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Terror in the Name of God: Why
Religious Militants Kill
Jessica Sterns
Harper Perennial (a division of Harper
Collins): New York, September 1, 2004. ISBN
0060505338 (paperback) $15.95. 400 pages.
Reviewed by
Anthony Stahelski, Ph.D.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001,
numerous books about terrorism have been
published. Most of the authors did not have
direct contact with terrorists as data sources;
instead, they relied on secondary sources and
cited those few individuals who have had direct
contact. In her book Terror in the Name of
God: Why Religious Militants Kill, Dr.
Jessica Stern interviewed terrorists and
presumed terrorist supporters on their home
ground.
Until Dr. Stern’s book was published, most of
the authors who had direct contact with
terrorists were either journalists or former
counter-terrorism agents. Dr. Stern’s book is
therefore unusual because she is a trained
social scientist who spent four years collecting
primary data. She is to be commended for her
courage in undertaking this enterprise, which
she did in spite of her acknowledged fears.
Dr. Stern has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from
Harvard University, and she is a faculty
affiliate at the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs. She has served on the
National Security Council, specializing in the
threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism in
Russia and the former Soviet states. She has
been a super-terrorism fellow at the Council of
Foreign Relations and a national fellow at the
Hoover Institute. She has published numerous
articles and books on terrorism and weapons of
mass destruction. She clearly has the background
and expertise to write an academic treatise on
terrorists for her fellow scholars and
researchers. In this case, she has instead
written a very readable book for the general
public that is an interesting blend of
personalized journalism and social science.
Overview
In her introduction, Dr. Stern states that she
limited her research to terrorists who are
religiously motivated because she considers
religious terrorists to be the most dangerous
individuals in the world today. Also in this
section, Dr. Stern acknowledges that her
field-interview and survey data-collection
methods did not constitute fully controlled
experiments with random selection to
experimental and control groups. This is an
important point that applies to all research on
cults and extremist groups. These closed,
insular groups cannot be studied with the best
scientific methods, and therefore any
conclusions made about these groups are
empirically questionable.
Dr. Stern divides her book into two sections.
Part I is entitled Grievances That Give Rise
to Holy War. In the five chapters in this
section, Dr. Stern uses the data from her
interviews and surveys to answer the following
question: Why do people respond to religious
grievances by joining terrorist groups, and once
they join, what makes them stay? Dr. Stern
concludes that there are five “grievances”
(reasons) that cause individuals to join and
stay in these groups. Each chapter in Part I is
devoted to one of these five grievances:
Alienation, Humiliation, Demographics, History,
and Territory. Although she has separated these
grievances into separate chapters, Dr. Stern
recognizes that behavior is determined in
multiply ways, and that joiners have a complex
set of reasons for their actions.
In Part II, entitled Holy War Organizations,
Dr. Stern addresses this question: How do
leaders run holy-war organizations? In chapters
6, 8, and 9, she focuses on different types of
terrorist organizations, and on the different
kinds of relationships that exist between cult
leaders and their followers. The focus in
chapter 7 is on individuals who engage in
terrorist actions apparently without the
approval or support of a group or organization.
In chapter 10, Dr. Stern makes counterterrorism
policy recommendations based on her data
collection and on her experience.
Part I: Grievances That Give Rise to Holy War
In chapter 1 (“Alienation”) Dr. Stern interviews
former members of a domestic right-wing,
extremist hate group, called the Covenant, the
Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). Like most
cults, the CSA was based on a charismatic
leader, and it practiced many typical cult
behaviors identified by Margaret Singer, Robert
Lifton, and other cult researchers. The cult was
located in an isolated environment, members were
not allowed to receive any outside messages or
information, and members had to give up all
vestiges of their pre-cult identities. The
leader and the other cult members became the
only reality for each member. Dr. Stern
concludes that these behaviors occurred because
CSA members became increasingly alienated from
mainstream society.
Chapter 2 (“Humiliation”) is essentially an
abbreviated history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict from the Palestinian viewpoint. In
1999, Dr. Stern interviewed Hamas and Fatah
officials in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as
Israeli counter-terrorism officials. She
concludes that the Palestinians have been
militarily, economically, and culturally
humiliated by the Israelis, both historically
and in the present, and that this humiliation
leads to a continuous supply of Palestinian
suicide bombers.
In Chapter 3 (“Demographics”), Dr. Stern
describes how population shifts alter the
balance between competing religious groups. The
Soeharto regime in Indonesia supported the
movement of Muslims from overcrowded islands to
underpopulated islands with indigenous Christian
populations. In some cases, Christians reacted
violently, which led to the formation of Islamic
terrorist groups in Indonesia who attack
Christians and other minorities and the
Indonesian government.
Chapter 4 (“History”) examines the impact of
selective historical memory on extremist
behavior. Right-wing Jewish extremists wanted to
destroy Muslim holy sites in Israel, to restore
the Temple of Solomon, and to expand Israeli
borders to their biblical dimensions. Dr. Stern
uses their story to demonstrate how historical
interpretation can be used to sustain a
long-term grievance of one group against
another, thus leading to a continuing cycle of
violence.
Chapter 5 (“Territory”) describes the
Indian-Pakistani Kashmir conflict from the
viewpoint of various participants. In this
chapter, Dr. Stern makes the point that
competing groups imbue disputed land with sacred
and/or nationalist characteristics, thereby
making land something more than just a natural
resource. Extremist groups on both sides use the
sacredness of the land to fuel the grievance
process of potential joiners and supporters.
Part II: Holy-War Organizations
In chapter 6 (“Inspirational Leaders and Their
Followers”), Dr. Stern discusses her interviews
with leaders of the “save-the-babies” movement,
a violent subgroup of the right-to-life
movement. These leaders describe a new form of
extremist organizational structure called
“leaderless resistance.” This is a disturbing
extension of the cult organizational model into
the Internet age. Similar to traditional violent
cults, this group uses a charismatic,
transformational leader to inspire followers to
commit violent acts. However, these followers
are only inspired. The leaders do not explicitly
order followers to engage in these acts. Those
who engage in the acts do not live with the
leaders or with other followers, and they do not
regularly communicate with anyone in the
movement. This new “virtual reality” extremist
organizational structure is also used by
Al-Qaeda, which Dr. Stern describes in chapter
9. This structure is much more difficult for law
enforcement and security agencies to monitor and
penetrate.
Chapter 7 (“Lone Avengers”) discusses an even
more troubling trend: religiously motivated
terrorists acting completely on their own, with
no apparent connection to any leaders or groups.
Dr. Stern indicates that these “lone avengers”
are inspired by a combination of terrorist
ideology and revenge desires for perceived
personal grievances. They tend to get inspired
via the Internet, and they sometimes use the
Internet to carry out their vengeance. Dr. Stern
points out that these individuals can have easy
access to Internet instructions for the creation
of weapons of mass destruction.
Chapter 8 is entitled “Commanders and Their
Cadres.” The title implies that the chapter is
about the activities of leaders and their
followers; it isn’t. Dr. Stern interviews
leaders of Islamic Kashmiri terrorist groups in
Pakistan. Her questions focus on recruiting and
fundraising. Dr. Stern integrates these two
topics when she discusses madrassas, the
fundamentalist Islamic religious schools. These
schools provide free room and board to boys
studying the Koran. Dr. Stern visited some
madrassas, and the responses to her questions
make clear that the boys are indoctrinated for
jihad, or holy war. The madrassas supply a
seemingly endless stream of new recruits to
Islamic terrorist groups all over the world, and
the madrassas are funded by wealthy Islamic
countries (primarily Saudi Arabia) and
individuals. Dr. Stern concludes this chapter by
saying that the madrassas schools not only
supply willing bodies; they also replenish group
idealism that is lost when veteran aging
jihadists succumb to cynicism and materialism.
Chapter 9 (“The Ultimate Organization: Networks,
Franchises and Freelancers”) focuses
specifically on Al-Qaeda, and more generally on
global resistance to the New World Order. Dr.
Stern considers Al-Qaeda to be the most
sophisticated religious terrorist organization
in existence today. It is a network of networks,
which inspires both franchised local terrorist
groups and freelancing lone avengers. She
considers Al-Qaeda to be a combination of one, a
traditional terrorist group with specific
hierarchies, locations, and training facilities,
and two, a virtual-reality “leaderless
resistance” organization. This combination, plus
the continuing freedom and charisma of Osama Bin
Laden, has allowed Al-Qaeda to become the
umbrella organization for numerous more
localized Islamic terrorist groups around the
world.
Dr. Stern points out that many American and
European right- and left-wing extremists admire
Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and that this
admiration extended to applauding the 9/11
attacks. This is not that surprising, since one,
they share a common enemy (Jews/Israelis), and
two, they share a hatred of globalization, the
New World Order, and the creation of the
American-dominated homogeneous world culture.
Audience/Quality of Presentation
Dr. Stern’s book appears to be written for the
layperson, and it certainly seems very
accessible to the general public. She frequently
writes in the first person, enriching her
narrative with personal details about the
individuals she meets in her worldwide odyssey.
She also discusses her personal reactions to
these individuals. She then switches to the
third person when she summarizes her insights in
social-science language and concepts. She
follows this format in each of the chapters that
focus on a specific group. I think this style
would increase a general reader’s interest in
understanding religious terrorists.
Contribution
Although the psychology and sociology of
terrorism has been addressed more thoroughly in
other publications, and although many of Dr.
Stern’s insights into the terrorist mindset have
been made elsewhere, the personal immediacy of
her descriptions gives them fresh relevance.
However, she has not satisfactorily answered the
question she set for herself in Part I: Why do
people respond to religious grievances by
joining terrorist groups, and once they join,
what makes them stay? Dr. Stern is correct in
concluding that demographics, history, and
territory are external forces that influence
potential terrorists. However, these external
factors affect everyone in a given area, not
just potential terrorists; and everyone is
alienated and humiliated to greater or lesser
extents. In spite of this pervasive alienation
and humiliation, only a minority of the affected
join terrorist cults. Obviously, this minority
is affected more deeply than the majority who do
not join. Why? There are clearly other factors
involved than just the five discussed by Dr.
Stern.
Dr. Stern’s contributions in Part II are both
clearer and more significant. Specifically, she
makes the reader aware that the madrassas
religious schools are a crucial component for
Islamic terrorist groups. Without the schools,
the groups would have a much more difficult time
finding a pre-indoctrinated supply of new
recruits. Overall, she rightly points to the
danger of terrorist use of modern technology
against the modern world, and to the terrorist
use of the latest type (based on modern
communication technology) of corporate
organizational technique, the virtual
organization. Modern terrorists are not only
deadly, they are smart and technologically
sophisticated.
In my opinion, Dr. Stern’s greatest contribution
is made in chapter 10, “Recommendations.” Dr.
Stern is neither a hawk nor a dove; she is both.
Her realistic, pragmatic, counterterrorism
recommendations reflect her vast experience in
this area. She understands a fundamental truth
about counterterrorism: We must rigorously
counter terrorists in the short term, while
trying to eliminate the “breeding conditions”
for potential terrorists in the long term.
I found this book most interesting as a profile
in courage. Dr. Stern’s odyssey was fascinating,
and her ability to gather information from
initially reluctant interviewees is remarkable.
As a researcher in this area, I would be very
interested in seeing the transcripts of actual
interviews and the data from her surveys.
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