[ALBSA-Info] They're not insane

[Kreshnik Bejko]

Again articles are surfacing in the press stating the truth about these 
suicidal maniacs. They are not fighting
a state they are fighting a way of life. This is, arguably, baggage from the 
half-assed work of the colonial era. You introduce these people to a 
lifestyle radically different, you take what you want and then you leave 
them to sort things out in their own. Well they did!!

Twisted view of the world drives some to mass murder
By MARCUS GEE
>From Thursday's Globe and Mail


When most people picture a terrorist, they imagine a sadistic madman like 
the Russian hijacker played by Gary Oldman in the movie Air Force One .

In reality, many modern terrorists are more like Saeed Hotari. Until June, 
he was known to neighbours and friends as a shy, devout young man with 
boyish looks that made him appear younger than his 22 years.

He attended mosque, observed fasts, studied the Koran and worked hard at his 
job as an electrician.

But one night he rode by car to Tel Aviv, joined a lineup outside a 
beachfront disco and detonated a bomb hidden in his clothing. Twenty-one 
Israelis died, including the teenage girl he had been talking to in the 
line.

To most reasonable people, this week's terrorist attacks on the United 
States seemed to be the acts of madmen. Who but a lunatic would fly an 
airliner into an office building crowded with innocent people?

In fact, say those who study the matter, terrorists are seldom out of their 
minds. Psychological profiles of captured terrorists have shown they often 
do not fit the stereotype of unhinged loners or embittered outcasts.

Instead they are like Mr. Hotari: rational, logical, deliberate and deeply 
devoted to their cause.

"The notion that they are insane in a clinical sense is misplaced," said 
Philip Schrodt, a terrorism expert at the University of Kansas. "They are 
not hearing voices in their heads. They are just utterly convinced that what 
they are doing is right, and they will do anything to achieve their 
objective."

Mark Juergensmeyer, a California scholar who interviewed several terrorists 
for his book on religious terrorism, Terror in the Mind of God, said he was 
struck with how sane they seemed.

"My impression of virtually everybody with whom I talked was that they 
seemed not only normal but pleasant, affable, with above-normal 
intelligence. If you didn't know they were associated with terrorism, you'd 
think they were good people."

What made them different from ordinary people, he said, was their twisted 
view of the world.

Whether they were radical Sikhs from India, Christian militants from the 
United States or Islamic fundamentalists from the Middle East, he said they 
believed they were part of a titanic struggle between good and evil.

As for the mindset of those who carried out Tuesday's attacks, Prof. 
Juergensmeyer said: "I have no question in my mind that these people died 
with a feeling of exhilaration that they were entering an enormous struggle 
on the side of the forces of good," he said.

For the terrorists, the struggle is so important they could easily 
rationalize killing thousands of people, he said.

"If you view the world as at war, then all things are possible."

For Saeed Hotari, the war was close to home. A refugee, he returned from 
Jordan to his father's West Bank hometown to find the place beggared by 
years of Israeli occupation.

Like many young Palestinian men, he was brought up to despise Israel, 
Israelis and all that they stand for.

In a note he left for his parents, he promised to turn his body into 
"fragments and bombs which run after the people of Zion, blowing and burning 
what remains of them."

His father later told the newspaper USA Today that he was proud of his son's 
sacrifice. "He has become a hero. Tell me, what more could a father ask?"

Terrorism experts say the approval of the community is an important reason 
why terrorists do what they do. In a recent opinion poll, 78 per cent of 
Palestinians said they supported suicide bombings against Israel.

The encouragement of radical Islamic clerics is also key, experts say.

In some Islamic schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, young people are 
taught that if they sacrifice themselves in the struggle against Israel, 
they will reap rich rewards in the afterlife, including the services of 72 
beautiful virgins with "complexions like diamonds."

"In the West, we might say that these people are mentally ill, but in parts 
of the Middle East, what they do is sometimes culturally accepted, even 
encouraged," said David Schenker, a research fellow at the Washington 
Institute for Near East policy. "There is a certain school of thought that 
this type of thing is selfless — it helps your community, it helps your 
family."

He said the Koran forbids suicide, so radical clerics describe suicide 
attacks as acts of "self martyrdom."

Far from being loners, Mr. Schenker said, terrorists are often part of a 
close web of comradeship that supports and encourages them.

Like soldiers in battle who sacrifice themselves to protect the lives of 
their brothers in arms, today's terrorists may give up their lives at least 
partly because they know their peer group will respect them for it.

Walter Laqueur, a scholar and the author of a book on terrorism, said the 
growing breed of religious or sectarian terrorism accounts for half of the 
terrorist attacks in recent years.

"The new terrorism is different in character, aiming not at clearly defined 
political demands but at the destruction of society and the elimination of 
large sections of the population," he writes in The New Terrorism: 
Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction .

"In its most extreme form, this new terrorism intends to liquidate all 
satanic forces, which may include the majority of a country or mankind."

That makes them different from previous kinds of terrorists who had specific 
demands, such as the release of imprisoned comrades. The aim of the new 
breed is simply to lash out against a perceived enemy, more often than not 
the United States.

It is not just Islamic militants who see the world that way. Prof. 
Juergensmeyer sees the same war-to-the-death mentality in American Christian 
militias, right-wing Jewish fanatics and Sikh extremists.

"What makes religious violence particularly savage and relentless is that 
its perpetrators have placed such religious images of divine struggle — 
cosmic war — in the services of worldly political battles," he writes in his 
book.




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