How to confront a cult of terror

Cult psychology may help explain why young men become suicide murderers.

Zealots who tend to violence are meant to be easy to spot. That is why the identities of the alleged London bombers are so arresting. All were British born and raised. Most were well educated, showing no signs of religious fervour. Only one appears to have been remotely socially dysfunctional. For those who believe in the stereotyped terrorist as either rabidly fanatical or desperate, illiterate, and oppressed, this superficial normality is mystifying. It is therefore dangerous to reduce this kind of terrorism to an inherent consequence of Islamist extremism.

Certainly it has that expression, but a suicide bomber’s psychology is far too complex to be categorised neatly. Some may simply be suicidal, looking to give their life meaning. Like many suicide victims, they may appear normal while suffering intense feelings of social alienation and humiliation. Some might just be brainwashed. Whatever the case, it appears that the ideal candidate for a suicide bomber is not someone who is religious – but someone vulnerable to exploitation.

Without a life of utter hopelessness, it takes more to sacrifice your own life to kill innocent people than an extremist bent. It takes programming. The vague labels of “Islamism” and “extremism” do not sufficiently capture this psychology.

Behaviourally, this has all the hallmarks of a cult. It is worth considering this as the appropriate model to analyse these latest attacks.

If Osama bin Laden is any guide, terrorist demagogues, like cult leaders, are charismatic figures who espouse heretical views that stand condemned by the mainstream. Their discourse is absolute and adversarial – the cult is pure, the world is evil – and in the process, the leadership emerges as the exclusive source of authority. Thus are the followers’ critical faculties suspended. With no external, stabilising influence, any action mandated by the leadership is uncritically executed. Murder-suicide suddenly becomes “reasonable”.

But most tellingly, it is the vulnerability of cult members that is so tragically exploited. It is no coincidence that suicide bombers are almost exclusively pawns: the young, anonymous and dispensable. Terrorist leaders may speak absurdly of heavenly virgins gained through self-inflicted “martyrdom” – but they seem incongruously unwilling to claim the prize for themselves.

A major problem is that cults are incredibly difficult to dismantle intellectually. The brainwashing is too great. Deporting the leadership is an option – but the danger is that because they are so revered within the cult, this may turn them into martyrs. Unfortunately, this leaves us with what we already have: intelligence and law enforcement with community co-operation.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and even Prince Charles, have called on Muslims to weed out the extremist element within. In Australia, this is already happening: intelligence behind recent ASIO raids reportedly came, in part, from within the Muslim community. But it can be of only limited use.

Australian Muslims are already closely monitored, particularly the congregations of those with a firebrand reputation such as Sheikh Mohammed Omran. Frankly, ASIO would know far more about any threatening elements in the Muslim community than mainstream Muslims would.

I believe Australian Muslims’ most meaningful role will necessarily be focused on preventing cult formation. Here there is hope. One feature of cult members is that they are often overcompensating for some kind of feeling of guilt. This creates a spiritual void that the cult often fills. (It comes as no surprise at all that one of the alleged London bombers, Hasib Hussain, suddenly became fervently religious 18 months ago after being a wild drinker.)

Our failure as mainstream Muslims has been our negligence in providing the alternative narrative to fill this spiritual void. Anyone familiar with the Muslim community will know stories of those who convert to, or rediscover, Islam and adopt the radical views filling the gap left by the mainstream’s relative inactivity.

Ultimately then, it is not enough, or even particularly useful, for mainstream Muslims to condemn cults within because they are already defined by their very marginality. We must forcefully provide the presently dormant alternative.

Melbourne lawyer Waleed Aly is on the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.

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Muslim MP calls for new council to accredit imams

“We have the same types of people in Melbourne as those polarising London, let’s be honest about it,” said Adem Somyurek, the state Labor member for Eumemmerring.

Mr Somyurek urged the Federal Government to establish an Australian Muslim council, as France did after the September 11 attacks, to educate Australian Muslims and accredit imams.

Mr Somyurek’s call came as Muslim groups wrote to Prime Minister John Howard to urge him to set up a British-style anti-terrorism summit as part of a campaign against Islamic extremism in the wake of the London bombings.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, which made its initial suggestion of a summit last week, sent a formal proposal to Mr Howard yesterday.

The summit would address inflammatory religious literature, the proper religious training of imams and a proposed migration restriction on radical overseas clerics, according to the organisation’s president, Dr Ameer Ali.

Dr Ali, who is travelling to Sydney today to muster support for a declaration by Australia’s leading Muslim clerics against religious-inspired hatred and violence, played down suggestions that Australian Muslim leaders should sign a fatwa, or formal religious decree. Five hundred British Muslim leaders issued a fatwa on Tuesday condemning the London bombings.

Mr Somyurek also believes the Government should monitor Islamic religious education, that Victoria’s religious hatred laws should be used against extremist Muslims, and that the Prime Minister and senior ministers should visit Muslim communities more often.

He analyses how extremists operate within Muslim communities in an article on The Age opinion page today, and calls on Australian Muslims “to stand up to these psychopaths”. But he also believes Muslims need to be empowered and consulted on policy issues. “At present, Muslims have pulled down the shutters. They are not marching or writing to newspapers or on talkback – and that plays into the hands of the extremists who say ‘they will never like you – they are Christians and you are Muslims’,” he told The Age yesterday.

Mr Somyurek said an Australian Muslim Council could promote “our own version of Islam in a way that’s more palatable for Australians, a more liberal interpretation, and enlighten people on the positives of Islam”.

It could accredit imams, who are currently brought from overseas with minimal controls, and perhaps begin training Australian imams.

He said the Government should examine and monitor religious education in mosques and religious schools. “It’s totally unregulated, much is low quality, and teachers are not subject to any standards,” he said. “This is a critical area where kids’ minds and values are being shaped.”

Mr Somyurek said Victoria’s religious vilification law should be strictly enforced.

He said many Muslim communities were in socio-economically disadvantaged seats, usually Labor-held.

“Maybe the Prime Minister or senior ministers need to visit these areas on a more regular basis and demonstrate to Muslims that they are important.”

Age, July 21, 2005

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The bravest women in the world

The world depends on Muslim feminists pushing for reform, writes Pamela Bone.

Feminist debate here – what little of it there is – seems to be mainly about whether Big Brother is empowering to or patronising of young women. Many of the same young women would rather die (metaphorically speaking) than own the title of feminist.

In other places women are dying, literally, for the feminist cause. Did Western feminists in the 1970s – so silent these days! – think they had it hard? They had to put up with scorn and ridicule from the media and hostility from conservatives who said they were out to destroy the family. But no one, so far as I can remember, was murdered.

A few examples, of many, of what women in some countries are up against: in northern Afghanistan in May, three women workers at a microcredit organisation (which gives loans to women to start up small businesses) were stoned to death by warlords; in India, a woman social worker in Madhya Pradesh state had her hands chopped off by a man furious because she was counselling villagers against child marriage.

In Iraq, a wave of attacks on women has been carried out by the new insurgent groups. Said a 23-year-old university student: “They dropped acid in my face and on my legs. They cut all my hair off while hitting me in the face many times, telling me it’s the price for not obeying God’s wish in using the veil.”

Those searching for the “root causes” of terrorism might do well to listen to the terrorists themselves. The leadership of al-Qaeda has said many times that its aim is to set up a global Islamic state. They want a worldwide Islamic theocracy ruled according to sharia law; a world in which women must conceal their faces, where they may not work or be educated, may not go in public without a male relative; a world in which women are under the total control of men. They want a world in which women do not have the option of rejecting them.

A YouGov poll published in London’s Daily Telegraph last month found that 32 per cent of British Muslims believed that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end”. But men were far more likely than women to say this.

As well, the proportion of Muslim men who said they felt no loyalty to Britain (18 per cent) was more than three times higher than the proportion of women who said the same.

In Western countries, young Muslim women tend to do better in education than young Muslim men. Muslim women, it seems, are more likely than men to appreciate Western democracy. And men are more likely to resent it, at least partly because our laws prevent them from controlling women to the extent some – not all – would like to. An Iraqi-Australian woman I talked to thought it funny that a friend of hers can threaten her husband she will go to the police if he attacks her. “He doesn’t dare hit her now,” she laughed. This same woman said Australian women have no idea how lucky they are.

There may be many reasons for the hatred Islamic extremists have for the West, but high among them is the freedom of women. The West is “decadent and immoral” because in it women are free. The Islamists fear that Western influences will trigger an Islamic feminist revolution.

Too late. The revolution has already begun. Across the Middle East women are organising and demonstrating, demanding their rights, challenging the interpretations of their religion that say they are worth less than men. At great risk to themselves, women in Afghanistan and Pakistan have recently held large protests against the widespread violence towards women that exists in their cultures. Last week brave women in Iraq were holding protests against the proposed constitution now being drafted, which assigns laws on marriage, custody and inheritance to religious authorities. In Canada it was women immigrants from Muslim countries who protested most about proposals to set up an Islamic court there.

Far from this being an era of post-feminism, what is really needed is a new feminist wave across the world – or, if you object to that word, a new global focus on women’s rights.

Of course there are Muslim women who will say they are contented under sharia laws, just as here there were women’s groups opposed to the feminist reforms that are now taken for granted. There have always been women who collude with their own oppression and perpetuate the traditions that keep them subordinate. But they are wrong, because everywhere that women are oppressed there is backwardness and poverty.

The best thing the West can do to bring about reform in Islamic countries is to engage with the progressive movements in those countries, and while many of those progressives are men, it is women who are the main drivers of reform.

Yes, Muslim feminists are still a minority, but they are a growing minority. And they are the bravest women in the world, and deserve every support and encouragement we can give them. It is not too great an exaggeration to say the future of world security depends on them.

Pamela Bone is an associate editor.