Laurent Murawiec
Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C., author of the just-released The Mind of Jihad
“Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place,” begins a WIRED piece by Bruce Schneier entitled The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists. In his article, Schneier rejects the “strategic model” interpretation of terrorism, an economic model of rational behavior used by some social scientists and experts in matters of terror; he bases his analysis on a paper by Max Abrahms, a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation: What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategies.
Abrahms tries to show that this model, often applied to the study of terrorism, is unworkable by outlining seven “puzzles,” seven purportedly flawed assumptions about terrorism. He then proceeds to provide his own recipes to grasp and combat terrorism.
Both the author and his commentator unfortunately proceed and outline yet another radical misunderstanding of the matter at hand.
Their unstated axioms vitiate the entire argument: they tacitly posit, though never state (or reflect upon), that
- terrorism is the operative concept and practice that needs to be analyzed
- that all terrorisms are equivalent and can be homogenously understood, inasmuch as they share fundamental and defining traits. Further, and even more damaging to analysis,
- the “terrorism” they analyze has nothing to do with the historical and theological breeding ground from which it sprang.
Thus, the word “jihad” does not appear even once in Abrahms’ treatment.
Past the single-country, or single-object terrorist organizations, such as the Tamul Tigers’ LTTE’s claim on parts of Sri Lanka, ETA’s demands regarding an independent Basque land of Euskadi, or the IRA’s irredentist fight for the Six Countries of Ulster, it does not seem to have dawned upon either writer that the lion’s share of modern terrorism is Muslim, inspired by and committed in the name of jihad.
Moreover, neither tries to look beyond the mere word of “terrorism” or “terror.” Their not uncommon reduction of terror to the terrorist act, or a string of such acts, at the expense of the etiology and substance of modern terror, is particularly damaging: what if terror, the Terreur first undertaken in the modern world by Robespierre and the French Montagnards in 1793, is a system of rule rather than a number of bombings and killings? What about the consciously-claimed filiation posited by Vladimir Lenin regarding the Cheka’s terror, from January 1918 onward? What of the Gestapo’s reign of terror, just as the others a principal and fundamental means of terrorizing and cowing an entire society?
Can we apply this concept to contemporary, Islamic terror? Can we furthermore go past a study of the means to a study of the ends? Jihad then comes into play.
Abrahms’ “puzzle #1” enunciates as a given that “scholars have questioned the rationality and motives” or terrorism because terrorist violence against civilians purportedly has failed to reach political goals. But the analysis blithely ignores two foundational cases where terror actually won the aims it had assigned itself: the Algerian FLN, which was a miserably ineffective military force, and one that was mopped up by the French military, won the Algerian War largely by dint of systematic slaughter of civilians, French and Muslim alike. The PLO gained control of the Gaza strip and the West Bank from Israel mostly by dint of a sustained campaign of terror. Bother were symbols of and models for innumerable terror groups – including the radical Islamist mujahideen gathered in Pakistan and Afhanistan.
Omission or blindness, the analysis breaks down. The “strategic model” may be flawed, Abrahms’ no less. In both cases, the problem lies with the casual and slapdash application of various academic theories (rational choice, decision theory, Weberian categories, etc.) to the subject regardless of the substance of matter – the history, theology, law and sociology of the world of Islam.
Abrahms has found that “[p]eople turn to terrorism for social solidarity. He theorizes that people join terrorist organizations worldwide in order to be part of a community, much like the reason inner-city youths join gangs in the United States” (in Schneier’s summary). There again, a little bit of history might have helped: people join organizations in general, from North to South Pole, for reasons of “social solidarity.” The desire to be “part of a community” applies to people who join the bird-watchers’ association, members of the local football team and union members: what does the striving for social solidarity teach us about terrorists that we did not know? More so, is it, as Abrahms suggests, the crucial contributing factor – and to what? The reason(s) individual join a group does not exhaust the nature and purpose of that group; it only sheds some light of the joiners’ motivations.
What first attracted my own interest in researching modern and contemporary terror – it is now published as The Mind of Jihad - was an unusual characteristic of all jihadi groups: the love of death, the lust for blood, the desire to kill and maim, the joy in inflicting both. In the doctrine, in the practice and in the propaganda of jihadi groups the world over, it is a dominant and ubiquitous feature. Most other terror groups seem to look upon death, blood, killing and maiming, as instrumentalities. With very few exceptions, they did not make a cult of it. Only an Islamic terror master could have said, as Osama bin Laden did, and before him many jihadi theorists, “we love death more than you love life.”
Bafflement led to exploring a number of different avenues to understand the dynamics of this bloodlust. It came as a surprise that the belief-structure (as distinct from the belief-content) of contemporary jihadis much resembled that of Europe’s medieval Millenarians, whose insurgencies mobilized tens of thousands at a time the whole length and breadth of the continent: they were Gnostic believers, seeks of the Apocalypse, their doctrines were messianic. They believed themselves to be invested by God by a stupendous, cosmic mission that they alone knew, and rebuild society, and earth as a whole, along the lines of their Utopian venture of Kingdom come. They were above the common norms of mankind, they were The Law unto themselves, and God wanted these Elect to shed torrents of blood to realize His Plan. Whoever has studied the writings of the leaders and doctrinaires of modern jihad – Hasan al-Banna, Abu Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, Ruhollah Khomeiny, Ali Shariati - will easily recognized the kinship, beyond the difference in religious and cultural terms of reference. In huge numbers, rural and urban masses, their lives dislocated, their alienation extreme, their confidence in any institution shattered by social chaos, rose up behind messianic leaders.
The form taken by the millenarian utopia in Islam historically is Mahdism. Time and again, in both Sunni and Shia Islam, self-proclaimed Mahdis (the expected Deliverer, the Guided One) led insurgencies against established authorities, as harbingers of the Day of Judgment. Mahdism, always a banner for social upsurge and revolt, was politicized in the 19th century by Jamal al
My bafflement after reading your slapdash article can only lead me to one conclusion that doesn’t vitiate the unstated axioms of your radical misunderstanding of the matter at hand. In other words, I think your article basically says, nu-uh! I just use a lot of big words.
Interesting article, and it seems Bruce might be swallowing his words because of it:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/10/the_seven_habit.html
Tip of the hat to the both of yous.
“…But the worst is still to come: “And finally, we need to minimize collateral damage in our counterterrorism operations, as well as clamping down on bigotry and hate crimes, which just creates more dislocation and social isolation, and the inevitable calls for revenge.” In other words, it’s our fault.
“They hate us because we’ve wreaked evil. We should shut ourselves up, abandon the First Amendment, cozy up for the poor downtrodden – under the “hearts and minds” argument lurks political correctness and the intellectual surrender to sharia. All in the name of bright new insights into the nature of terrorism: to fight terror, be nice to them. And never, ever talk of “Islam.” It might offend.”
Two things: first, since when is clamping down on bigotry and hate crimes a bad idea? What problems would it cause? I mean, if you wanna stand up for people’s right to be hateful, fine, but I will stand up for the responsibility of the authorities to monitor those who exercise that right, and protect minorities in the US, Islamic or otherwise. And if their cousins in the US report that they are well-treated here, that has as much power to change minds as anything.
And also, in point of fact, we have wreaked evil. We can be strong in the Middle East and do a lot more good than we have, and by the way, a lot less evil. It’s not true that ‘under the “hearts and minds” argument lurks political correctness and the intellectual surrender to sharia.’ President Bush himself admitted that policies of political manipulation in countries like Iran was wrongheaded.
So on the one hand you accuse Abrahms of oversimplification, and then on the other you conflate his argument with ‘political correctness and the intellectual surrender to sharia.’ Sounds to me like exchanging one oversimplification for another.
Personally, I don’t think this was meant as a serious analysis of the “Seven Habits…” article, I think this was a rather pompous advertisement for his (Murawiec’s) book, thinly disguised until the last two sentences that say “Buy my book, That might be a useful starting point”.” Once you take this in to account, you can calculate the size of the pinch of salt with which you need to take it.
I think the author makes interesting and valid arguments. but I agree with “Disappointed” on this style of writing. It’s unecessarily wordy.
I was following this text with interest, and saw much value in it, until the author suddenly veered off 180 degrees near the end.
Turning from a reasoned discussion of terrorist mindsets and how Radical Islam does (and/or does not) spring from cutural attitudes and mental constructs into an unsupported series of sneering attacks on any effort to bring potential terrorist recruits into the mainstream of non-terrorist culture seems jarring and disconnected from the rest of the article.
If you discard the last three paragraphs, this was a good and informative exposition of the authors’ reasoning. The two paragraphs before the last contribute nothing.
You state: Thus, the word “jihad” does not appear even once in Abrahms’ treatment.
This is demonstrably false.
For example on page 21 of the PDF file (labeled 32:4 | 98 ) It appears at least twice in a discussion of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Apparently you ran a search, which for some PDF reason does not work on this document, rather than go to the trouble to read the article.
I also don’t understand Greg’s comment, as the Schnieir article he links to completely endorses Abrahms’ analysis.
One point rather leapt out at me; or two points, rather:
“There is no simple explanation of contemporary terror. Simple explanations are liable to be simplistic, and always are.
(…)
“The root-cause of terror is jihad. Don’t only study jihad, please, study the mind of jihad, and the mind powering the mind. That might be a useful starting point.”
So, if simple answers are always simplistic, and the simple answer for the causes of terrorism is jihad…
@ Hal: Bruce cites this article in his newsletter as an “Interesting rebuttal”. And, actually, I thought that he reported Abrahms’ paper fairly neutrally, without either endorsement or negation, but maybe that was just me.
I like this article and so took a look at your book and started reading the published excerpt. I didn’t get even to the end of the first sentence.
It’s clear you’re from the US. Your prose is unreadable.
ARABISM = RACISM
The global virus of racist Arabism has claimed/claims millions of victims, it includes:
Kurds (under Saddam or Syria), Berbers, Jews (inside Israel - the genocide campaign since the massacre in 1929 by the Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini until today, or in the Arab world or on ‘Arab street’ in Europe, etc.), Africans (genocide in Sudan, oppression in Egypt, Slavery in Mauritania, etc.)…
Laurent Murawiec’s analysis is correct; John Stoner has approached resolution.
However, “the lion’s share of modern terrorism” decidedly is NOT “Muslim, inspired by and committed in the name of jihad,” but state terrorism such as America finances against Palestine and wreaks against places like Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq openly, and elsewhere clandestinely. It is not even true that the lion’s share of non-state terrorism is “muslim” ~ drug-related terrorism accounts for more than all other parties combined, or did the last time I looked at the USG statistics and pie-charts.
But it is true that the demise of the (corrupted) caliphate and the spread of Leninist anti-colonialism has fostered a generation of “do-it-yourself” amateurs waging “jihad” in violation of all the rules of jihad (”struggle”) and “qital” (fighting) in Islam. Hasan al-Banna, Abu Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, Ruhollah Khomeiny, and Ali Shariati all propagated Leninism dressed up in religious rhetoric, they were dialectical materialists steeped in the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (’Ali Shari’ati’s mentor at the Sorbonne) and the tactical methodologies of Lenin and Trotsky adapted to their twisted (and inherited) vision of Islam. Today’s “terrorism” is European in its genesis as well European/American as in its motivation.
American understanding, however, is not. And that is more than half of the problem.
I thought Abrahm’s premise was weak. Terrorist organisations as a social club? What rubbish. And this rebuttal is nothing more than an attempt to focus on and malign the Muslim type. Both are extracting the organisations they discuss from the environments in which those organisations operate. Thus they try to use big words in long sentences to muddy what is essentially a simple phenomenon - terrorists/freedom fighters are usually engaged in an insurgency against a militarily superior occupying force.
The acid test is whether these organisations enjoy the support of the communities in which they operate. If they do, then no amount about big words will provide understanding. A more useful lesson can be drawn from the Israeli experience - 60 years of increasing brutality has not blunted the Palestinian desire for freedom, if not justice.
Don’t create an fake argument that terrorists can only be understood by understanding that they are not like us; they are inherently violent. Rather understand that are indeed like you, they want to be free of oppressors and occupiers. Of course the problem with that is that you would first have to admit they you are an oppressor and an occupier…
I think Mike Moyle is correct in the first point of his assessment. Simple models are likely to be wrong. This gets worst when try to generalize on a collective made up by individuals who have various motives for joining a terrorist organization. From a mercenary who does not have anything else to do to the real fervor of an extremist. Also there are marked differences between leaders in an organization as opposed to the lowest ranking individual.
Well let’s see. The two most egregious terrorist attacks within the U.S. have been perpetrated by Al Qaeda and by Timothy McVey (with or without unknown allies). So that makes the “lion’s share” Muslim? Another tired, conveniently racist canard here is the supposed unique association of Islam with “bloodlust.” Perhaps you missed the smashing success among U.S. evangelical Christians of a movie called “The Passion of Christ.” (Blood and guts! Blood and guts! as my teenager said….)