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Tue 26 Aug, 2003 12:55 pm
"Violent, frustrated people can use almost any religion to fuel their explosive wrath, to dehumanize their victims and, ultimately, to justify shocking crimes."
Terrorists use religion as a means to intoxicate followers
BY DAVID CRUMM
DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
August 20, 2003
In the post-Sept. 11 world, everyone knows that religion and violence are an explosive mixture. On Thursday, when the lights went out, suspicions shot through millions of minds that a terrorist may have struck.
Even though anxiety about terrorism is so widespread, few scholars had systematically studied the interplay of faith and fury until Harvard's Jessica Stern set out to interview dozens of terrorists in 1998. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Al Qaeda, her work took on a new urgency.
Today, Stern is scheduled to appear on TV news shows, talking about the release of a book summarizing her research, "Terror in the Name of God."
As she describes what makes religious terrorists tick, Stern offers a remarkable conclusion: Violent, frustrated people can use almost any religion to fuel their explosive wrath, to dehumanize their victims and, ultimately, to justify shocking crimes.
No faith is immune to such abuse. Stern studied Muslim, Christian and Jewish terrorists as well as exotic sects, such as the deadly Japanese group Aum Shinrikyo, whose beliefs are a blend of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism that was used to justify sending poison gas into the Tokyo subway in 1995.
"We need to be aware that religion contains elements that can be misused," Stern told me via telephone last week. She is a Harvard lecturer in public policy and has worked with several national think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations.
Now, she wants to spread this warning: "We need to be very careful if we start hearing these arguments being made in religious groups that suggest the end justifies the means. That's the argument terrorists make."
She points to other warning signs. Explosive passions tend to brew when people who feel humiliated and alienated pull themselves from mainstream religious groups and form isolated circles of believers.
"Religion is good at making people focus on an us-versus-them view of the world," Stern said. "It's a problematic aspect of religion that bad people take advantage of and use."
Another tip off: Violent religious leaders often manipulate their followers with claims of special insights they have discovered within traditional scriptures. Stern calls this "spiritualizing" sacred texts. "These people probably started out wanting to find support for violence. But -- lo and behold! -- what happens when they spiritualize the sacred texts? They find support for violence."
As a result, "some of the people I talked to seemed to be religiously intoxicated," Stern said. What's worse is that cynical commanders of terrorist networks "use this spiritual intoxication because it's a good way to mobilize men."
Understanding this process, she argues in her book, suggests that new strategies beyond police and military action are needed to combat terrorism. And the faithful need to monitor their own religious groups for signs of extremism.
"People need to ask themselves: Am I being told that the end justifies the means? And: Is what I'm being asked to do consistent with the fundamental precepts of religion, which are compassion and protection of life?"
In parts of the world where extremist schools produce terrorists, she said, the United States should invest in free schools with a balanced education.
"Perhaps the most truly evil aspect of religious terrorism is that it aims at destroying moral distinctions themselves . . ." Stern wrote. "In the end, what counts is what we fight for, not what we oppose. We need to avoid giving in to spiritual dread, and to hold fast to the best of our principles, by emphasizing tolerance, empathy and courage."
I think of terrorists as the ones who perpetrate the acts.
These people are no more than puppets of their masters.
The ideal candidates for carrying out terrorist attacks are people who will readily submit their lives to a cause simply because they are not able to comprehend their own choice of social responsibilities [or through greed [72 virgins in heaven]].
It is the 'puppet controllers' [who themselves are terrorists] who have realised that folk with religious tendencies are ideal candidates to carry out their destabilising and anti-freedom operations and who need to be found and disabled, if we truly seek a solution to this problem!
In a sense, the puppets should be excused for their atrocities because they were too simplistic, and gullible to realise the weakness of their controllers arguments. [I suppose you could say they were predisposed to make themselves available to the devil, but I don't believe in God or the Devil].
Best regards, Bill.
That exactly is the way how religion works. The whims of religion rule out any possibility for rationality. Dedication to the religious belief is a part of those people's lives. They think of their religious belief to be a truism just as they regard as tautology that man needs water. Not a day in their life is not spent being instilled with the religious dogma. Not an action is not deemed as the sacrifice for the Omnipotent Power. The scripture as fills their body as the blood flows therein. As amorphous as the spirit of their religion, it combines the rest of the physical, or rather earthly, body to make a living man who is willing to do everything he can to keep in the highest esteem their religious belief. Put simply, defending for their religious belief comes from their instinct.
They are more ready to be instigated by threat to their religious belief to resort to violence than by other reasons. For Islamics in particular, it is even more the case. But the truth that might well be ignored is that the the spreading of western culture convoyed by the globalization does impinge upon the Islamic spirit. Admittedly, some people knowing the Islamic propensity very well have incited those religious defender diehards, but it is the inadmissible truth that Islamic spirit is seiged. Therefore they decided to fight their way out.
Before we jump on Islam, consider the OB/GYN murderer executed in Florida this week.
You're likely to hear the argument that it's a matter of degree but what do you suppose was going on in Vietnam during the reign of that devoutly Christian Madame Gnu (sic). And the argument that secularist societies have murdered a lot of people (Stalin and more recently Hussein).
I guess it's in the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill" (nowhere did it ever mean just murder but you're likely to hear that rationlized interpretation also).
truth
Jews and Christians have exercised terrorism when necessary, i.e., when they did not have large armies to conduct conventional war. This is no defense of terrorism, of course, but I hate to see making war look so good, so moral, so respectable by contrasting it with terrorism. They are both forms of gross obscenity.
truth
The use of suicidal terrorists is not exclusive to Islam. Consider not only the kamakazi bombers of WWII, but also the fact that we have made heros of our soldiers who have courageously entered into battle situations where they knew they were VERY likely to die. They sacrificed themselves for the country and their values. It's good to keep our perspective. We must smash muslim suicidal terrorism not because it is evil and we are good; we must smash it to survive. But a better, more enlightened, way to survive is to determine the causes of anti-American terrorism and eliminate THEM.
JLNobody
JLNobody, well said!
BumbleBeeBoogie
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