Customer Reviews

Islamic Terror: Conscious and Unconscious Motives (Praeger Security International)

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The author, an Israeli psychoanalyst, has done an outstanding job in detailing the many, many different ideas that psychologists and psychoanalysts have developed to explain why Islamic, fundamentalist, jihadist suicide-bomber commit their attacks. The author literally `bends over backwards' in presenting any and apparently, just about all psychoanalytical theories regarding the `motives' as to why a suicide-bomber undertakes his/her action. The author shows that psychologists are divided as to what motivates a Muslim to become a suicide-bomber (an Islamikaze). The author believes that the typical suicide-bomber martyr (a Shaheed) has an underlying, unconscious `narcissistic pathology' personality. Are they sane or irrational? It depends. It appears that any psychologist can call some world leader, or some Islamikaze, as being `narcissistic', simply because that person really likes himself. This `in love with himself' produces `delusions of grander' in trying to improve the lot of Muslims by killing others that an Islamikaze dislikes. (Narcissism can be `good' or `bad' depending upon what a person does.) While that may really explain some `over-achievers' personality, the author presents no `empirical' evidence that narcissism substantially explains Islamikaze behavior, besides referring the reader to other books he has written. But is all of this nothing more than perhaps just psyco-babble? Even if we accept the author's diagnosis: that narcissism is the `problem', the author does not explain what the `solution' is in how to entice a suicide-bomber to abort his mission and `reform.' Nonetheless, this book is well worth reading for getting an extensive understanding about the many divergent psychological ideas as to what may `nourish' an Islamikaze's conscious and unconscious behavior: is it due to a young child's hurtful weaning away from his mother or is it due to revelations from the Quran (which the author discounts)? Yes, the author discusses `shame' and the `Oedipal' conflicts of the shaheeds. Chapter contents include: Religious Terror; Terrorists and Their Mothers; Narcissistic Rage and Islamic Terror; The Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders; The [Muslim] State of Denial; A Clash of Civilizations?; The `Arab Mind'?; Fantasies of Rebirth Through Violent Death; and Suicide Murder as Unconscious Fusion with the Mother, among others. Also see: "Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam" by Fethi Benslama.