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"He who washes my body around my genitals
should wear gloves so that I am not touched there."--Will of Mohammed Atta
Because so much of the world outside the West has for historical
reasons fallen far behind in the evolution of their childrearing
practices, the resulting vast differences between psychoclasses has
recently turned into a global battle by terrorists against liberal
Western values. In order to understand this new battle, it would be
useful to know what makes a terrorist-what developmental life
histories they share that can help us see why they want to kill
"American infidels" and themselves-so we can apply our efforts to
removing the sources of their violence and preventing terrorism in
the future.
The roots of terrorism lie, I believe, not in this or that American
foreign policy error but in the extremely abusive families of the
terrorists. Children who grow up to be Islamic terrorists are
products of a misogynist fundamentalist system that often segregates
the family into two separate areas: the men's area and the woman's
area, where the children are brought up and which the father rarely
visits. Even in countries like Saudi Arabia today, women by law
cannot mix with unrelated men, and public places still have separate
women's areas in restaurants and work places, because, as one Muslim
sociologist put it bluntly: "In our society there is no relationship
of friendship between a man and a woman." Families that produce the
most terrorists are the most violently misogynist; in Afghanistan,
for instance, girls cannot attend schools and women who try to hold
jobs or who seem to "walk with pride" are shot.
Young girls are treated abominably in most fundamentalist families.
When a boy is born, the family rejoices; when a girl is born, the
whole family mourns. The girl's sexuality is so hated that when she
is five or so the women grab her, pin her down, and chop off her
clitoris and often her labia with a razor blade or piece of glass,
ignoring her agony and screams for help, because, they say, her
clitoris is "dirty," "ugly," "poisonous," "can cause a voracious
appetite for promiscuous sex," and "might render men impotent." Her
vulva is then often sewed up to prevent intercourse, leaving only
tiny hole for urination and passage of menstrual blood. The genital mutilation is excruciatingly
painful. Up to a third die from infections. Mutilated women must
"shuffle slowly and painfully" and usually are unable to experience orgasm.
Over 130 million genitally mutilated women are estimated to live
today in Africa alone, and genital mutilation is practiced by
Islamist families in families from Somali, Nigeria, Oman and Sudan to
Egypt, Yemen, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. A recent survey
of Egyptian girls and women, for instance, showed 97 percent of
uneducated families and 66 percent of educated families still
practicing female genital mutilation. Although some areas have
mostly given up the practice, in others-like Sudan and Uganda-it is
increasing, with 90% of the women surveyed saying they planned to
circumcise all of their daughters.
The mutilation is not required by the Qur'an; Mohammad, in fact, said
girls should be treated even better than boys. Yet the women have
inflicted upon their daughters for millennia the horrors done to
them, re-enacting the abuse men inflict on them as they mutilate
their daughters while joyfully chanting songs such as this:
"We used to be friends, but today I am the master, for I am a man.
Look-I have the knife in my hand. Your clitoris, I will cut it off and
throw it away for today I am a man."
As the girls grow up in these fundamentalist families, they are
usually treated as though they were polluted beings, veiled, and
sometimes gang-raped when men outside the family wish to settle
scores with men in her family. Studies such as a recent survey of
Palestinian students show that the sexual abuse of girls is far
higher than elsewhere, with a large majority of all girls reporting
that they had been sexually molested as children. Even marriage can
be considered rape, since the family usually chooses the partner and
the girl is as young as eight. The girl is often blamed for her
rape, since it is assumed that "those who don't ask to be raped will
never be raped." Wife-beating is common and divorce by wives rare-in
fact, women have been killed by their families simply because they
asked for a divorce. It is no wonder that Physicians for Human
Rights found, for instance, that "97 percent of Afghan women they
surveyed suffered from severe depression."
It is not surprising that these often-mutilated, battered
women make less than ideal mothers, reinflicting their own miseries
upon their children. Visitors to families throughout fundamentalist
Muslim societies report on the "slapping, striking, whipping and
thrashing" of children, with constant shaming and humiliation, often
being told by their mothers that they are "cowards" if they don't hit
others. Physical abuse of children is continuous; as the Pakistani
Conference on Child Abuse reports:
"A large number of children face some form of physical abuse, from
infanticide and abandonment of babies, to beating, shaking, burning,
cutting, poisoning, holding under water or giving drugs or alcohol,
or violent acts like punching, kicking, biting, choking, beating,
shooting or stabbings."
Islamist schools regularly practice corporal punishment-particularly
the religious schools from which terrorist volunteers so often
come-chaining up their students for days "in dark rooms with little
food and hardly any sanitation." Sexual abuse-described as including
"fondling of genitals, coercing a child to fondle the abuser's
genitals, masturbation with the child as either participant or
observer, oral sex, anal or vaginal penetration by penis, finger or
any other object and [child] prostitution"-is extensive, though
impossible to quantify. According to the recent survey of
Palestinian students, boys report having been used sexually even more
often than girls. Children are taught strict obedience to all
parental commands, stand when their parents enter the room, kiss
their hands, don't laugh "excessively," fear them immensely, and
learn that giving in to any of their own needs or desires is horribly
sinful. All these abusive childrearing practices are very much like
those that were routinely inflicted upon children in the medieval
West.
The ascetic results of such punitive upbringings are
predictable. When these abused children grow up, they feel that every
time they try to self-activate, every time they do something
independently for themselves, they will lose the approval of the
parents in their heads-mainly their mothers and grandmothers in the
women's quarters. When their cities were flooded with oil money and
Western popular culture in recent decades, fundamentalist men were
first attracted to the new freedoms and pleasures, but soon
retreated, feeling they would lose their mommy's approval and be "Bad
Boys." Westerners came to represent their own "Bad Boy" self in
projection, and had to be killed off, as they felt they themselves
deserved, for such unforgivable sins as listening to music, flying
kites and enjoying sex. As one fundamentalist put it, "America is
Godless. Western influence here is not a good thing, our people can
see CNN, MTV, kissing." Another described his motives thusly: "We
will destroy American cities piece by piece because your life style
is so objectionable to us, your pornographic movies and TV." Many
agree with the Iranian Ministry of Culture that all American
television programs "are part of an extensive plot to wipe out our
religious and sacred values," and for this reason feel they must
kill Americans. Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of Islamic
terrorism, describes how he turned against the West as he once
watched a church dance while visiting America:
"Every young man took the hand of a young woman. And these were the
young men and women who had just been singing their hymns! The room
became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips
met lips; chests pressed together."
Osama bin Laden himself "while in college frequented flashy
nightclubs, casinos and bars [and] was a drinker and womanizer," but
soon felt extreme guilt for his sins and began preaching killing
Westerners for their freedoms and their sinful enticements of
Muslims. Most of the Taliban leaders, in fact, are wealthy, like bin
Laden, have had contact with the West, and were shocked into their
terrorist violence by "the personal freedoms and affluence of the
average citizen, by the promiscuity, and by the alcohol and drug use
of Western youth. Only an absolute and unconditional return to the
fold of conservative Islamism could protect the Muslim world from the
inherent dangers and sins of the West." Bin Laden left his life of
pleasures, and has lived with his four wives and fifteen children in
a small cave with no running water, waging a holy war against all
those who enjoy sinful activities and freedoms that he cannot allow
in himself.
From childhood, then, Islamist terrorists have been taught to
kill the part of themselves-and, by projection, others-that is
selfish and wants personal pleasures and freedoms. It is in the
terror-filled homes-not just later in the terrorist training
camps-that they first learn to be martyrs and to "die for Allah."
When the terrorist suicidal bombers who were prevented from carrying
out their acts were interviewed on TV, they said they felt "ecstatic"
as they pushed the button. They never mentioned as a reason for
their violence any political dispute with the West, and denied being
motivated by the virgins or other enticements supposedly awaiting
them in Paradise. Instead, they all said they wanted to die to join
Allah-to get the love they never got. Mothers of martyrs are reported
as happy that they die. One mother of a Palestinian suicide bomber
who had blown himself to bits said "with a resolutely cheerful
countenance,"
"I was very happy when I heard. To be a martyr, that's something.
Very few people can do it. I prayed to thank God. I know my son is
close to me."
The son had been about to graduate from the university, about to
separate from his mother, to individuate, to self-activate. She was
happy about his suicide because now her son would always be "close to
her."
The imagery of the terrorists also often betrayed the source of their
martyrdom in their overwhelming sense of sinfulness: "The moment your
first blood spurts out, all of your sins are forgiven." Like serial
killers-who are also sexually and physically abused as
children-terrorists grow up filled with a rage that must be inflicted
upon others. Most even preach violence against other Muslim nations
like Egypt and Saudi Arabia "for not being sufficiently fervent in
the campaign against materialism and Western values." A fantasy
analysis of their choice of words reveals constant use of terms of
sexual attack that advocates a defiant rape of others in order to
restage their own sexual abuse: "It's time to penetrate America and
Israel and hit them where it hurts most" and "Americans must be
attacked for desecrating our holy places." Their excitement about
the "spectacular explosions" inflicted upon others is also sexual in
origin; as a psychiatrist who interviewed many terrorists reported:
"We have to study their fantasies to understand these men. The sexual
importance is sometimes striking. For some, when a bomb goes off, it
is like an orgasm. One fellow told me he felt 'liberated' every time
he heard a bomb explode. Some others told me they would place a bomb,
then sit out on a balcony and listen. When the 'boom' came, it was a
great relief."
The orgasmic explosions outside themselves are necessary, according
to those who interviewed them, because they "externalize their
feelings of inadequacy" that are the result of severe child abuse,
joining terrorist groups "to provide a sense of identity" and "share
their feelings of deprivation [and] a sense of imminent danger."
If prevention rather than revenge is our goal, rather than
pursuing a lengthy military war against terrorists and killing
massive numbers of innocent people while increasing the number of
future terrorists, it might be better for the U.S. to back a
U.N.-sponsored Marshall Plan for them-one that could even include
Community Parenting Centers run by local people who could teach more
humane childrearing practices in order to give them the chance to
evolve beyond the abusive family system that has produced the
terrorism, just as we provided a Marshall Plan for Germans after WWII
for the families that had produced Nazism.
This article first appeared on psychohistory@topica.com, November 2001.
See these related articles:
The Wellsprings of Horror in the Cradle, Alice Miller
The Sexual Rage Behind Islamic Terror, Jamie Glazov
Atta's Rage Rooted in Islam's Misogyny, Jamie Glazov
The School for Violence, Riane Eisler
Yes, This Is About Islam, Salman Rushdie
Afghan Boy Gets Lesson in Manhood, Philip Caputo
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