Final version: March 12, 2006

From : Vamik Volkan (omervamik@aol.com)

To: Peter J. Verhagen (verhagen.p@wxs.nl)

Secretary, WPA Section on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry

Dutch Foundation on Psychiatry and Religion, The Netherlands

Published in PSYCHE EN GELOOF (Psyche and Faith)

Volkan, Vamk D., and Sagman Kayatekin. 2006. Extreme religious fundamentalism and
violence: Some psychoanalytic and psychopolitical thoughts. Psyche & Geloof: 17:71-
91(Netherlands).
__________________________________________________________________

Extreme Religious Fundamentalism and Violence: Some Psychoanalytic and

Psychopolitical Thoughts

By

Vamk D. Volkan, M.D. (*)

M. Sagman Kayatekin, M.D. (**)

*Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; Senior

Erikson Scholar, The Erikson Foundation of Research and Education of the Austen Riggs

Center, Stockbridge, MA, USA; and Fulbright/Sigmund-Freud-Privatstiftung Visiting

Scholar of Psychoanalysis, Berggasse 19, A-1090, Vienna, Austria (Feb.24- June 30,

2006).

vdv@virginia.edu

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** Staff, The Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, MA, USA .

sagman.kayatekin@austenriggs.net

Abstract: Especially after September 11, 2001 radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorism

and the Western worlds response to it dominate the news and affects our lives. This

paper examines the concept of religious fundamentalism and how certain elements in

leader-follower interactions and large-group psychology come together to induce massive

violence and turn people such as suicide bombers, to commit horrendous acts in the

name of religious identity. The authors suggest that an examination of the common

characteristics of a restricted extreme religious fundamentalist organization, such as a

religious cult, provides a necessary platform on which we can stand and take a closer

look at more generalized or globalized violent fundamentalist religious movements like

al-Qaeda.

Key Words: religious cults, divine text, transitional objects and phenomena, large-group

identity, suicide bombers, unofficial diplomacy.

On November 2, 2004, as he was riding his bike to work in Amsterdam, Theo Van Gogh,

the great-great cousin of the renowned Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, was attacked by

a young man wearing traditional Moroccan garments. The assailant shot him and stabbed

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him in the chest several times. Gravely wounded, Van Gogh stumbled to the other side of

the street pursued by the attacker, pleading for his life. But the assailant was unmerciful;

he shot his victim again, stabbed him several more times, wielded a large knife and slit

his throat. Then he lodged a smaller knife to Theo Van Goghs chest, pinning a five-page

letter to his victims body while bystanders watched in horror.

Van Gogh was a flamboyant and controversial figure in Holland. A filmmaker,

actor, journalist, and author, he was an outspoken critic of many things. He was known

for his outrageous condemnations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and before he was

murdered, his attacks on Muslim valuesat one point he made reference to Dutch

Muslim immigrants as goat fuckershad spawned death threats. Theo Van Gogh was

dismissive of these threats and had refused police protection.

Muhammed Bouyeri, the ruthless murderer, was a Dutch-born son of Muslim

Moroccan immigrants. Information available to us suggests that Bouyeri lived an

ordinary lower middle-class life as a teenager. He failed in college and dropped out after

a few years. He thereafter started spending a great deal of time on the streets, was

arrested for a violent crime and spent seven months in jail. While incarcerated he became

interested in political Islam, and apparently the tragedy of September 11, 2001 had a big

impact on him. Following the premature death of his mother in 2002 he cut his ties with

mainstream social life and became active in radical Islamic groups.

The five-page letter pinned to the body of Theo Van Gogh included warnings to

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a Muslim herself and a harsh critic of the way women are treated in

Islam), the political party she was a member of, and other politicians. There were also

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references to Jewish influence in world politics. Furthermore, Bouyeri expressed his

belief in a radical Islamic sect known as Takfir Wal Hijra.

The assailant was caught after a brief exchange of gunfire with the police. A poem

found in his pocket titled Baptized in Blood,1 reflected Bouyeris religious/political

beliefs that supported his determination to kill his enemy. Interestingly, the poem also

indicated that Bouyeris end was near and that Allah would provide him a garden in

heaven.

Bouyeris trial lasted two days and he was sentenced to life in prison on July 12,

2005. On the second and last day of the trial, an unshaken Bouyeri told the court: "I take

complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion. When

prosecutors asked for a life term, Bouyeri responded: "I can assure you that one day,

should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same." In his final statement

to the court, Bouyeri said that he owed Theo Van Gogh's mother Anneke some

explanation: "I have to admit I do not feel for you, I do not feel your pain, I cannot. I

don't know what it is like to lose a child." He added: "I cannot feel for you ... because I

believe you are a nonbeliever I acted out of conviction, not because I hated your son.

How can we make sense of this horrible event and explain it? The poem found in

Bouyeris pocket made it clear that he was ready to die in order to kill his enemy.

Certainly Bouyeri must have had personal psychological motivations, yet we do not

know the details of his life history and what psychological processes might have been

initiated by his mothers death. Neither do we know his internal world and his personal

motivations for killing Theo Van Gogh. On the other hand, it is our argument that

reducing this murder to personal-psychological motivations will not provide a

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satisfactory explanation in a case such as this. We will need to take the exploration of this

horrible event beyond the bounds of individual psychology and examine the influence of

large-group psychology on Bouyeri. More concretely, we need to explore the role religion

and history play in influencing individual minds.

As he so bluntly put it in court, Bouyeri killed Theo Van Gogh, not because he

hated him, but because his victim belonged to another large group. He killed in the name

of a large-group identity. His mind reflected the thinking of hundreds of thousands of

others who belong to extreme Islamic fundamentalist organizations. We will begin to

study this kind of thinking by defining what is meant by the term fundamentalism in

any religion.

DEFINITIONS

The English term fundamentalism as it relates to religious self-definition was

coined in the late 1920s in the United States. Two Union Oil tycoons in California,

Lyman and Milton Stewart, financed the publication of a series of pamphlets called The

Fundamentals, which enumerated five points essential for Christian orthodoxy: biblical

inerrancy, the virgin birth, Christs atonement and resurrection, the authenticity of

miracles, and dispensationalism. At that time fundamentalists were simply defenders of

these five doctrines (Balmer, 1989). There were reasons for the appearance of religious

fundamentalism in the United States during the late 1920s. In this period of American

history the social structure of the country was going through drastic changes. The

economic power was shifting from rural environments to urban ones as America moved

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away from its dependency on an agricultural economy and welcomed an industrial one.

In addition, large numbers of immigrants created ethnic shifts in many locations

throughout the country. The resulting changes in societal structures ushered in a large-

group regression. The increase in a societys general reliance on religion and a shared

preoccupation with it in everyday life is one of the signs of large-group regression. Here

we use the term large group to refer to thousands or millions of people, most of whom

will never meet in their lifetimes, who share a specific large-group identity (Volkan,

1997, 2004, 2006). In other words, our term large group refers to ethnic, national,

religious or certain ideological groups, the memberships in which begin in childhood.

Even though the term fundamentalism was first used in the 1920s, we do not

mean to suggest that people in the United States, as well as people elsewhere in the world

from practically every faith, did not turn to increased religiosity during earlier times.

Human history is full of religious mass movements in extreme forms, and some of them

were often violent and destructive. No religionmonotheist, polytheist or paganhas a

clean history in this regard, and there is ample documentation of members of one religion

massacring people of other faiths, and even people of another denomination within their

own faith (Haught, 1990).

Today an extreme form of religious fundamentalism is defined in terms of its

disciplined opposition to non-believers and lukewarm believers alike (Marty and

Appleby, 1995, p.1). Members of a traditional religious community separate themselves

from fellow believers, redefine the sacred community, and become preoccupied with

certain fundamentals. Fundamentalists can be found anywhere in the world. For

example, Michael Barkun, political scientist and an expert on protestant culture in the

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United States, estimated that before September 11, 2001, 25 to 35 percent of the

population of the Untied States was fundamentalist Christian. He further stated that 20

percent of American fundamentalists (that is, five to six percent of the total population)

were extreme fundamentalists, such as millennialists who are convinced that Jesus will

return to earth, establish a kingdom, and rule from Jerusalem for 1000 years (Barkun,

1997, 1999, 2000).2

All indications are that the percentage of both fundamentalists and millennialists in

the United States has increased since September 11, 2001. At the same time, in the

United States and in Europe, the term fundamentalism as it refers to Christianity, has

practically disappeared in public speeches. Instead, Christians with an exaggerated

preoccupation with religion and some of its fundamentals are now referred to as

conservative Christians. In the USA and Europe, only serious theologians and other

scholars have continued to state that there are fundamentalist groups within practically

every faith traditionJudaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and

Confucianism includedand these movements share certain traits despite the

substantive differences among them in terms of doctrine, cosmology, social composition,

size, organization, and scope of influence (Marty and Appleby, 1995). In general, in

mainstream America and to a great extent Western-world discourse, fundamentalism

and fundamentalist have become pejorative words. These words become associated

with Muslims and acts of terrorism. This of course makes it necessary to explore what

Islamic fundamentalism is and what factors encourage its extreme and violent forms.

Before focusing on extreme Islamic fundamentalism and the Wests role in it, first

we will briefly explore what psychoanalysis has to say about religion in general. Second

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we will list the main characteristics of extreme fundamentalist religious movements and

describe their restricted and generalized/globalized forms. The restricted type refers

to movements which remain isolated within one large group and which often induce

negative feelings in those outside of the movement within the same large group. The

generalized/globalized type receives direct or indirect emotional, financial and other

forms of support from a vast number of bystanders within the same large group and/or

within many political entities. Third, we will explore the phenomenon of suicide bombers

as a by-product of generalized/globalized extreme religious movements. Finally, we will

suggest a psychoanalytically and psychopolitically informed idea for dealing with

present-day generalized/globalized Islamic fundamentalism/terrorism and the Wests

response to it.

PSYCHOANALYSIS ON RELIGION: AN IMAGINARY LANTERN

Sigmund Freud considered any religious commitment, be it fundamentalist or

mainstream, to be an expression of unresolved individual psychological issues from

childhood (Freud, 1913, 1927, 1939). According to Freud, the terrifying impressions of

helplessness in childhood arouse the need for protection, which can be provided

through the love of a father. The duration of ones sense of helplessnessovert or

covertthroughout life, Freud concluded, makes it necessary to seek an omnipotent

father, an image of God, to assuage the feeling of vulnerability; thus, religion is related

to shared illusion. In 1901, he famously rewrote the well-known text of Genesis,

God created man in His own image, as Man created God in his (Freud, 1901, p. 19-20).

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 Interestingly, for a very long time after Freud, few psychoanalysts dealt with the

topic of religion or questioned Freuds assumptions in depth. There was an unspoken and

sometimes spoken animosity between religion and psychoanalysis. In 1978 Hans

Leowald, a very respected psychoanalyst, wrote that under the weight of [Freuds]

authority religion in psychoanalysis has been largely considered a sign of mans mental

immaturity (p.57) and an illusion to be given up as we are able to overcome our

childish needs for all-powerful parents (p.57). Leowald associated religion with the

primary process, better known in lay terminology as illogical thinking, But he also stated

that the secondary processlogical thinking in lay terminologyis nourished by the

former. While Leowald (1978, 1980) opened a way for psychoanalysts to discus the topic

of religion, question Freuds assumptions and add their own views (Sokolowski, 1990), it

was the work of British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott in the early 1950s on

transitional objects and /or transitional phenomena that momentously enlarged

psychoanalytic theory on the foundation of religious beliefs and feelings .

Winnicott understood the transitional object/phenomena as universal. During

the early part of the first year of life, each infant or toddler chooses a transitional

object from whatever is available on the basis of texture, odor, and mobility

(sometimes even an infants own hair can become a transitional object). Usually,

the child chooses a soft object such as a teddy bear, which is under the childs

absolute control. Or, the child chooses an inanimate thing (a transitional

phenomenon), like a nursery rhythm, as something that functions as a transitional

object.

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 Over the course of the first years of life, the transitional object/phenomenon

becomes the first item that clearly represents not-me in the childs mind. Though

this first not-me image corresponds to a thing that actually exists in the world, the

transitional object is not entirely not me because it is also a substitute for the childs

mother, whom the childs mind does not yet fully understand is a separate individual

in her own right and whom the toddler perceives to be under his or her absolute

control (an illusion, of course). This is why playing with a teddy bear or repeating a

melody can soothe the child and, conversely, why on certain occasions the child can

discharge aggression against the toy (or make the repeated soothing melody sound

ugly) without fearing that it will retaliate when the child again treats it as a soothing

object.

Through the teddy bear or the melody, the child begins to get to know the

surrounding world. It is not part of the child, so it signifies the reality out there

beyond the childs internal world, the not-me that the child slowly needs and

discovers and creates. What is created at first does not respond to reality as it is

perceived by an adult through logical thinking. The childs reality, while playing

with a transitional object or phenomenon, is a combination of reality and illusion.

Winnicott (1953) wrote:

Transitional objects and phenomena belong to the realm of illusion

which is the basis of initiation of all experience... This intermediate area
of experience, unchallenged in respect of its belonging to inner or
external (shared) reality, constitutes the greater part of the infant's
experience, and throughout l i f e is retained in the intense experiencing
that belongs to the arts and to religion and to imaginative living, and to
creative scientific work. (p. 16)

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 A Jesuit and a psychoanalyst, William W. Meissner, beginning in the 1960s,

wrote a series of papers and a book (Meissner, 1984) examining the relationship

between psychoanalysis and religion. In his book and a later paper (Meissner, 1990) he

also made references to Winnicotts concepts, concluding: If beliefs and belief systems

facilitate psychic growth and contribute to the maintenance of psychic health and

mature responsible living, they are not pathological - any more than the illusory play in

the transitional space between mother and child is pathological. Or for that matter, any

more than Freuds own cultural creation psychoanalysis (Meissner, 1990, p.114).

Meissner also concluded that individuals in general would have a hard time maintaining

a commitment to something as abstract as a religious belief without concrete symbols.

He states: Communion itself, the act of consuming the sacred host, is a form of

concrete symbolic action (Meissner, 1990, p.107).

In regard to our discussion, what is interesting to us is that in most

psychoanalytic writings on religion in recent decades, especially before September 11,

2001, besides having little or no detailed interest in Islam, there is little emphasis on the

relationship between religion and violence. Meissner (1990) reminds us that just as a

transitional object can degenerate into a (pathological) fetish, transitional religious

experience can be distorted into less authentic, relatively fetishistic directions that tend

to contaminate and distort the more profoundly meaningful aspects of the religious

experience (107). But, ho goes no further in examining the relationship between

religion and violence.

Elaborations on transitional objects and/or transitional phenomena by

psychoanalysts such as Phyllis Greenacre (1970), Arnold Modell (1970) and Vamk

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Volkan (1976) allowed us to see more clearly the progressive, healing, and creative

aspects of religious beliefs and feelings, as well as their regressive, destructive, and

restrictive aspects. In order to focus on both aspects, Volkan (2004) considered an

imaginary lantern with one transparent side and one opaque side located between the

infants or toddlers and their actual environment. When toddlers feel comfortable, fed,

well-rested, and loved, they turn the transparent side toward t h e real things which

surround them, illuminating these things and begin to perceive them as entities

separate from themselves. When infants feel uncomfortable, hungry, or sleepy, they

turn the opaque side of the lantern toward the frustrating outside world. This wipes

out the surrounding real things. Most mothers have observed that, when their toddlers

are falling asleep, they hold onto their blankets as if their whole world consists of

themselves and their blankets; at such times, the transitional object is a mother-

substitute that cuddles the children and "protects" them from the rest of the real world

beyond. When the lantern is thus turned opaque side out, we imagine that the

children's minds experience a sense of cosmic omnipotence.

In "normal" development, toddlers play with their "lanterns" hundreds and

hundreds of times, getting to know reality in one direction and succumbing back to

lonely, omnipotent/narcissistic existence in the other direction, until their minds begin

to hold onto unchangeable external realities, such as having a mother separate from

themselves who is sometimes gratifying and at other times frustrating. During such

repeated "play" toddlers minds learn both to differentiate and to fuse illusion and

reality, omnipotence and restricted ability, suspension of disbelief and the impact of the

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real world, and so on. Using their blankets, teddy bears, or other transitional objects,

children are involved in a watershed concept.

If a child's development is normal, he or she eventually develops an acceptance

of the "not-me" world, even the indifference of the universe, and adjusts to logical

thinking. However, there is also a need for what Volkan (2204) calls, "moments of rest"

during which there is no need to differentiate between what is real and what is illusion,

a time when logical thinking need not be maintained. It is in these moments that the

relation to the transitional object or phenomenon and playing with it echoes

throughout a lifetime. During moments of rest a Christian might know that it is

biologically impossible for a woman to have a baby without the semen of a man but

also believe in the virgin birth. Rationally, people might know that no one really

sees angels, but they may behave as if angels exist. In other words, the function of th e

transitional object remains available to humans for the rest of their lives. The need for

"moments of rest" varies from individual to individual and from social subgroup to

subgroup. Some people declare that they do not require such religious moments of

rest, but perhaps they refer to the same function by different names. For example,

they may "play" the game of linking magical and real in astrology, or paint abstract

paintings that represent a mixture of illusion and reality.

It may be assumed that advances in science would have created tremendous

pressures discouraging the reactivation of the transitional objects or phenomena in

adulthood. But, we are aware that as scientific knowledge increased, shared and

socially sanctioned magical beliefs did not diminish. Besides keeping the

influence of the play with the transitional object or phenomena throughout our lives,

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the influence of early childhood identifications explains this condition. The biggest

and most organized and socially-sanctioned propaganda for a better way of life

comes from religious organizations to which parents, teachers, and neighbors belong.

Children not only identify with their parents religious beliefs, but as they grow up,

they often continue to be exposed to religious propaganda. Thus, for the sake of

maintaining significant interpersonal and internalized object relations in the area of

religion, the mixture of illusion and reality become crystallized in childrens minds

as psychic reality. A vast majority of adults, sometimes without being aware of the

influence of the religious propaganda they were exposed to as children, later as

adults can become scientists while also maintaining their religious magical beliefs.

Religion plays a significant role in linking individuals to their large group. The

"normal" range of religious beliefs, like the "normal" range of psychological health, is

socially determined.

Expanding psychoanalytic thought on transitional objects or phenomena, we

consider religious beliefs and feelings to derive from normal developmental processes

in early childhood and from the times when we require a moment of rest" in

adulthood. An investment in religion is not only due to mental conflicts of childhood

associated with feelings of helplessness and the corresponding desire for an

omnipotent father, as Freud thought. Nevertheless, the image of God incorporates

many different sources as the child grows, and is modified according to an individual's

own psychology, sociocultural experiences, education, and use of religious symbols or

protosymbols, which means using a symbol to stand not for another item, but as

the other item (Werner and Kaplan 1963).

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 As individuals go through the life cycle, they may use religion to gratify or to

defend against various needs, wishes, and internal tensions and conflicts. For some

people, Freud's original description of the emotional link between God and a father-

image does indeed hold. But, for each individual, the image of God becomes a source

of various combinations of transitional objects and phenomena, maternal or paternal

love, fear of punishment, hatred, omnipotence, and so onincluding, very

significantly, the sense of belonging to family, clan, and large group.

As already stated, a person who is non-regressively devoted to a religion can

comfortably believe in seemingly magical and illogical aspects of religion, yet also be

comfortably rational and logical in relating to life issues in general. Others, especially

those individuals whose early parent-child relationships were disturbed or those who

were raised in religious environments where the internalized religious "propaganda"

was excessive, have a tendency as adults to reactivate the regressive aspects of playing

with the transitional object or phenomenon. By regressive we are referring to the

turning of the opaque side of the imaginary lantern toward the external world in an

excessive fashion. In a sense, such individuals try to "wipe out" external reality and

rational thinking in order to make the world revolve around themselves and their

religions/"teddy bears" or specific melodies.

Returning to the lantern metaphor, the religious fundamentalist is preoccupied

with keeping the opaque side of the lantern turned against the real world that is

perceived as threatening and frustrating. Unlike infants who can probably block

out the external world more thoroughly, adult fundamentalists are more aware of an

environment that they perceive as threatening. Furthermore, such an adults moment

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of rest is not really a restful one. An excessive preoccupation with religionas the

transitional object/phenomenonthat tries to block the external world is accompanied

by complicated issues of omnipotence, submission to or fusing with divinity,

searching for total perfection yet fearing failure. Furthermore, the threats from

outside becomes magnified, and to deal with this the persons who keep the opaque

sides of their lanterns turned against the real world often seek each other and become

followers of a leader/protector. They hope that the leader will make their

uncomfortable moments of rest comfortable. Alas, such radical fundamentalist

leaders also posses a lantern with an opaque side facing the outside world, magnifying

the dangers that exist out there.

CHARACTERISTICS OF RESTRICTED EXTREME RELIGIOUS

FUNDEMENTALIST MOVEMENTS

There are countless examples of restricted extreme religious movements or cults

such as Jim Joness Temple in Jonestown, David Koreshs Branch Davidians at Waco,

Shoko Asaharas Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, Josephs DiMambros Order of Solar Temple,

Gush Emunim in Israel and even, in their initial stages, Hamas in Lebanon and Molla

Omers Taliban in Afghanistan (Mayer, 1998; Weber, 1999; Wessinger, 1999; Moses-

Hrushovski, 2000; and Volkan, 2004).

An examination of the common characteristics of these restricted extreme and

violent fundamentalist religious organizations or cults, and even peaceful ones such as the

Old Believers Community in the Lake Peipsi region of Estonia (Volkan, 2004), provides

a necessary platform on which we can stand and take a closer look at more generalized or

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globalized violent fundamentalist religious movements like al-Qaeda. Generalized or

even globalized extreme and violent fundamentalist religious movements, as we will

show, share most of the same basic elements that exist in restricted movements and, in

most cases, start in similar ways. When an extreme and violent religious fundamentalist

movement becomes generalized or globalized, it becomes contaminated with ethnic,

nationalistic, economic, ideological, and political issues. When the bystanders within

the same large group become emotionally involved in the activities of extreme and

violent religious fundamentalism, we begin to face a very complicated large-group

process that can be best illuminated by the application of large-group psychology.

Let us return now to restricted extreme religious fundamentalist organizations or

cults and consider their common characteristics:

1- A Divine Text: The Fundamentals which were published in the 1920s included

five specific areas illustrating a groups specific religious self-definition. Likewise, each

restricted extreme religious fundamentalist movement or cult has its own divine text,

whether it is written on paper or passed along verbally. For example, the text may be a

specific version of the Bible, or an interpretation of certain verses of the Koran. The

divine text is irrefutable, non-negotiable.3

2- An absolute leader who is the interpreter of the divine text: The leader of a

restricted extreme religious fundamentalist movement is the sole interpreter of the

groups divine text. No other interpretations are acceptable. The leader usually is a man;

only rarely is the leader a woman.4

3- Total loyalty: Membership in an extreme religious organization or cult provides

a sense of belonging for its followers. Total loyalty to the leader and to the divine text

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removes anxiety they might have due to intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. In a

well-running extreme religious organization all the actions and thoughts of believers are

highly organized and institutionalized. Most groups create tangible incentives and

economic dependence to ensure that members do not leave the group.

Once an individual is involved in the network of an extreme fundamentalist

religious group, it becomes difficult for that person to quit the membership. The putative

divine rule infiltrates members everyday existence and intimate personal relationships,

fundamentally changing them.5

4 - Members feel omnipotent, yet victimized: Restricted extreme fundamentalist

religious groups are pessimistic movements (Sivan, 1985). Pessimism exists because the

members perceive their specific religious fundamentals to be continually under attack

by non-believers or even lukewarm believers, Darwinists, scientists, and even rival

religious fundamentalist groups that cite other texts as truly divine. Paradoxically,

because they believe that their text is the true divine guide and their leader is the only true

spiritual leader, a sense of omnipotence exists among the members of such groups. The

contamination of a shared sense of pessimism with a shared sense of omnipotence creates

a special condition that allows extreme masochism or sadism to become tolerable.

5- Extreme masochistic and/or sadistic acts: When a restricted extreme religious

fundamentalist group perceives a threat to the divine authority of the leader and to the

survival of the group and its identity, the protection of the group and its identity become

its primary preoccupation. Since the members pessimism is contaminated with

omnipotence, the group feels entitled to destroy others who are seen as threatening to

the groups survival.6 However, the group can also express its omnipotence by a grand

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masochistic gesture such as a massive suicide. Those who kill themselves believe that

through death they will merge with the divine leader and/or God, the omnipotent object,

and thus crystallize their omnipotence and continue their existence in heaven.7

6- Alteration of the shared morality: What we observe in an extremely violent

restricted religious fundamentalist group is the existence of an altered shared morality

that accepts mass suicides or mass killings.

7- Creation of borders: Even during safe times when there is no imminent

threat to the groups security, a restricted extreme religious fundamentalist organization

or cult builds physical borders such as walls or barricades. But more importantly, they

also build psychological borders around themselves, such as wearing a specific color or

style of dress that separates them from others.8

8- Changing of family, gender, and sexual norms within the borders: As the

leader of an extreme and restricted religious fundamentalist movement becomes more

divine and omnipotent, he or she may become the father, the mother and the lover

for all the followers. Routine family systems become disturbed and child-rearing

practices drastically change. So-called family values are replaced by the leaders

interpretation of the divine text. The perception of women is usually reduced to their

giving sex (pleasure) and food (milk) to the leader or other men belonging to the same

group. Sometimes the leader in a restricted extreme religious fundamentalist organization

or cult owns all the women and children in the group.9

9- Negative feelings among outsiders: Because a restricted extreme fundamentalist

religious group feels special, divine, secretive, magical, omnipotent, masochistic or

sadistic, and because they erect borders around themselves, they induce negative feelings

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among people who live outside their borders. Outsiders perceive restricted extreme

religious cults or organizations as a threat to their own religious or other belief systems.

If a restricted extreme religious fundamentalist group develops a reputation as a group

that degrades women, abuses children and ruins the traditional family system that is

accepted by the surrounding society at large, the bystanders negative feelings increase.10

TALIBAN: AN EXAMPLE OF THE GENERALIZATION OF AN EXTREME

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALIST GROUP

An extreme fundamentalist religious movement starts to become generalized

when the majority of bystanders within the large group, instead of having and

maintaining negative feelings about the movement, begin to support it directly or

indirectly. A clear example of this generalization (and later globalization) can be seen in

the spread of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which originally was a restricted group.

The Taliban rose to power in Afghanistans post-Soviet wretchedness and were

originally recruited mostly from among young Pashtuns, Afghanistans largest ethnic

group. The Taliban, whose name means religious students, first came to notice in late

1994 when they were hired to drive local bandit groups away from a 30-truck convoy

that was trying to open a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia. The Taliban

leader, Mullah Omar was then in his mid-thirties. Eventually, it grew from that

original core group of about 100 into a cohort of 35,000 men from 43 countries.

The event that crystallized Omars position as a supreme leader and then

Talibans generalization and its eventual globalization illustrates Freuds (1921)

description of (regressed) mass psychology. In 1994, the Taliban demonstrated their

20
power with draconian public punishments for crime and stringent controls over girls

and women in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. As they refused to deal with

warlords and fought local police forces as well as roving bandits, the Taliban applied a

strict interpretation of Islamic law to combat the corruption and chaos that plagued

post-Soviet Afghanistan. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was still under

President Burhanuddin Rabbanis control however, and the Taliban were divided

as to their next course of action. At this critical time, in one key act, Omar sealed his

divine leadership: he publicly displayed and put on the cloak of the Prophet

Mohammed, which had been kept for over 250 years in a marble vault in Kandahars

Shrine of the Cloak of the Prophet Mohammed. 11

It was on a Friday in the spring of 1996 that Mullah Omar first came to see the

cloak. He told the keeper of the Prophets cloak, Oari Shawali: Here I am. I have taken

a bath and I have put on new clothes. Let me see the Robe. Since Shawali had

not bathed himself, and it would have been sinful to touch the Prophets cloak

unprepared and dirty, he told Omar to return that night. When Omar arrived at

the shrine, accompanied by 100 followers, Shawali had prepared himself to handle the

cloak. He later recalled how Omar became disoriented and trembled when he laid

eyes on the sacred robe. When he prepared to pray, he mistook the way toward

Mecca, and he had to be helped to face the right direction. A week later, now

seemingly more confident, Omar appeared at the shrine once more. He took the

robe to an old mosque in the center of Kandahar, climbed onto the mosques roof,

and wore the cloak. For the next 30 minutes, he held the cloak aloft, his

21
palms inserted in its sleeves. The crowd watching him cheered; many lost

consciousness (Onishi, 2001).

It is clear that Mullah Omars ceremony with the Prophets robe took place at

a critical time. Donning the cloak publicly was certainly a gamble since the act could

easily have been seen as blasphemous. But, by successfully fusing his image with the

image of the Prophet in the minds of his followers, Omar blurred the reality that he

and the Prophet lived centuries apart and were two (perhaps dramatically) different

human beings and leaders. Thus, Omar was able to use the cloak to solidify the

shared political-religious identity of his followers, as well as his image as the

commander of the faithful. This act went a long way toward generalizing the Taliban

movement, or at least crystallizing the movements previous attempts to become

generalized.

Once an extreme fundamentalist religious movement is generalized it takes on

political, revolutionary, legal and even military ambitions. The Taliban began to

purify the society from elements they perceived as unwanted and create a new

large-group identity and culture. It was only a few months after Omar merged

his image with the image of the Prophet that the Taliban captured Kabul, began to

enforce their oppressive laws on the Afghan population, and allowed Osama bin

Laden and his al-Qaeda organization, with their limitless funds, to thrive in Afghanistan

and be part of a globalized movement that is known as radical Islam.

TODAYS GLOBALIZED ISLAMIC EXTREME RELIGIOUS

FUNDAMENTALISM

22
 Osama bin Laden is not the only recent figure to inflame what historian

Bernard Lewis (1990) called the Muslim rage, and what W. Nathaniel Howell, the

former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait during its invasion by Saddam Husseins forces

in August 1990, referred to as the nostalgia movement (Howell,1997, p.100).

Long before September 11, 2001 it was clear that Islamic religious fundamentalism

and even its extreme forms, would find emotional support among Islamic large

groups, especially in the Arab world, and that it could easily be globalized.

Bernard Lewis noted: Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the

otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the

forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final

analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an

increasing extent even their livelihood (Lewis, 1990, p. 59).

What are the causes of this Muslim rage or nostalgia for past glories? We will

try to answer this question, at least partly. A full analysis of this situation is simply

beyond our expertise.

Less than a century after the death of the prophet Mohammed, Arab Muslim

armies had established a huge empire, stretching from India to Spain, and Islamic culture

blossomed everywhere. But the unity of Islam was actually broken up very early after the

death of the Prophet Mohammed, and there were bitter divisions and regional power

struggles almost from the beginning. The most important division had occurred after the

fourth Arab Caliph was killed. A group of Muslims known as Shiites (from the Arabic

Shiat Ali, the party of Ali) rejected the legitimacy of the first three Caliphs in the line of

Mohammed. They accepted Mohammed as the prophet and the Koran as divine

23
revelation, but proposed their own interpretation of Koranic law. Today Shiites make up

some 10 to 15 percent of the worlds Muslim population, including most of Irans

Muslims. The majority of the Muslims in Iraq are also Shiites, as we are reminded

almost daily as we listen to the news about horrible tragedies in that country. They have

separated themselves from dominant Sunni Muslims who had a Caliph. The attack by

Sunni Muslims on Al-Askari shrine (one of the holiest Shiite sites) in February 2006 and

the violent backlash of Shiites toward Sunnis in Iraq is a testimony to this old, bloody

division within Islam.

During the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, The Grim (1512 to 1520), the

Turks took over Syria and Egypt and in 1517, the Arab Caliphates came to an end. The

Ottoman Sultan then assumed the title and inherited the role of the defender of the

holiest places in Islam, the cities of Mecca and Medina, which were the cradle of Islam

(Itzkowitz, 1972, p. 33). Islam was clearly one of the dominant elements of Ottoman

identity, as the Ottomans took many lands in Europe and Arabic lands in the Middle East

and other places elsewhere, even though they allowed the conquered people to keep their

religions. The dominant relationship between the Christians and Islamists for centuries,

until the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, was the relationship

between Europe and the Ottoman Empire (Kayatekin, in press). Arabs, who were the first

Muslims and who now lived under the Ottoman Empire, had to submit to Islamic

newcomers. Ottoman identity was not connected with an ideology that called for bringing

all Muslims under one political umbrella and there were no Western or Islamic historians

mentioning such a possibility until the nineteenth century (Inalcik 1987, Ortayli 2003).

24
 There were two developments in the nineteenth century that further defined the

Western worlds perception of the Ottoman Empire and, by extension, of Islam. The first

was Europes preoccupation with Pan movements such as Pan-Germanism and Pan-

Slavism, movements that reflected a striving to create massive entities under the umbrella

of Germanic or Slavic ethnicities. The European elite also quickly imagined Pan-

Islamism originating in the Ottoman lands. They were seeing the East through the lens

of the West. The second development was the Western powers interest in the Ottoman

lands, as the Ottoman Empire was perceived as the Sick Man of Europe. These

developments and other associated events, the study of which is beyond the scope of this

paper, magnified the idea of an Islamic power even though the Ottoman Empire

paradoxically was as powerless in the nineteenth century before and after the Pan

movements. Western powers, however, thought it would be a good move to make the

Sick Man completely helpless so that the danger of a Pan-Islamic movement could

be contained or removed.

Europeans at that time were also competing among themselves. Before the bloody

First World War (1914-1918) started, Germans bought a number of Ottoman newspapers

and sent representatives throughout the Ottoman lands. Their propaganda began

influencing the Ottoman elite and the public in general, including the idea that England

and France were leading an antiIslamic movement while Germany was supporting such

a movement. The propaganda reached an absurd level when it was rumored that Kaiser

Wilhelm had converted to Islam and gone to Mecca for a pilgrimage. Germany utilized a

strategy to destabilize regions where British and French influence was dominant. The

Ottoman elite, by and large, identified with this German propaganda (Kayatekin, in press)

25
and the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany.

Meanwhile, the British were busy developing a negative image of Islamist

Ottomans. Propaganda spread fear among the British public about a possible united

Islamic world under the Ottoman Sultan/Caliph (a Pan-Islamic Movement) that would

destroy the British Empire with the help of Germany. Using this feared and imagined

movement to divide and conquer, the British government put out the suggestion that it

would prefer and support a Caliph with Arabic origins, such as someone from among

the rulers of Mecca (Kayatekin, in press).

The Ottoman Sultans double role as religious leader and political defender of the

Islamic world lasted until the end of the Ottoman Empire and until the establishment of

the secular Turkish Republic that rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.

When modern Turkey was born and the Caliphatein a sense the Sunni Islams papacy

was abolished, the centuries long established leadership of Islam disappeared

overnight. With the Ottoman Empire, the former defender of Islam, in a state of collapse

and Turks busy with the establishment of a new large-group identity and with their so-

called westernization struggles, the Arabs and many other Muslims remained helplessly

open to the influence and the manipulation of Western powers. Even before the Caliphate

was abolished, as we already mentioned above, the British continued to raise and dash

hopes for establishing a caliphate outside of Turkey, and they deliberately created

divisions among Indian and Arab Muslims by saying they would support the

establishment of the Caliphate in either India or one of the Arab countries. Political

scientist Elie Kedourie (1970) analyzes the British governments disastrous handling of

the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its humiliation of the Arabs

26
and other Muslims. According to Kedourie, the widely used Chatham House Version of

Middle East History, written by British historian Arnold J. Toynbee and his followers,

was not trustworthy and was humiliating to the Arabs. To some extent, European scholars

follow this text even today.

It is difficult to pinpoint one definite major beginning that marks the attempt in

the recent decades to reverse this humiliation and rejuvenate the glory of Islam. There

were multiple events that can be considered as starting points. One of them was the

establishment of Dar al Tabligh al-Islami (The Institute for the Propagation of Islam) in

Iran, not an Arabic country (MacEoin, 1983). This institute played a role in nurturing an

atmosphere for Ayatollah Khomeinis leadership, which embraced an apocalyptic,

millennialist vision for a perfect theocracy (Landes, 2001). But the prestige of the

Iranian revolution among other Muslims (especially among Sunnis) declined in the late

1980s and Iran ceased being a model for Islamic radicals of all kinds, a result of

economic mismanagement, widespread torture, executions, human rights violations and

the war between Iran and Iraq. (At the present time, the president of Iran, Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad is trying to revive Irans reputation and fundamentalist ideology through his

determination to develop nuclear weapons. This, of course, will have international

consequences. Ahmadinejad even declared that the Holocaust never occurred, exhibiting

a magical and illusionary thinking pattern that inflames fear in the international arena.)

We will now review other significant attempts to generalize or globalize extreme

Islamic religious fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism evolved as an ideology which

focuses on an enemy in the Western world, seeks out a grandiose and millennialist savior,

and wishes to return to a realistic and imagined glorified past. Osama bin Ladens appeal

27
found fertile grounds. The elements which distinguish bin Ladens al-Qaeda . . . is not

the appeal to the alienated and anxious elements among Arabs and Muslims, but the

grandiosity of his world vision, the use of modern technology to extend his reach and

explore the vulnerabilities of contemporary societies, and the absence of spatial or

humanitarian limits to his target-list (Howell, 2001, p. 148).

Elsewhere Volkan (2004) explores some known aspects of bin Ladens troubled

childhood and illustrates how bin Ladens personal internal revengeful psychological

motivations are reflected in his actions in the external world. Mohammed was an orphan

who later evolved as a spiritual leader and then took up a sword to protect Islam. Bin

Laden himself was in essence an orphan, as his biological mother was exiled from

his fathers harem when he was one year old, leaving him in the care of his step

mothers. This was certainly a factor in why he developed a revengeful character

(Volkan, 2004). Most likely he also searched for a father figure in order to reach up in his

developmental ladder, for all indications are that his father, with 54 children, did not have

much time for him. Osamas father died in a plane crash when Osama was 10 years old,

and his older brother Salem, who could have been a father or big brother figure for

Osama, was also killed in an air tragedy, this time a helicopter accident.

There are some indications that bin Laden identified with the orphan Mohammad

(victimized) who later became a warrior. Therefore, when the opportunity arose, bin

Laden presented himself as a supreme leader who knew what to do for Islam and what

Islam permits its followers to do, including suicide bombings, which already existed

before bin Ladens leadership.12

28
 Of course, financial resources made it possible for bin Laden to effectively use

propaganda and manipulations. It is known that according to bin Laden, the Islamic

world [fell] under the banner of Cross (reported by the Africa News Source, November

5, 2001). Most likely he was referring to the abolishment of the Caliphate by the Turks.

While bin Laden personally might be concerned about losing a father figure (The Caliph)

and wanting to create a new one with a global and millennial vision, one rarely finds an

open reference to the removal of the Caliphate by the Turkish Republic among Muslims

on the street in the Arabic world and in other Muslim-populated locations. What is more

open is the complaint about mistreatment and humiliation by the West within the Islamic

societies and corresponding omnipotence for an upcoming revenge, its success, and a

divine glory.

On the surface, the characteristics of a globalized extreme religious movement

seem different than those of restricted extreme religious groups. For example, todays

radical Islam resembles a giant global commercial corporation, with secret funds and

representatives in various countries and with a shared ideology contaminated with

religious beliefs. It strives to become a world power by using any means, from engaging

in effective political and religious propaganda, to making financial deals. But it also

performs horrendous acts of violence. Radical Islam, in general, complains about the

Western giant and the merciless commercial/technical/cultural/religious organizations

which have infiltrated the Islamic world through globalization, and which are

humiliating Muslims. Nevertheless, they have become, in a sense, a more drastic and

more deadly mirror image of the Western globalization movement. Therefore, it may be

29
difficult to see that the characteristics of the restricted extreme religious organizations

also exist in the core of radical Islam.

The characteristics that we can see more clearly in restricted extreme

fundamentalist religious movements, however, are present within the globalized extreme

Islamic fundamentalist religious movement as well. A divine ideology is present and its

interpreter exists. The interpreter has declared the United States and the West in general

as the enemy and received permission from Koranic passages such as Surah 8, verse

17 to strike at the enemy. Followers blindly follow the leader(s) and the ideology. They

feel victimized but omnipotent, and experience an altered morality. Even though we

may not know where they are and where they are hiding, they have built borders

around themselves in order to maintain their large-group identity. The divine ideology

replaces family values and many old traditional and religious beliefs, including beliefs

about suicide and homicide. Todays radical Islam induces extreme negative feelings in

outsiders in faraway locations, but many people in the locations where radical Islam is

present, although not terrorist themselves, have direct or hidden sentiments supporting

the movement. The last characteristic basically differentiates this globalized extreme

religious fundamentalist movement from a restricted one.

FROM SHARED SENTIMENTS WITHIN THE SOCIETY TO SUICIDE

BOMBINGS

Fathali Moghaddam (2005) from Georgetown University in Washington, DC used

the metaphor of a narrowing staircase leading to the top floor of a building when

describing the path to terrorist acts. We will look at the five floors in this building by

adding some other observations to Moghaddams ideas, observations taken from other

30
experts on todays extreme Islamic religious fundamentalist movement and suicide

bombers.

The first floor represents a place where a large group is located. This group feels

victimized and humiliated, and on this floor a sense of pessimism prevails. Moghaddams

first floor complements Bernard Lewis (1990) and Nathaniel Howells (1997, 2001)

descriptions of the Islamic world, especially the Arab world. There are, obviously,

various types of Islamic countries and large groups, for the Islamic world is not one

homogeneous blob as it is sometimes described by Lewis (Said, 1979, Yavuz, 1995).

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper, a generalization is warranted because of the

huge number of Muslimsin the millionsin different countries who are emotionally

linked in their belief that they are not being treated fairly by the Western world.

Turning back to Moghaddams staircase, we notice that the general shared mood

of victimization and humiliation among the occupants on the first floor is the key factor

that sends some occupants of this floor to the next one. Moghaddam states that those who

reach the second floor begin to crystallize their displacement of aggression onto out-

groups, such as the United States, England or other European countries. We see this now

after the Danish cartoon incident.

Howell refers to three factors in Arab and Muslim societies that encourage this

displacement. First, even the most despotic regimes in the Islamic world are reluctant to

turn against mosques or other Islamic institutions. Islam, therefore, provides the most

secure and privileged environment for opposition activities, including terrorism, in these

societies (Howell, 2001, p.150). Second, many Islamic governments behave as if Islamic

activism is the preferred channel for pent-up discontent (Howell, 2001, p.150). Here,

31
we should remember that such governments and other authorities were often aided by

Western powers to behave as they do. For example, the Americans and the British

politically and financially supported the building of more and more madrassahs in

Pakistan and also in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, with the idea that students

who are exposed to religious education would turn their rage against the Soviets. During

the American- and British-supported dictatorship in Pakistan, the number of madrassahs

grew dramatically. This in turn provided a foundation for extreme religious

fundamentalism that now perceives the Western world as its enemy. Even the Israeli

occupation authorities in the West Bank and Gaza in the1970s and 1980s facilitated the

growth of Hamas in order to find an alternative to the Palestinian Liberation Organization

(PLO) (Howell, 2001). Now after its surprising victory in the recent Palestinian

elections, Hamas does not even accept the existence of Israel. Howells third factor

concerns the absence of an authoritative Islamic hierarchy, which makes it easy for cult

leaders, charismatic imams and magical belief systems to thrive. The Islamic world, in

general, is experiencing what Volkan (2004) calls a leaderless regression.13

Those who climb to the third floor support restricted extreme fundamentalist

organizations with religious leaders who hold a correct interpretation of a divine text.

People who join these organizations begin to live secret lives as they keep their

memberships hidden from their spouses, parents and friends. They incorporate an

ideology of martyrdom (Davis, 2003) that Westerners call an ideology of terrorism.

The psychic realities of the two opposing groups do not fit together.

On the fourth floor the cell structure of terrorist organizations begins.

Moghaddam (2005) describes how this structure is adopted from the models provided by

32
guerrilla forces fighting dictatorships in Latin America and later copied by terrorist

organizations operating in Western societies including the Irish Republican Army (IRA)

(Coogan, 2002). Recruits who will perform terrorist acts, such as the suicide bombers

face two uncompromising forces: from within the terrorists organizations, they are

pressured to conform and obey in ways that will lead to violent acts against civilians (and

often against themselves); from outside the terrorist organization, especially in regions

such as the Middle East and North Africa, they face governments that do not allow them

even a minimal voice and democratic participation in addressing perceived injustices

(Moghaddam, 2005, p.166).

Those who reach the fifth floor are trained to treat everyone, including civilians,

outside their tightly knit group as the enemy (Moghaddam, 2005, p.166) and to commit

terrorist acts and become suicide bombers.14 At first glance the psychology of the present-

day Islamic religious fundamentalist suicide bombers is puzzling. In our clinical work we

see individuals who wish or attempt to kill themselves primarily because they have low

self-esteem and/or suffer from an unbearable sense of guilt. The suicide bombers, on the

other hand, seemingly kill themselves in order to reach a higher level of selfesteem not

unlike those in restricted extreme religious fundamentalist cults or organizations who

participate in mass suicides. Studies have not revealed one specific kind of individual

psychopathology that explains why the present-day Islamic suicide bombers kill

themselves in order to destroy other human beings. Therefore, in order to understand the

psychology of the suicide bombers, instead of simply relying on individual

psychodynamics, we will examine the role of large-group psychology in creating suicide

bombers.

33
LARGE-GROUP IDENTITY AND SUICIDE BOMBERS

When we think of the classical Freudian theory of large groups (Freud, 1921), we

visualize people arranged around a gigantic maypole, which represents the group leader.

Individuals in the large group dance around the pole/leader, identifying with each other

and idealizing the leader. Volkan (2004, 2006) has expanded this metaphor by imagining

a canvas extending from the pole out over the people, forming a huge tent. This canvas

represents the large-group identity. We have come to the conclusion that essential large-

group psychodynamics center around maintaining the integrity of the large-group

identity, and leader-follower interactions are just one element of this effort.

Imagine thousands or millions of persons living under a huge tent. They may get

together in subgroupsthey may be poor or rich or women or men and they may belong

to certain clans or professional organizationsbut all of them are under one huge tent.

The pole of the tent is the political leadership. From an individual psychology point of

view, the pole may represent an oedipal father or a nurturing mother or both; from a

large-group psychology point of view, the poles task is to keep the tents canvas erect (to

maintain and protect the large-group identity). Everyone under the tents canvas wears an

individual garment (personal identity), but everyone under the tent also shares the tent

canvas as a second garment.

In our routine lives people are not keenly aware of their shared second garment,

just as they are not usually aware of their constant breathing. If a person develops

pneumonia or is in a burning building, this person quickly notices each breath. Likewise,

if a groups huge tents canvas shakes or parts of it are torn apart, those under it become

34
obsessed with their second garment, and their individual identity becomes secondary.

They become preoccupied with the large-group identity and will do anything to stabilize,

repair, maintain, and protect it, and in the process, they begin to tolerate extreme sadism

or masochism if they think that what they are doing will help to maintain and protect their

large-group identity.

Before September 11, 2001, before the war in Iraq and before we witnessed daily

suicide bombings in that country, we had some basic information about how Palestinian

suicide bombers were trained. They were trained to replace or suppress their individual

identities and taught to replace or dominate them with the large-group identity.15 But

precisely how can large-group identity be made to supersede a persons individual

identity? The technique for creating suicide bombers in the Middle East had typically

included two basic elements: 1) finding people whose personal identities were already

disturbed due to humiliation of themselves or their families and who were seeking a

second identity to stabilize their internal worlds; and 2) forcing the large-group identity,

whether ethnic or religious, into the cracks of the recruits damaged or subjugated

individual identities. Once people were educated for suicide attacks, the ordinary

rules and regulations of individual psychology no longer applied to their patterns of

thought and action. Killing ones self (ones personal identity) and others (enemies) did

not matter; what mattered was that the act of terrorism brought self-esteem and attention

to the group. The psychological priority was the repair and/or enhancement of the large-

group identity (through a sadistic and masochistic act), which actually enhanced the

suicide bombers modified personal identity, because other members of the traumatized

community had come to see the bomber as the carrier, the agent, of the groups identity.

35
 Islam expressly forbids suicide, but there was no lack of conscious and

unconscious approval of Palestinian suicide bombers from at least some other members

of their communities. While in early 1996, only 20% of Palestinians supported the

practice, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO) after the

May 2001 Netanya suicide bombing showed that 76% of the Palestinians participating in

the survey supported this act. We are not aware of any statistical studies concerning the

present Palestinian sentiments, but Hamas success at the polls is very telling.

Most suicide bombers in the Middle East were chosen as teenagers, educated,

and then sent off to perform their duty in their late teens or early to mid-twenties. It

appears that the education was most effective when the individuals replaced their

personal sense of helplessness, shame, and humiliation with religious elements of the

large-group identity, as internalizing the divine makes people feel omnipotent and

supports their self-esteem. Typically, the education of the young Palestinian candidates

for suicide attacks was carried out in small groups. Sometimes good candidates were

educated quickly, but more often these groups read the Koran together and chanted

religious scriptures over some time. For example, here is a passage from the Koran that

seems to justify turning what Bernard Lewis has called Muslim rage on a Western

world and especially on Israel. Conflict with the Israelis has been perceived and

experienced by Palestinians as like having a constantly bleeding wound.

Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought
not against you on account of religion nor drove you out of your homes.
Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity. It is only as regards to
those who fought against you on account of religion, and have driven you
out of your homes, and helped to drive you out, that Allah forbids you to
befriend them ... (Surah 60, Verses 8 and 9)

36
 The teachers also supplied mystical-sounding phrases to be repeated

over and over in a chant, such as, I will be patient until patience is worn out from

patience. These kinds of mystical (but actually nonsensical) sayings,

combined with selective reading of the Koran, created an alternate reality.

Meanwhile, the teachers interfered with the real-world affairs of their

students, mainly by cutting off meaningful communication and other ties to their

families and by forbidding things which may be sexually stimulating, such as

music and television. Suicide bomber candidates were instructed not to inform

their parents of their missions. No doubt parents in this part of the world often

surmised what their childrens missions were, but regardless, keeping secrets from

parents and family members helped create a sense of power within the youngsters.

Such secrets induced a false sense of individuation and symbolized the cutting of

dependency ties, which supposedly had been replaced as the youngster became a

flag for the large group. The teachers then turned the trainees attention to the

heavens and convinced them that their sexual and dependency needs would be

fulfilled by houris, beautiful maidens who live in paradise, once they became

martyrs. Sex and women, the students were promised, would be obtained after a

kind of passage to adulthood, but in this case the passage was killing oneself.

The death of a suicide bomber was honored at a wedding ceremony, a

celebration at which friends and family gathered to proclaim their belief that the

dead terrorist was in the loving hands of angels in heaven.

37
 The more the large-group identity-tent is shaken, the more stress is placed

on a large group, and the more the people under that tent will be inclined to wear

the shared canvas as their main identity garment. Therefore, the more a

community feels humiliated, helpless, under stress, the more easily normal

people can be pushed into becoming candidates for terrorism, especially when the

large-group identity is also contaminated with a divine omnipotence. This is

the situation in the Islamic world today, especially in the Middle East. There are

reports that now the training a suicide bomber receives to perform his (and

sometimes her) deadly act in Iraq only takes 24 hours.

A NEED FOR A THERAPEUTIC SPACE

Considering what we observe every day on our televisions and read in our

newspapers, especially since September 11, 2001, we should be very humble about

suggesting new strategies for bringing the world into more peaceful and saner times.

When God versus Devil thinking begins to dominate enemy relationships, it means that

a severe regression exists in international relationships. In such a situation the large-group

psychology, as well as the leaders individual psychologies, begins severely and

sometimes illogically, to contaminate political, legal, economic, military and other real

world issues. Also, enemies start becoming alike. We need to be careful not to be

misunderstood here. We are not referring, for example, to what the Nazis did and what

the Allies did in World War II, and we are not saying that the Allies were like the Nazis.

Many factors such as historical circumstances, reactivation of past victimizations, the

leaders personality organization, existing military power and, most importantly, the

38
degree of large-group regression can make a large-group humiliate and dehumanize the

other and be terribly cruel. In dealing with such an extremely regressed large group, the

opposing group need not be identically as regressed as the perpetrating group.

When we speak of a similarity between enemies, we are referring to certain large-

group processes without considering the degree of their regression or its consequences.

First, we are simply saying that when a large groups identityand in this paper we are

focusing on its religious identityis threatened, the threatened large group automatically

begins to hurt the aggressors large-group identity. Thus, the attacked group begins to

take on similarities to the perpetrator. Second, both groups utilize shared and massive

mental mechanisms such as introjection, projection, denial, dissociation, isolation,

rationalization and intellectualization in their consciously or unconsciously motivated

political propaganda. This comes from their leadership and/or is wished for and supported

by the society. Third, humiliating, hurting and killing people in the name of large-group

identityand here we are focusing on religious large group identitybecome acceptable

by both sides. These factors are why psychoanalytic and psychopolitical insights need to

be considered when making plans to tame the massive violence of today. Those

psychoanalysts or other mental health professionals who have seriously studied

international relationships and those experts in psychopolitical arenas, however, should

also be ready to work with experts in different fields. No one branch of the social

sciences or scientific disciplines has the single correct answer.

Psychoanalysis has provided us with a concept called therapeutic space.

Consider an analysand with a very traumatic childhood. He (or she) comes to

analysis as an adult with defenses against shame and humiliation, murderous rage,

39
and a need to be understood and accepted as a human being by fellow human

beings. After a while this person, during his sessions, gives up his defenses and

adaptation to his internal conflicts. The analyst becomes a transference figure and

the patient experiences the analyst as some important figure from his childhood,

such as a person on whom the analysand depends and for whom he experiences

rage. Such developments are part of analytic treatment, and for it to work

properly, a therapeutic space has to be formed and maintained in the analysts

office.

Let us visualize such a space with an imagined effigy representing the

analyst sitting in the middle of it. The analysand sends verbal missiles to mutilate

and kill the effigy and the analyst tolerates the attack. The next day, the analyst-

effigy is placed in the therapeutic space again, showing the analysand that his or

her childhood rage in fact did not commit a murder. A mental game is played in

this space until the analysand learns how to kill a symbol and not a real person,

how to relinquish devastating guilt feelings, how to tame other intense emotions,

and how to separate fantasy from reality. The analysand also learns to establish a

firm continuity of time, but with an ability to restore feelings, thinking, and

perceptions to their proper places: the past, the present or the future. In other

words, the burdens of the past can be left behind, and a hope for a better future

can be maintained.

There should be no damaging intrusions into this space. For example, the

analysand does not really hit the analyst, but only his or her effigy, and the analyst

does not have real sex with the analysand who wishes to be loved, but only shows

40
the patient that the latter is loved because the analyst has always protected the

therapeutic space.

We can also imagine creating a therapeutic space between warring

enemy large groups where they can play a serious and deadly game while

always killing the effigies rather than one another. This is of course very difficult

and perhaps impossible to establish, because enemy groups would constantly

invade this space with real bullets, missiles, torture, and live bombslike suicide

bombers. Nevertheless, every effort should be made to create such a space and

keep it as stable as possible. Without such an effort, the Islamic terrorists will

continue to destroy themselves and innocent people, and their enemies will spend

money and energy under the illusion that they will catch all of the terrorists by

raining missiles from the sky in the name of freedom and democracy.

After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, naturally there was rage in the

USA as there was in other places such as Madrid, Casablanca, Istanbul, Mombasa, Taba,

London and elsewhere after the terrorists hit these locations. And, again naturally, the

victims wanted revenge as well as protection from future disasters and tragedies. When

the USA came up with the Bush doctrine, putting aside pre-existing theories in favor of

a preemptive strike, the war in Iraq opened a new Pandoras box, large-group identity

issues became more prominent, us and them divisions became deeper, and extreme

fundamentalist religions began to contaminate and influence world affairs more and

more. Elsewhere Volkan (2004) wrote: When Gods are involved in human conflict,

tragedies follow. Because Gods do not negotiate, they give permission to destroy the

evil (p. 167). After September 11, 2001, there seemed to be little and perhaps no effort

41
made at all to understand events on a deeper human level.

Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) which Volkan

founded in 1987 at the University of Virginia (closed in 2006 three years after Volkans

retirement) experimented with creating therapeutic space between enemy groups. Volkan

(1988, 1997, 2006) called this method the Tree Model. This methodology has three

basic components or phases: (1) psychopolitical assesment of the situation (representing

the roots of a tree), (2) psychopolitical dialogues between members of opposing groups

(representing the trunk of a tree), and (3) collaborative actions and institutions that grow

out of the dialogue process (representing the branches of a tree).

The first phase of the Tree Model includes in-depth psychoanalytically-

informed interviews with a wide range of people who represent the groups

involved, through which an understanding begins to emerge concerning the main

aspects, including unconscious ones that surround the situation that needs to be

addressed. The psychopolitical dialogues between influential representatives of

opposing large groups are conducted under the guidance of a psychoanalytically-

informed facilitating team and take place in a series of multi-day meetings, as

often as possible, over several years. As these dialogues progress, resistances

against changing the large groups pathological ways of protecting its identity

are brought to the surface and articulated, so that fantasized threats to large-group

identity can be interpreted and realistic communication can take place. In order

for the newly-gained insights to have an impact on social and political policy, as

well as on the populace at large, the final phase requires the collaborative

development of concrete actions, programs, and institutions with official

42
governmental and grassroots support. This multi-year methodology allows several

disciplines including psychoanalysis, history and diplomacy, to collaborate, to

articulate and work through underlying psychological and historical aspects of

existing tensions. What is learned is then operationalized so that more peaceful

coexistence between the large groups can be achieved, and threats (especially the

fantasized ones) to large-group identity coming from the other can be tamed.

This leads to a progression within the large group.

In this paper we will not go into more depth on the methodology of the

Tree Model. It had never been applied to a situation where the external dangers

were extreme. It, however, contains concepts that can be modified for thinking of,

and even starting, strategies for acute and very deadly situations such as the one

that now exists between the radical Islamists and the people in the West who are

their targets. The idea of developing such strategies should come after a serious,

well-thought-out interdisciplinary planning period.

One of the first things to do is find what Volkan (2006) calls, entry

points to the Tree Model process. We are not, for example, suggesting some

Americans or other Westerners sit across a table from members of Al-Qaeda to

discuss peace. To propose this would be unrealistic, at best a ridiculous

suggestion. Rather, we are speaking of finding an entry point, such as creating

dialogues that would take place over several years between committed influential

members of the Western world and members of the Islamic world. These would

be held with the blessing of governmental authorities and under the auspices of a

psychoanalytically informed interdisciplinary team, such as the former CSMHI

43
team, whose members do not believe in instant coffee solutions. Practical

aspects of the Tree Model would begin after the participants understood the

psychic realities of their opponents.

Those who participate in this planning should take into consideration not

only the real events and politics, but also psychological and psychopolitical

factors. These factors include an understanding of large-group regression and

rituals, the human need to have enemies and allies (Volkan, 1988), the tendency

of enemies to become alike, the intertwining of a regressed leaders internal

expectations with the political/societal process that he or she initiates (Volkan,

2004), the impact the shared mental representation of history has on people, the

reactivation of past shared traumas of ancestors (called chosen traumas) that

magnify the present dangers, the importance of explaining the psychic realities of

the enemies, finding avenues for group mourning (Volkan, 2006) so that past

losses are accepted and do not induce malignant entitlement ideologies to recover

what had been lost, and lastly, leaving Gods out of decision-making.

FOOTNOTES

1- The poem found in Muhammed Bouyeris pocket:

Baptized in Blood

44
So these are my last words
riddled with bullets
baptized in blood
as I had hoped.

I am leaving a message
for you the fighter
the Tawheed tree is waiting
yearning for your blood
enter the bargain
and Allah opens the way
He gives you a garden
instead of the Earthly rubble.

To the enemy I say

You will surely die
Wherever in the world you go
Death is waiting for you
Chased by the knights of DEATH
who paint the streets with Red.

For the hypocrites I have one final word

Wish DEATH or hold your tongue and sit.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, my end is nigh

But this does not end the story.

2- Most theologians agree that millennialism existed among the early church fathers until

St. Augustine developed a doctrine known as amillennialism. As years passed,

amillennialism mostly faded away, and millennialism returned. Phillip Lamy concludes

that millennialism tends to arise in periods of intense, social change (Lamy, 1996, p.

61), that is, when there is a large-group regression whether or not it is followed by a

stable large-group progression.

45
3- For example, for Gush Emunim to give up areas that were included in the Land of

Israel violates Gods command and for the members of this organization such a belief is

non-negotiable.

4- Prophet Lois Roden, a woman, was the leader of Branch Davidians at Waco before

David Koresh took the leadership. Many of the New Religions in Japan are also led by

women. But even while this is true, as John Stratton Hawley and Wayne Proudfoot

(1994) state, Japans New Religions extol the return to the Golden Age when women

entirely depended upon men in Japan.

Sometimes a leader who does not possess enough charisma may choose a front

man. For example, Joseph DiMambro built his own temple, preparing for the return of

Jesus Christ in solar glory. But a physician, Luc Jouret, became the leader of the Order of

the Solar Temple, with DiMambro pulling the strings backstage. Non-negotiable

religious ideas come from the leader or his/her front man. Since the leader knows the

divine truth, the need for moral decisions is removed.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine in detail the leaders of the extreme

religious fundamentalist movements. Obviously, to prepare sophisticated and

psychoanalytically-informed psychobiographies on such leaders would depend on the

availability of sufficient information. The case histories of some extreme fundamentalist

religious leaders of restricted organizations or cults leaders (Volkan 2004, Olsson, 2005)

suggest that the future leader has a troubled childhood. He seeks to create a family

(cult) and become its mother and father in order to find a solution to his own childhood

mental conflicts. In the long run, however, repetition/compulsion takes over as the leader

46
mistreats followers as his own parents mistreated him. This leads to the creation of an

atmosphere where extreme masochism or sadism is activated within the family.

5- Freuds (1921) description of mass psychology, where the followers identify with each

other and rally around an idealized leader, comes to life. As Waelder (1936) stated long

ago, Freuds description only fits what is observed in regressed groups. Followers remain

regressed and dependent upon and obedient to the leader, the divine text and the

organization.

6- Sometimes they attack to remove the opposition and possible threat. For example, in

1980, in Kano, Nigeria, sect leader Alhaji Mohammadu (Maitatsine) Marva, who had

proclaimed a new era of anti-materialist reformed Islam, led his followers to the central

mosque in Kano where non-believers or lukewarm believers of his ideas were

gathered. This event led to the killing of an estimated 8,000 persons.

7- Annie Moore, a 24-year-old nurse who belonged to Jim Jones Peoples Temple and

who was the last to die in the mass suicide in Jonestown, provided an illustration of an

escape from pessimism in her suicide note that says, We died because you would not let

us live in peace (Wessinger, 1999, pp 51-52).

8- In Israel, men in the Haredi community seclude themselves in Yeshivot, institutions in

which they study the holy scriptures without maintaining contact with general culture and

knowledge. In todays Turkey we witness various religious fundamentalist movements

47
that demand women wear scarves. But each groups scarf is different or worn in a

different style. Thus the groups scarf is like a uniform that defines a border between the

group and others.

9- Typically leaders of restricted extreme fundamentalist movements, such as David

Koresh at Waco (Volkan, 2004), wish to change their early troubled childhoods by

creating a new family with themselves as the new and wished-for parent. But, when

this does not work out, the fate of the new family follows the fate of the leaders original

familyit becomes dysfunctional. Koresh owned all the women among his followers

and had sex with underage girls. Men at Koreshs compound at Waco were to be celibate.

The leaders having sex with underage girls is a kind of symbolic, but

pathological act to revise the leaders original internalized bad mother-child

relationship. These acts, however, are usually explained by magical religious beliefs.

For example, David Koresh (who was born out of wedlock when his mother was a young

girl and who, until age five, believed that his mother was his aunt.) was convinced he

could not be Jesus Christ since Jesus did not have children, so accordingly, he modeled

himself after a messiah referred to in Psalm 45, Who married virgins and whose children

ruled the earth.

In Islamic extreme religious fundamentalist movements too women and children

are abused. Their mistreatment is explained by the divine book and its interpreter.

Taliban provides a classical example of an Islamic fundamentalist religious movement in

which the degradation of women was extreme.

48
10- In 1995 one of the authors, Volkan, chaired a Select Advisory Commission to the

FBIs Critical Incident Response Group charged with examining how insights from

behavioral sciences could enhance the agencys ability to respond to crises such as the

one at Waco. Volkan observed that the aggressive negative feelings held by the authorities

against David Koresh and his Branch Davidians during the siege at Waco

unintentionally fed the Branch Davidians millennial expectations of a catastrophe

(Volkan, 2004).

11- Some people of Kandahar reportedly believe that the prophets cloak can cure the

sick and heal the lame. It had only been removed from its vault on two previous

occasions: in 1929 when King Emanullah invoked it to unify the country, and again in

1935 when authorities turned to the relic to stop a cholera epidemic in the city.

12- More information about bin Laden, such as the information found in

Peter Bergens recent book, The Osama bin Laden I know: An Oral History of al Qaedas

Leader, may tell us more about this man.

13- Under these conditions, people like bin Laden attracted the Islamic masses attention

as a hoped-for savior, not unlike the situation in Germany in the 1930s when the Germans

were attracted to Hitler as a savior. Hitler, like bin Laden, had a millennialist vision.

14- Today suicide bombings have become directly associated with Islamic terrorism. The

appearance of suicide bombers for religious purposes and for nationalistic or seemingly

non-religious ideological reasons is nothing new. We can go back to a Biblical story:

49
And Samson said, 'Let me die with the Philistines!' And he bowed himself with all his

might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the

dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life (Judges

16:30). From Samsons suicidal destruction of the Philistine temple onwards, there are

numerous examples of this kind of deadly action in the history of mankind.

15- In clinical practice we sometimes see a similar phenomenon in isolated individual

cases: a youngster who cannot maintain a cohesive sense of personal identity may

become psychotic and have religious hallucinations, such as believing he or she is the

reincarnation of an old religious leader. In such cases, psychotic persons replace their

damaged personal identities with an identity that is made up and obviously false to

outsiders. But suicide bombers are not psychotic. In their cases, the created identity fits

well with the external reality and is approved by outsiders. Thus, future suicide bombers

feel normal, and often experience an enhanced sense of self-esteem. They become, in a

sense, spokespeople for the traumatized community and assume that they, at least

temporarily, can reverse the shared sense of victimization and helplessness by expressing

the communitys rage.

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