Customer Reviews

Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

5 star:		(17)
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2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I was shocked by the ferocity with which a couple of reviewers panned this book. It reminded me of the initial outcry and emotional vetting that took place right after 9/11. Tellingly, at that moment when a vast majority of the civilian population was screaming for blood, it was the military who pushed for calmer heads to prevail. Knowing your enemy is a big part of suceeding and if we as Americans can be faulted with anything, it's our arrogance. I submit that being able to mentally hold an idea and at the same time not agreeing with it is a level of intellectual prowess not acheived by some reveiwers.

This book is fantastic. I could not put it down. Unlike most books of this sort which by necessity rely primarily on anecdotal evidence, this is serious work. It is closer to hard science in its procedure than most of the rabble rousing goobly gook masquerading as serious books on terrorism.

Prof. Stern is not trying to morally equate anything. She simply tries to expose some terrorist core motivations which are decidedly different from those of a soldier. Traditional phase-line thinking will not win thin war on terrorism. We need more thinkers of Stern's ilk to raise the level of the discourse.

In surveying books on terrorism for my college course, I found this one of the best. Wish it wasn't hardcover!

Stern analyzes the different types of reasons for terrorism (humiliation, alienation, demographics, territory, and history) and explains both on the psychological and sociological level how they operate. She also explains how the different methods of terrorism operate to bring about the psychological trance/bliss state, how terrorists become as well as their logistical operations. She describes charismatic leaders, commanders and cadres, lone wolves, and freelance franchises as forms of organization and the sometimes mixed motives of their members. She discusses terrorist organizations' relationships with states, weapons acquistion and type, recruit training, and techniques to enhance commitment.

The book covers much the same territory that Mark Juergensmeyer's "Terror in the Mind of God" covers. He does it more elegantly, with more depth, and with many of the same insights and conclusions, but Stern provides more information on the nature of organizations and a better categorization of motives. This is the broader book.

If you have strong ideological beliefs or interests in parties involved with or affected by terrorism, you probably won't like the book. Christian terrorism and Jewish terrorism exist, albeit on a vastly lower level than Islamic terrorism at the moment, but the forces behind all kinds of terrorism have much in common, as this book points out. If we can't get past emotional reactions and judgments to understand why and how these terrible and tragic events occur, then we only contribute to their perpetuation, not their alleviation.

With the avalanche of books on terrorism and Islam cluttering the bookstores and library shelves, I was hesitant to plunge into this one. I am glad I reconsidered. It is a remarkable account using primary sources, primarily insiders or inmates who have been active in pursuing their perfidious goals. Many are the actual villains in some of the high profile terrorist crimes of our era.
Sparing a lot of details and personalities, you can discover them for yourself, it is enough to say that Stern has traveled the globe to conduct her interviews and compile her research. From American Fundamentalists with their addiction to targeting abortion clinics for destruction; to Hamas; Indonesians, Pakistanis et al committed to their respective jihads, the author gives a comprehensive, and often eye opening glimpse at the inside operations of a vast cross section of groups.
In establishing a common thread of psychological and economic profiles of the recruits for various terrorist groups, Stern provides useful insight for those wishing to comprehend some of the most menacing ideologues in our modern world. The story is all the more remarkable as Stern is an American professor, female, and Jewish; yet she manages, occasionally at potential risk to her safety, to penetrate conservative Muslim strongholds to obtain her information.
This is scholarly, but still well organized and readable, and I highly recommend it as a first stop for anyone seeking to get a good handle on this important issue.

Timely for her insight into the psychology of religious militarism, Jessica Stern investigates the factors that create terrorism. Written in narrative format, the author interviews members of several militant movements in order to understand how religion can be used as a tool of violence. By dividing the book into two parts, Stern first examines the factors leading to religious terrorism, and in the second part of the book, she studies typical terrorist organizational structures. Written in the last two years, Stern concludes with public policy implications to counter the rise of religious terrorism.

In each chapter in the first part of her book, Stern interviews religious militants from differing religions in order to uncover the factors that increase the likelihood a person will join and remain in a terrorist organization. Although "fun and profit" (5) provide incentives for religious militancy, Stern believes five other factors influence the decision to join in a jihad. Whether real or perceived humiliation, terrorist leaders have learned to harvest the outrage youth feel against occupying powers. Because of the oppression of these powers, terrorist organizations set up legitimate charitable organizations to ease the suffering of the oppressed class. Youth join terrorist organizations to strike back against their oppressors because of their alienation and humiliation, and out of a sense of obligation to return the favor to those terrorist organizations that provide charitable relief to their families. Ethnic demographics also play a key role in terrorism. When a government creates a "policy [that] deliberately shifts an ethno-religious mix" (62) (i.e., a migration policy), the power of the once dominant ethnicity becomes weakened. As a result, the privileges this group once received begin to diminish, and this group seeks to reestablish its authority. Eventually, a "holy war" is called, and militants flock to either side believing they are fighting an eternal struggle. Ancient history can be a "powerful weapon in extremists' hands, including in their efforts to expand national boundaries and to seek redemption" (85). Terrorists use a selective reading of history and religious texts for justifying violence and mobilizing recruits. Disputes over territory also create an Us versus Them mentality, which helps establish a "clear identity and a definite purpose in life" (137).

Stern writes the second half of her book in an attempt to understand terrorist organizational structures. She believes terrorist organizations fall into four categories. Within each of these organizations is a tension between being able to withstand loss of members (resiliency) and the organization's ability to optimize the destruction of the attack (capacity). First, terrorist organizations can be structured by an inspirational leader. In this type of organization, one leader headlines a movement, but does not give explicit orders or material benefits to his/her followers. The movement is tied together by a special narrative and language, and followers are inspired to take violent action on behalf of the group. Second, lone-wolf avengers use their own ideologies and agendas to fight for their own cause. The lone-wolf avengers cannot cause damage on a large scale, but at the same time, these terrorists provide difficulty for investigators, as networks are individualized. Third, commander and cadre organizations provide a large hierarchical network that are highly destructive, and members of the organization and their families benefits from their large fund-raising efforts. Because of the structure of this organization, it can be easily penetrated, and this organization necessitates a large cash income. Fourth, Stern examines Al Qaeda as an example of the ultimate organization. This organization has a hierarchical structure, but hires militants for specific geographical areas to use in one-time missions. This organization takes careful interest in planning its attacks, has allies in high governmental positions, and has the ability to acquire conventional, unconventional, and nuclear weapons. Recruitment and training are a high priority for this organization. This organizational structure vocalizes and articulates the grievance it wants addressed, advertises its mission, and has the patience and ability to change its mission objectives. This organization is structurally a network of network weakly tied together, optimizing resiliency. This organization receives incomes from licit and illicit businesses and charitable organizations, and it uses leaderless resisters, freelancers, and franchises to optimize its effectiveness.

In her concluding chapter, Stern explains the vulnerability of Islamic states to terrorism. America's support for Israel, increasing globalization leading to lower standards of living, and the vulnerability of states transitioning to a democracy all increase the likelihood of terrorism in Islamic states. With this in mind, Stern closes with a handful of foreign policy suggestions.. America must understand that violence against terrorism is partially effective, and violence provides terrorist organizations with the ability to recruit new militants. Therefore, we need to learn to penetrate these organizations. We should not impose the death penalty on terrorists. We should not use torture during interrogation, and we should purchase the expertise of unemployed terrorists. America should also promote and develop alternative educational methods in Muslim nations, combat infrastructures that mobilize recruits, and make it more difficult for terrorist organizations to obtain weapons.

I have grown utterly weary of the explosion of terrorism studies following 9/11, but this book held me rapt from beginning to end. Stern has written a deeply personal work far removed from either dry academic prose or "I was there" anecdotes without losing the ability to present a fairly balanced view across a number of regions and religions. The result is a remarkable look at both the personalities of those she interviewed and her sometimes startlingly honest reactions to each one. Her style is solid and the footnotes are filled with extensive, valuable resources for further reading. This is not a good buy for those readers that prefer the author remain detached from his or her subject, but in my opinion it is Stern's first-person style, descriptive narrative and open revelation of her thoughts and reactions to each subject that makes this an especially powerful work.

Jessica Stern's book "Terror in the name of God" can be divided into three parts.
The first part consists of interviews with terrorists. This was absolutely amazing. Imagine this young Jewish woman interviewing anti-Semitic Palestinians! Nevertheless she was able to extract a great deal of interesting information from them. Surely many of them lied to her -- but the lies are useful too.
Of course, they were all different. They shared the ability to dehumanize their victims - an ability that seems to be shared by some of the people who have reviewed this book - but were different in other ways. This part of the book was very readable and served as the background for the other two parts.
The second part consists of theoretical discussions describing the structure of the terrorist movements and how they worked, and also included some interesting material on the nature of leadership.
The third part "Conclusions/Policy Recommendations" brings it all to a head. She points out that a terrorist organization has a life of its own. The adherents become financially dependent on it - and in its charity mode the entire community becomes dependent on it. What happens, then, when the organization achieves its aims, as it did when the Taliban (with US aid) ejected the Soviet Union and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. These organizations cannot simply disband. She suggests that we should hire them and they should become part of our anti-terrorist program.
We all know that many (perhaps most) of the madrassahs (the Islamic schools) teach terrorism and recruit suicide bombers. But these are the free schools and poor students can get their lunch there. The state schools are expensive. We should be encouraging the development of public schools to compete with the madrassahs. In fact, the WTO and the World Bank discourage the development of public schools on the theory that they are a needless expense that poor countries cannot afford. This policy is dead wrong! They should be encouraging investment in education as an economic policy as well as a humanitarian one.
There were other suggestions as well but I will stop here. If you are interested read her book.

Both religion and technology are seductive in their ability to both soothe and explain - but both are dangerous in the hands of zealots of either discipline. Stern, a Harvard professor and former fellow on terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations, expands her definition of religious terrorists worldwide by including the Muslim jihad in Indonesia, militant Palestinians, zealous Israelis, and Americans who kill abortion doctors in the name of Christianity. Stern outlines how militants of all persuasions find recruits and recondition them in cultlike sects to embrace suicide and murder.
Stern spent 5+ years traveling worldwide to research this book, which combines psychology and forensic science in a remarkable study that all who are interested in keeping abreast of the growing role of religious terrorism should be required to read.

I have been recommending "Terror in the Name of God" to everyone I know who will read a serious and troubling book. And troubling indeed is Jessica Stern's look at why religious militants kill. Troubling also are her observations on how others, both individuals and governments, respond to religious violence. While governments all over the world respond in ways that escalate religious violence, her main concern is that America, and especially American foreign policy, tend to respond in ways that make matters worse.

Stern's first point is that grievances, real or imagined, give rise to an individual's joining a terrorist group. One group with a grievance, which we might not think of as a terrorist organization, is an American group existing only as virtual organization. A website for those who believe in killing doctors who provide abortions announces which clinics are scheduled to have protests, and encourages people to show up to harass staff and women coming for abortions. The site provides names and home addresses of such doctors, and people encouraged by the site have succeeded in forcing clinics in several states to shut down. At least two murders of abortion providers have been traced to this site. But it is very difficult to prosecute on virtual evidence. And it is almost impossible to trace the money donated through the Internet, and the people who "belong" to such a nebulous group.

Stern also talked to men in a militant Jewish group in Jerusalem, who were involved in a plan to blow up the Dome of the Rock to make room to rebuild the Temple. To them, Judaism will not be complete unless this is done.

But the crux of the book, because it is of such danger in today's world, is Islamist fundamentalist violence, in its multiplicity of forms, from Algeria to Indonesia. This is the truly frightening part of the book, because it poses the greatest danger, and because the West, specifically the United States, is responding to it in such counterproductive ways.

Stern builds up to this conclusion. She must have been researching terrorism for years before she began this particular book, given her position on the National Security Council as far back as 1994. For this book, she began visiting terrorists in 1999, and was still visiting after September 11. In some cases, it took nearly two years of negotiations before they would meet with her. And she is very careful to remind the reader that they all lied to her, to serve their own purposes. In cases where she could verify the lies, she points them out. In other cases, they have to go unchecked.

So we follow her as she goes to Pakistan, Palestine, Israel, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India. She takes what have to me felt like isolated incidents, and shows how they have helped groups learn from each other and in many cases merge. For instance, Egypt did an excellent job of suppressing its militant jihadist group. They then left Egypt, joined Al Queda, and provided the technical know-how that made possible the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the African Embassy bombings, and September 11. It was Osama Bin Laden, through his legitimate and illegitimate businesses in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who provided the money.

So why do they hate us? Partly it is because we do not embody their religious values. Fifty years ago, Muslims came to the West for higher education. Now, if they come, they are repelled by our materialism, the freedom of our women, our decadence, and our lack of religious and moral values. They return with anti-Western values. But current surveys show that people in the Arab world still highly value the technology of the West (no doubt including our weapons, though the survey didn't include this question). This ambivalence no doubt fuels some of the problem.

So what are doing wrong, and what could we do to improve things? First, we don't understand the complexities of what drives people to be terrorists. As one example, in places like Pakistan, schools are so inadequate, and expensive, that poor parents may have no choice. If they want their sons to get any education, they send them to the madrassahs. Boys enter these schools as early as five; there they are fed, housed, clothed, taught the Koran--and the hard line of the terrorist organization. If they show promise, they may be allowed to enter the organization. Even if they do not, they will in all likelihood toe the party line, and perhaps send their sons to the school. (Rather than try to shut these schools down, she would like to see alternative schools set up, which would provide an education beyond the Koran, which is the only curriculum in these schools. A free practical education might siphon off some of the attendance.)

Stern talks about the "God-shaped hole" in modern life, which afflicts people in Indonesia as much as it does in Chicago. People are looking for meaning in their lives, and they will take it wherever they can find it. If all that is on offer is a terrorist organization, so be it.

Stern sees the Islamic world as particularly vulnerable to the virus of terrorism, for a number of reasons. One is US support for Israel. Another is that standards of living have remained stable or fallen in most Muslim states over the last 25 years, while in the rest of the developed world they have risen. This has bred fury with rich America. 80% of Muslim states are ruled non-democratically. She makes the interesting point that states with many natural resources (i.e. oil) have especially hard times becoming viable democracies. I wish she'd explored that more. She also notes that the transition to democracy is a vulnerable period across the board. I wish she'd explored that more too, given the current situation in Iraq.

As to what to do, she is critical of a strictly military approach. For one thing, Al Queda and other terrorist groups don't function like armies; they use small amorphous cells in a wide variety of places, and our usual military tactics don't work. I'd guess this is why we end up with so much "collateral damage." And when we use military force, we provide more recruits for terrorism. She is also critical of our insistence on the death penalty, primarily because the European Parliament has prohibited extradition of terrorists to the US without guarantees that the death penalty will not be used. And Britain has said that its soldiers will not turn Bin Laden over to the US unless the death penalty is waived.

The US needs to denounce, loudly, Israel's de facto settlement process, and wherever possible, counter the slogans of the terrorists, not with throwing down gauntlets, but with statements of our values in ways that respect the true values of Islam.

Let me finish this overly long review of a truly important book with a short quotation from her ending:

"The religious terrorists we face are fighting us on every level--militarily, economically, psychologically, and spiritually. Their military weapons are powerful, but spiritual dread is the most dangerous weapon in their arsenal....We need to avoid giving in to spiritual dread, and to hold fast to the best of our principles, by emphasizing tolerance, empathy, and courage."

The topic of terrorism used to be in the political realm, but the past decade has seen a decided shift to the religious. Professor Stern has done an admirable job trying to get past generalities and actually study the people and their motivations. Through an unprecedented collection of interviews with the actual terrorists themselves, she helps to lift the veil a little bit, and peer underneath it. It's admirable that she undertakes this work when it in the post 9/11 world it is fraught with politics and colored by personal views, and also an issue that has no easy answer. Terrorism is in the eye of the viewer. What is one person's terrorist is another's justified protector and fighter. To see this, look at the breadth of reviews already posted here. She tries to find both sides in each movement she studies, looking how the movement came to be, and what keeps it going. What makes people send their children to be martyrs to a movement? Stern attempts to discover what is behind this. The book is thorough, but not overly dense. One of the biggest drawbacks is that Stern's academic background shines through, and sometimes the prose is a bit dry. But this is the best work I've read so far to examine terror movements both domestic and international. Well worth the read if you are interested in learning more on this hot button issue.

This is an interesting addition to the literature on terrorism. What sets it apart from many other books is the author's attempt to base analysis on a series of interviews with those whom she defines as terrorists. Some who review this book negatively focus on their sense that her definition is too generous, and includes those whom they would not see in that light. Nonetheless, the interviews illuminate her points nicely. And, too, if those whom she has interviewed do not represent the terrorist population well, her conclusions will suffer. Terrorism, for Stern, is ". . .an act or threat of violence against noncombatants with the objective of exacting revenge, intimidating, or otherwise influencing an audience" (page xx).

She begins by assessing the types of grievances that lead to terrorist activities. Among these are a sense of humiliation that terrorists see themselves as suffering from, alienation, demographics (religious groups, socioeconomic groups, and the like), history, and territory. Then, she explores the organization of "holy war" operations. She notes that organizations run a continuum from "lone wolves" or "leaderless resistance" models on to "terrorist armies or commander-cadre organizations." As to leaders, she argues that the requirements for their success are similar to those of firms or nongovernment organizations. She says: "Today's multinational terrorist leader is an entrepreneur who brings together mission, money, and market share" (page 142). The evidence suggests to her that terrorist organizations that are most successful have a resilient network organization, with "widely distributed leadership and minimal (or successfully encrypted) communication among nodes" (page 144). Greater organizational communication can make it easier for states to penetrate such organizations and thereby disrupt them .

After the analysis, she speaks of policy recommendations. She also suggests why Islamic countries are particularly good recruiting areas for terrorist organizations. The list of policy suggestions would include some of the following: try to undercut the attractiveness of students going to extremist religious schools (which can become seedbeds of terrorist recruitment), go after the infrastructure of recruitment of new terrorists, upgrade security at vulnerable and attractive targets (so-called "target hardening" strategy), avoid being sucked into ongoing occupations (since this will generate resentment and lead to recruitment of terrorists), work to strengthen "weak states" such as Afghanistan (or stay out of such states), before they descend into chaos and warlordism and terrorist recruitment. And, finally, she argues in her last lines: ". . .what counts is what we fight for, not what we oppose. We need to avoid giving into spiritual dread, and to hold fast to the best of our principles, by emphasizing tolerance, empathy, and courage" (page 296).

Overall, this is a useful study to add to others. Her methodology is interesting, but fraught with the problem noted above. Nonetheless, a good addition to the literature.