,
places like southern Sudan or the Malaccan Islands. He states that both kinds of
brutality have similar origins and are qualitatively of the same nature,
although their symbolic value is very different.
Hence, in the minds of those who orchestrated the 9/11
tragedy, the aim was the symbolic effect of such a huge atrocity stamped on the
minds of both West and East. This symbolic effect was accentuated by the
rerunning media images of destruction. Dr. Erdely stimulates further discussion,
pointing out how little we know about those other victims that have been slain
for decades in countries such as Algiers and Indonesia by the same kind of
factious jihadist groups that killed more than two thousand people on 9/11. This
in a way reminds us of the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón (2004) when he states:
“If the number of collateral deaths in the different worldwide conflicts were
counted, the resulting statistics would scare even the most indifferent person.”
That indifference, also related to “moral disengagement” (Braginsky, 1986) is,
according to Garzón, the best ally of all dictators, fundamentalists and
terrorists, and, I would add, manipulators.
This book encourages the reader
to develop a better understanding of how normal people can be recruited and
indoctrinated to transform themselves into suicide hijackers in order to follow
a purportedly divine commandment. It doesn’t end there, as it also stimulates
reflection on how our actions, presented as the fight against terrorism, have
only treated terrorism's consequences. Our actions, however, have been useless
in reducing terrorism and have contributed to the daily recruitment of new
jihadists, even in our own countries. But we could go even further because if we
take only related cultic attributes into account, we could easily conclude:
“Many pundits are saying that the eradication of bin Laden will be fruitless
unless certain ‘underlying causes’ in the friction between East and West are
addressed. But that presumes a rational stance in modern terrorism, and there is
none” (Pearson, 2001). We ought not to take only the terrorist mind into account
when trying to measure rationality, but should also analyze the cultural
implications of the phenomenon. Polk (2004) tells us that 73% of Lebanese
people, 43% of Jordanians, 47% of Nigerians, 33% of Pakistanis and 27% of
Indonesians approved of suicide attacks, if that could stop Western ideas from
being disseminated. This finding may cause in the West a similar discomfort to
that created in the Muslim world by Madeleine Albright’s assertion that the
death of half a million Iraqi children was a “hard choice” but “the price is
worth it” (Burgat, 2004 on Albright’s 2001 response about U.S. sanctions against
Iraq).
These in a
way remind us of the Spanish judge, Baltasar
Garzón
(2004), when he states: "If the number of collateral deaths in the different
worldwide conflicts were counted, the resulting statistics would scare even the
most indifferent person." That indifference, also related to "moral
disengagement" (Braginsky, 1986) is, according to Garzón, the best ally of all
dictators, fundamentalists, and terrorists and, I would add, manipulators.
It seems easy to find good reasons for
our own actions, which we justify based on the behavior of others. It is easy
to engage the general population in “us vs. them” solutions. In doing so,
however, not only are we deafly ignoring the causes of terrorism, which begin at
the very first stages of education, but also we are day after day adding new
reasons for supposedly “moral justifications” to violence. Meanwhile, why is it
that the victims are always mostly innocent civilians, sometimes very near, but
other times so far removed from our humane interest and compassion?
This book is based on well-documented research from a
multidisciplinary approach. It is written in a clear and readable form,
intentionally avoiding the use of academic jargon. Highly recommended.
References
Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the
exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31 (2), 101-119.
Braginski, B. (1986). The meaning of indifference.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4 (2), 235-243.
Burgat, F. (2004). ¿Locos por Dios? De la
retórica religiosa a la reivindicación política. La
Vanguadia. Dossier 10, 50-53.
Cialdini, R. B. (1997). Professionally responsible
communication with the public: Giving psychology a way.
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 23 (7),
675-683.
Garzón,
B. (2004, 28 February). Tiempo de canallas. El Pais, Opinión.
Goldhagen, D. J. (1997). Los verdugos
voluntarios de Hitler. Los alemanes corrientes y el holocausto. Madrid:
Taurus Pensamiento.
Hoffman, B. (1999). Inside terrorism.
Columbia University Press.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2001). Terrorismo
religioso. El auge global de la violencia religiosa.
Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Pearson, Patricia (2001, November 5).
Apocalyptic Cult Methods Explain bin Laden. USA Today. Retrieved 23
December 2001 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-05-ncguest1.htm.
Polk, W. R. (2004). Terrorismo mundial.
La Vanguadia. Dossier 10, 70-76.
Rodríguez-Carballeira, A., & Javaloy, F.
(2003). Reacciones colectivas tras el ataque del 11 de Septiembre.
Encuentros de Psicología Social,
1(4), 249-254.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2001). Fighting
terrorism by understanding man’s capacity for evil. Fresno Area Psychologist,
9 (3).
Cadena Ser radio. (2004, 14 May). La
Ventana.
Appendix
LETTER SENT TO BE READ AT THE CEREMONY IN HONOR OF THE
VICTIMS OF MARCH 11, 2004, FROM THE AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF MADRID
I am a member of the University
community as well as a wounded person at the terrible 11M. What I have lived
through has been difficult, but fortunately my physical and psychological
injuries are reversible. As many Spanish people, I have deeply felt the pain of
so many families who suffered irreparable damages, which is so hard to overcome
when circumstances are so absurd, indiscriminate and unjust…
To support politics and thoughts
of global peace and justice is the best way to prevent such sufferings that have
hit, in one way or another, so many world citizens…
It would be my desire that such a
barbarian act wouldn’t be of use to generate more hate, as hate has been the
reason that brought so much death. Let us learn about it, in order to end this
dynamic of injustice and terror.
Carlos M.
Professor at Autonomous University of Madrid. Cantoblanco,
April 1, 2004.
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