wojtek
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8874/8874.ch01.html
Mark Juergensmeyer
Terror in the Mind of God
The Global Rise of Religious Violence
>...My way of thinking about culture is enriched by the ideas of several
scholars. It encompasses the idea of "episteme" as described by Michel
Foucault: a world view, or a paradigm of thinking that "defines the
conditions . . . of all knowledge."12 It also involves the notion of a nexus
of socially embedded ideas about society. Pierre Bourdieu calls this a
"habitus," which he describes as "a socially constituted system of cognitive
and motivating structures."13 It is the social basis for what Clifford
Geertz described as the "cultural systems" of a people: the patterns of
thought, the world views, and the meanings that are attached to the
activities of a particular society. In Geertz's view, such cultural systems
encompass both secular ideologies and religion.14
The cultural approach to the study of terrorism that I have adopted has advantages and disadvantages. Although it allows me to explore more fully the distinctive world view and moral justifications of each group, it means that I tend to study less closely the political calculations of movement leaders and the international networks of activists. For these aspects of terrorism I rely on other works: historical studies such as Bernard Lewis's classic The Assassins; comprehensive surveys such as Walter Laqueur's Terrorism (revised and republished as The Age of Terrorism) and Bruce Hoffman's Inside Terrorism, which covers both historical and contemporary incidents;15 studies in the social psychology of terrorism by Walter Reich and Jerrold Post;16 political analyses such as Martha Crenshaw's work on the structure of terrorist organizations in Algeria and Peter Merkl's analysis of left-wing terrorism in Germany;17 and the contributions of Paul Wilkinson and Brian Jenkins in analyzing terrorism as an instrument of political strategy.18
These works leave room for other scholars to develop a more cultural approach to analyzing terrorist movements--efforts at reconstructing the terrorists' world views from within. This research has led to a number of significant case studies, including analyses of the Christian militia by Jeffrey Kaplan, the Christian Identity movement by James Aho, Irish paramilitarists by Martin Dillon, Sikh militants by Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Jewish activists by Ehud Sprinzak, and Hamas suicide bombers by Paul Steinberg and Anne Marie Oliver.19 These and other works, along with my own case studies and some interesting reportage by international journalists, make possible an effort such as this one: a comparative cultural study of religious terrorism.
This book begins with case studies of religious activists who have used violence or who justify its use. The first half of the book contains chapters on Christians in America who supported abortion clinic bombings and militia actions such as the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, Catholics and Protestants who justified acts of terrorism in Northern Ireland, Muslims associated with the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and Hamas attacks in the Middle East, Jews who supported the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the attack in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs, Sikhs identified with the killing of India's prime minister Indira Gandhi and Punjab's chief minister Beant Singh, and the Japanese Buddhists affiliated with the group accused of the nerve gas attack in Tokyo's subways.
Since these case studies are not only about those directly involved in terrorist acts but also about the world views of the cultures of violence that stand behind them, I have interviewed a number of people associated with these cultures. In the chapters that follow, however, I have chosen to focus on only a few. In some cases I have highlighted the established leaders of political organizations, such as Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi, Tom Hartley, and Simranjit Singh Mann. In other cases I have chosen outspoken activists who have been convicted of undertaking violent acts, such as Mahmud Abouhalima, Michael Bray, and Yoel Lerner. In yet other cases I have selected members from the lower echelons of activist movements, such as Takeshi Nakamura and Yochay Ron. The interviews that I have chosen to describe in detail are therefore diverse. But in each case--in my opinion--they best exemplify the world views of the cultures of violence of which the individuals are a part.
In the second half of the book I identify patterns--an overarching logic--found within the cultures of violence described in the first half. I try to explain why and how religion and violence are linked. In Chapter 7 I explain why acts of religious terrorism are undertaken not only to achieve a strategic target but also to accomplish a symbolic purpose. In Chapters 8 and 9, I describe how images of cosmic confrontation and warfare that are ordinarily found in the context of heaven or history are sometimes tied to this-worldly political battles, and I explain how the processes of satanization and symbolic empowerment develop in stages. In Chapter 10, I explore the way that religious violence has provided a sense of empowerment to alienated individuals, marginal groups, and visionary ideologues.
In the last chapter of this book I return to questions directly about religion: why anyone would believe that God could sanction terrorism and why the rediscovery of religion's power has appeared in recent years in such a bloody way--and what, if anything, can be done about it. I have applied what I have learned about religious terrorism to five scenarios in which violence comes to an end.
In order to respond to religious terrorism in a way that is effective and does not produce more terrorism in response, I believe it is necessary to understand why such acts occur. Behind this practical purpose in writing this book, however, is an attempt to understand the role that violence has always played in the religious imagination and how terror could be conceived in the mind of God.
These two purposes are connected. One of my conclusions is that this historical moment of global transformation has provided an occasion for religion--with all its images and ideas--to be reasserted as a public force. Lurking in the background of much of religion's unrest and the occasion for its political revival, I believe, is the devaluation of secular authority and the need for alternative ideologies of public order. It may be one of the ironies of history, graphically displayed in incidents of terrorism, that the answers to the questions of why the contemporary world still needs religion and of why it has suffered such public acts of violence, are surprisingly the same.
Notes
1. "Global Terror," Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1998, A16.
2. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 91.
3. Warren Christopher, "Fighting Terrorism: Challenges for Peacemakers," address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 21, 1996. Reprinted in Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 446.
4. See, for example, the essays from a conference on the psychology of terrorism held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
5. Baruch Goldstein, letter to the editor, New York Times, June 30, 1981.
6. Interview with Rev. Michael Bray, Reformation Lutheran Church, Bowie, Maryland, April 25, 1996.
7. Interview with Sohan Singh, leader of the Sohan Singh Panthic Committee, Mohalli, Punjab, August 3, 1996.
8. Interview with Mahmud Abouhalima, convicted coconspirator in the World Trade Center bombing case, federal penitentiary, Lompoc, California, September 30, 1997.
9. Interview with Abdul Aziz Rantisi, cofounder and political leader of Hamas, Khan Yunis, Gaza, March 1, 1998.
10. Lance W. Small, an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, at the time Kaczynski taught there, quoted in David Johnston and Janny Scott, "The Tortured Genius of Theodore Kaczynski," New York Times, May 26, 1996, A1. According to the authors, Kaczynski's brother David thought that Kaczynski was unaffected by any particular political movement at the time.
11. In using the phrase "cultures of violence," I realize that for some this will evoke the term "cultures of poverty," coined by Oscar Lewis and other anthropologists in the 1960s to describe the mindset of the barrios of Latin America and African American ghettos in the United States. Lewis was accused of presenting a static set of values, forged through desperate conditions, that on the one hand explained away many of the moral and intellectual shortcomings of the people who came from such cultures, and on the other hand seemed to imply that nothing could be done to help them. My term, "cultures of violence," does not carry these implications.
12. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1973), 168.
13. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 76.
14. Clifford Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press), 1964; and "Religion as a Cultural System," reprinted in William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
15. Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London: Al Saqi Books, 1985); Walter Laqueur, Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), revised and republished as The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987); Hoffman, Inside Terrorism.
16. Walter Reich, Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Robert S. Robins and Jerrold Post, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
17. Martha Crenshaw, Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1978); Peter Merkl, "West German Left-Wing Terrorism," in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). See also Crenshaw's article on instrumental and organizational approaches to the study of terrorism, "Theories of Terrorism," in David C. Rapoport, ed., Inside Terrorist Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
18. Paul Wilkinson, Political Terrorism (London: Macmillan, 1974); Brian Jenkins, International Terrorism: Trends and Potentialities (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1978). See also Paul Wilkinson and A. M. Stewart, eds., Contemporary Research on Terrorism (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987); Bruce Hoffman, An Agenda for Research on Terrorism and LIC [Low Intensity Conflict] in the 1990s (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1991).
19. Jeffrey Kaplan, "The Context of American Millennarian Revolutionary Theology: The Case of the 'Identity Christian' Church of Israel," Terrorism and Political Violence 5:1, Spring 1993, 30-82, and "Right Wing Violence in North America," in Tore Bjørgo, ed., Terror from the Extreme Right (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 44-95; James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990); Martin Dillon, God and the Gun: The Church and Irish Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 1998); Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Paul Steinberg and Annamarie Oliver, Rehearsals for a Happy Death: The Testimonies of Hamas Suicide Bombers (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).