Beyond Martyrdom and Salvation

Immediately after the attacks of September 11, the American news media and their “talking head” experts began to present the message that both martyrdom and the application of Islam’s tenet of obtaining salvation by death in a holy war were the sole motives for the behaviors of the terrorists involved. While undeniably significant, the motivational drives of the new breed of terrorist are far more complex than these two factors alone. Salvation and martyrdom fail to account for the deliberate and precise nature of these individuals’ behaviors. To be a martyr, one simply needs to suicidally detonate a small bomb in a crowd. However, to fully devote many years of one’s life to the training and preparation for terrorist acts implies far stronger and more complex types of motivation.

My analysis suggests that the terrorists, although frequently portrayed as isolated loners

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operating in a small cell in which they have little contact with others, are strongly motivated by the cohesion and affiliation they share with others. This affiliation is not daily social contact but rather the terrorists’ membership in a secretive organization. The terrorists are zealots fighting against a larger evil that must be eradicated. Because their numbers are few, they are the archetypal “underdogs” in the battle between good and wickedness. This underdog identity means that their small network becomes a brotherhood deeply forged by the heroic nature of this battle.

This deep affiliation further allows the terrorists to dehumanize all who are not part of their belief structure or network. Because of their hyper-cohesion, these individuals are capable of mentally constructing an “in-group” which fosters an over-simplified, archetypical world of good and evil in which those against them are more demonic than human. Modern terrorists do not use euphemisms like “collateral damage” because killing men, women, and children is justified simply because they are “satanic” in the terrorists’ mental model of the world. Likewise, that the majority of the world has condemned them does not cause the terrorists to reconsider their position. Instead, it serves as evidence of the inherent evil in those not part of the in-group. In a spiraling manner, the isolation and condemnation further develop affiliation and cohesiveness, causing further violence, bringing more repudiation, and encouraging even greater cohesiveness.

Modern terrorists are completely committed to their cause. Contrary to popular views, they are not irrational psychotics but rather intensely patient and dedicated individuals. For example, Mohammed Atta, who is believed to have led the attack on the World Trade Center, is thought to have spent at least three years preparing for his actions. This lengthy groundwork exhibits irrevocably that the terrorists’ motivation is not a short-lived, extreme form of youthful fanaticism rooted in economic disadvantage but is rather the product of a belief and needs system deeply entrenched within the psyche. Because they have invested so much of their time and have risked so much of their well-being, the terrorists are most unlikely to have a “change of heart” or retreat from the cause. The dissonance created by such a shift would create far too much anxiety.

The future behavior of the terrorists must be to create more mass terror, to either kill or be killed. Modern terrorists would be far less threatening to civilization if their motivations were simply martyrdom or salvation as so many “experts” contend.

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