What Makes a Suicide Terrorist Tick

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What Makes a Suicide Terrorist Tick?

• Mohamed Atta (d. 09/11/01). Pilot of the plane
  that hit the north tower.

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Bibliography

• 1) Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God
• 2) William James, The Divided Self and the
  Process of its Unification.
• 3) R.D. Laing, The Divided Self
• 4) The Bible
• 5) The Koran
• 6) Islam Empire of Faith

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A War of Ideas?

• On that day there shall be a blast on the
  trumpet, and all that are in the heavens, and all
  that are on the earth shall be terror-stricken,
  save him whom God pleaseth to deliver and all
  shall come to Him in humble guise. -- Sura 27,
  The Koran
• if you spurn my judgments, and do not obey all
  my commandments, but break my covenant, then be
  sure that this is what I will do I will bring
  down upon you sudden terror -- Lev 26 15

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Some Hypotheses

• The Schizoid condition
• Self Loathing
• The Sleep of Reason
• Altruism
• Indoctrination

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1. The Schizoid Condition

• A dissociation of ones self from the world and
  from ones self.
• the deliberate cultivation of a state of
  death-in-life as a defense against the pain of
  life.
• The schizoid creates a false-self system which
  he presents to the world while withdrawing into a
  hidden disembodied self.
• Schizoids are people who experience them-selves
  as automata, as robots, as bits of machinery, or
  even as animals.

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The Divided Self

• the individual delegates all transactions
  between himself and others to a system within his
  being which is not himthe world is experienced
  as unreal, and all that belongs to this system is
  felt to be false, futile, and meaningless.
• --- R.D. Laing

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Schizoid Psychosis Crossing Over

• If there is anything a schizoid individual is
  likely to believe in, it is his own
  destructiveness. He cannot fill his own
  emptiness without reducing what is there to
  nothing.
• The psychotic schizoid is a welter of
  conflicting emotions, from a desperate longing
  and yearning for what others have and he lacks,
  to frantic envy and hatred of all that is theirs
  and not his

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Jihad Struggle

• Greater jihad is the struggle with ones self
  to be a better more righteous Muslim.
• Lesser Jihad is the military struggle against
  infidels who subjugate Muslims.
• Both the jihads have their own importance. In
  one, one struggles to amend his inner self, and
  in another he defends his religion.
• -- Mullah
  Mohamed Omar

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The Greater Jihad or Inner Struggle

• Atta, struggled to be a pious Muslim, but was
  unable to live up to Islams strict moral
  requirements. His westernized libido was found
  of alcohol, tobacco, and lap dancing.
• His Muslimized super-ego struggled to repress
  these forbidden desires. He was tortured by
  guilt, shame and self-loathing.

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2. Religion Self Loathing

• Atta saw himself as a contemptible infidel, hated
  his western identity, and wanted to destroy it.
• They will not cease to war against you until
  they turn you from your religion, if they be
  able. But whoever of you shall turn from his
  religion and die an infidel, their works shall be
  fruitless in this world and in the next, they
  shall be consigned to the fire, therein to abide
  for aye. The Koran, Sura 2

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Projection, Destruction Redemption

• Atta projected the part of himself that he
  believed had been corrupted by Western values
  onto the Towers. He saw them as temples to greed
  and infidelity, modern day incarnations of Sodom
  and Gomorrah.
• By destroying the corrupt part of himself, his
  western identity, he hoped to buy redemption
  for himself from Allah.

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3. The Sleep of Reason.

• The suicide terrorist has difficulty
  distinguishing fact from fiction.
• Aristotle noted that human beings are rational.
  We gather and process information, formulate
  generalizations, tease out conclusions, get rid
  of inconsistencies, and manage over time to
  correct our mistakes.
• He failed to point out that the ability to reason
  can be anesthetized, especially by religion.

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Reason and Religion pull us in opposite
directions.

• Judaic, Christian, and Islamic myth looks back to
  our sacred origins, forward to the
  restoration of a lost Golden age, life as it was
  before The Fall. So, these religions are
  CONSERVATIVE.
• Reason is practical and PROGRESSIVE. Science is
  constantly discovering new truths. We know more
  than our parents, and our children will know more
  than we do. So reason looks forward..

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Religious myth disguised as scientific theory is
dangerous.

• Creationism, for example, is myth marching about
  in the respectable garments of science.
• The narratives of religion are not supposed to be
  empirically demonstrable.
• Religion myth tells a story that makes the lives
  of some meaningful, but it should never be used
  as a basis for scientific research or pragmatic
  policy.

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Myth cannot survive rational analysis.

• As for those that have faith and do good works,
  We shall admit them to gardens watered by running
  streams, where wedded to chaste virgins, they
  shall abide forever.
• --The Koran, 454

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Closing the Gates of ijtihadIndependent
Reasoning

• Sunni Muslims believe that there is no need for
  independent reasoning about Islamic Law the
  Shariah.
• Shariah is thought to be a fixed blueprint for
  society. So ijtihad is neither necessary nor
  desirable. Instead of critical reflection,
  Muslims are taught to imitate taqlid (the
  past). See especially Anderson

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Shariah

• Orthodox Muslims hold that Shariah is divinely
  dictated, and so, an unquestionable basis for all
  conduct.
• Shariah consists of the proclamations of the
  Koran, sound Hadith (orally transmitted sayings
  and actions of the profit), and other sources.

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4. Religious Altruism

• Atta hated his Western identity, and hoped to
  redeem himself by destroying it.
• But he also believed he was sacrificing himself
  for a greater good, the Lesser Jihad, the
  Islamization of the world.
• These, the faithful and the infidels, are the
  two disputants who dispute concerning their Lord
  but for those who have disbelieved, garments of
  fire shall be cut out, and boiling water shall be
  poured down upon their heads. --Koran, 2120

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5. Religious Training

• As children we believe what our elders teach us
  what to fear, who to hate, and so on.
• As we mature intellectually, we discover that
  what we have been taught is not always true.
• To prevent us from seeing the world as it is, and
  from drawing our own conclusions about it, some
  religions try to control us through
  misinformation.

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Jihad Factories

• In Pakistan over a million students study in some
  10,000 madrasas, schools teaching militant Islam.
  
• Pakistans religious parties, i.e. the Mujahedin,
  support such schools, and draw from them recruits
  to wage jihad for various causes.
• One such school, Haqqania madrasa, has produced
  more Taliban leaders than any other.
• Most of these leaders believe that nuclear
  weapons should be part of the arsenal of jihad.

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Haqqania Madrasa

• A madrasa is a muslim religious seminary.
• Haqqania Madrasa NW Pakistan.
• 2,800 students ages 8 to 35.
• The youngest boys sit cross-legged 4 to 8 hours
  per day memorizing the Koran.
• Older boys learn the Hadith, Islamic history and
  jurisprudence.
• There are no world history, math, or science
  courses taught.

22
Jeffrey Goldbergs visit

• In March 2000 Goldberg enrolled as a student in
  Haqqania Madrasa.
• He stayed for a month, talked to whom he pleased,
  participated in classes, and studied the Koran.
• In one class, he was challenged to explain why
  Americans hate Osama bin Laden.

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Goldbergs Dialogue

• Goldberg argued that bin Laden purposely targets
  innocent people for his own ends, and his
  practices contradict the teachings of The
  Koran.
• The class shouted him down and began chanting
  Osama! Osama!

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Too much religion addles the brain

• One student, abusing all logic, argued, The
  atomic bomb comes from Allah, so it should be
  used.
• Goldberg writes, I then asked, Who wants to see
  Osama bin Laden armed with nuclear weapons?
  Every hand in the room shot up. The students
  laughed and some applauded.

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Review The hypotheses again

• The Schizoid condition
• Self Loathing
• The Sleep of Reason
• Altruism
• Indoctrination

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The Schizoid Condition.

• Atta, and his ilk, were schizoid personalities
  with psychotic tendencies. The jihad they
  prosecuted was not only against the West, it was
  against their own Westernized, infideic, alter
  egos.
• Unable to cope with normal human interaction,
  incapable of giving and receiving love, and
  tortured by guilt and shame, the hated self
  withdraws into a part of itself that wants to
  die.
• Laing asserts, and I agree, that ones sense of
  identity requires the existence of another by
  whom one is known.

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Another factor

• The SLEEP OF REASON
• 1. The critical faculties of the suicide
  terrorist have been anesthetized by religious
  myth, ideology, and indoctrination.
• 2. The terrorist cannot distinguish fact from
  fantasy.

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Two Motives

• Self Interest By destroying the corrupt part of
  themselves suicide terrorists hope to redeem
  themselves in the estimation of their God.
• Altruism By sacrificing themselves, the
  September 11th terrorists believed that they
  would be ridding the world of infidels, and that
  that was surely a good thing.