Guest Column: Jihad Tourism
by Anat Berko
Special to IPT News
October 2, 2013
Special to IPT News
October 2, 2013
The findings of my research indicated that the jihadists' obsessions
created what are known as "overvalued ideas," that is, false or
exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic. One often repeated, was
the vision of what awaited the shaheed (a martyr for the sake of Allah)
in the Islamic paradise after death. The sensations of the release of tension
and relaxation come only after the terrorist act, when the perpetrator looks at
the people he murdered. Even suicide bombers whose explosive belts failed to
detonate or who were arrested before they could carry out their missions
described a transcendent sensation, a smile as they approached their targets.
They spoke of their inability to control their
impulsive behavior, harmful to themselves and others. They described the mujahed's
[the jihad fighter's] search for meaning in his life, how he turns his back on
civilization and everything it represents. Many of them felt rejected by their
immediate surroundings, either because of feelings of inferiority, marginality
or guilt for things they had done (or not done) that brought dishonor to their
families, or simply because they could not integrate into society as
productive, contributing citizens. Those who had been exposed to Western
society had strong feelings of inferiority, jealousy and rejection, especially
because of differences in life styles, sex roles, confidence and other personal
attributes. Some of them noted unbridgeable gaps between culture and science.
One dispatcher of suicide bombers spoke of the great differences in
capabilities, culture and economic condition between Christian and Muslim
Arabs. For the mujahedeen, people are either good or bad, and that conceptual
polarity directs their course.
Terrorists are also frustrated and alienated by those
who rejected them, leading them to announce that as mujahedeen they
"reject the rejecters." A similar sensation has been noted in
criminological studies as a criminal behavioral dynamic, and because the
criminal is rejected by a normative society and cannot integrate into it, he
declares war on it. Generally speaking, there is no psychopathology among
Muslim terrorists. That is, none of them can be diagnosed as having a
recognizable mental illness, even those who attempted to carry out suicide
bombing attacks. What remains to be examined is whether or not there is a
collective pathology, and if it is a question of a society, many of whose
members find it difficult to suppress violence and control their urges and
anger.
Jihad, a holy war against the infidel, is the personal
duty of every Muslim, and if he does not wage it, he will die as a religious
hypocrite, someone who only outwardly practices Islam but does not truly
believe, and be damned for all eternity. The terrorists I interviewed told me that
waging jihad is, for the mujahed, the way to partake of Allah's mercy
for themselves and the members of their families, and to go directly to
paradise without the Islamic "tortures of the grave" and without
undergoing a painful examination by angels before they are allowed to enter.
Exhilaration and ecstasy accompany jihad fighters in
their search for arenas of excitement around the globe. They look for places
where they can rape and kill with impunity and fight the infidel in the name of
Allah, reaching the pinnacle of masculinity and honor reserved for the shaheed.
Superficially, they may seem to be fighting for an ideal, but in reality, even
in suicide bombing attacks, there is an element of desire for reward, both in
this world and the next. The overwhelming desire of many Muslim adolescent
boys, even those educated in the West or who are converts to Islam, especially
those living in countries where there is no real governance, is excitement. To
that end they stream into confrontation zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Chechnya, Libya, Iraq, Africa (such as the recent terrorist attack in Kenya),
and Syria to experience the mission, the excitement and promise of being a
shaheed as the ultimate in self-realization.
Frustration, alienation and a sense of inferiority
accompany the increase in the pace of modern life, and the gap between East and
West continually grows. The deprivation, restrictions and solutions imposed by
Islamism lead people to seek a group to which they can belong and which will
help them channel their negative feelings for the other, the different, the
"infidel," feelings which are common to all. In addition, the need
for adventure and excitement has helped create a kind of "jihad
tourism" especially but not exclusively relevant for young Muslim men,
including those born in the West. Today in Syria there are jihadist fighters
from 60 countries, among them converts to Islam, who star in videos and help
the jihadists recruit supporters and spread propaganda. Jihad tourism is a
subculture of fun and excitement, a festival of violence, similar to the
Western criminal and gang subcultures. The jihadist lifestyle allows them to
shake off the confines of the disintegrating patriarchal family. As opposed to
ordinary criminals, whose social status is lowered when they are classified as
felons, the Islamic terrorists feel they are performing good deeds for the sake
of Allah, raising their status. They act on violent impulses, are unrestrained
in their aggression and try to impress those around them by taking risks,
hoping for admiration and praise. They butcher people of all ages, use both
sarin gas and hatchets, behead, rape and mutilate their "enemies"
with no regard for the fact that until recently the enemy was a neighbor, or at
least shared their language and culture.
In their "extreme jihad journeys" they
become accustomed to violence and atrocities, or as one of the men I
interviewed said, "we find the smell of blood natural; even as young
children we saw sheep being slaughtered in our yards." In addition, they
receive religious justification from various fatwas, religious edicts issued by sheikhs such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim
Brotherhood's religious authority. The jihad tourists live like wandering
adventurers, generally finding it difficult to integrate into the mainstream of
modern life. Instead they choose a path of murder and violence while embracing
simplicity and even primitiveness. Having different aspirations, they do not
have to compete with the West, seeking instead to destroy it while hoping to
recreate the past in preference to joining the future. Before he was killed by
the Americans, the terrorists I interviewed often praised Osama bin Laden and
the simple life he lived in the caves of Tora Bora – an illusion, because bin
Laden lived a life of relative comfort in Pakistan.
The waves of jihad tourism and terrorism
targeting mainly Christians and Jews in the West have spun out of control and
are not susceptible to the restraints of family, culture, religion or society.
Violent jihad tourists are now overwhelming entire countries: Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. The atrocities
currently being committed in Syria would not embarrass any legendary serial
killer, and there are thousands of such jihad tourists there, Sunni and
Shi'ite, and even Western converts to Islam, who torture and kill innocent
civilians.
It is the high season for jihad tourism, and while the
mujahedeen continue their activities in Iraq, the trendy watering hole is
currently Syria, where Bashar al-Assad's friends and foes alike
indiscriminately slaughter innocents of all ages and sexes. They surf on waves
of blood, and the operatives of the Al-Nusra Front, a group affiliated with
Al-Qaeda, slaughter both members of the Assad regime and of secular rebel
organizations who fighting the same regime.
The goal of Western educational systems is to provide
the tools necessary for functioning in society. In the Islamic countries,
however, children are taught from infancy that the family and clan are the
foundations of their lives and dictate their behavior. Islamic society binds
its members in chains, and the individual has no choice but to submit to group
pressure. Drowning in blood and violence, his only justification is seeking the
death of a shaheed.
And recent conflicts show that the West provides
plenty of jihad tourists despite our education and opportunities. For some,
especially converts to Islam, waging jihad in foreign lands can be exciting and
revolutionary and a chance to prove the depth of their new devotion.
With all of this in mind, I would like to propose calling
murder for the sake of Allah "shahadamania," which might make it
easier for the West to understand and fight the syndrome. It refers to the
obsession for istishhad [martyrdom for the sake of Allah] and includes
feelings of transcendence and euphoria after killing the infidel, the
capitulation to instinct, the inability to function in daily life, and jihad as
a good and even altruistic deed in this world to qualify for a hedonistic
afterlife.
Dr. Anat Berko, PhD, is a Lt Col (Res) in the Israel
Defense Forces, conducts research for the National Security Council and is a
research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism at
the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. A criminologist, she was a visiting
professor at George Washington University and has written two books about
suicide bombers, "The Path to Paradise," and the recently released "The Smarter
Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers
