Terrorist Psychology

Published: 03/05/2007

It’s the psychology too
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Last week I was contacted by a female acquaintance of Omar Khayam, one of the bomb plotters just convicted. She described her feelings about the terrorist gang: ‘They are disturbed, really. I am angry about innocent people dying in Iraq too but I don’t want to kill other innocents in revenge. They don’t know how to be men I think.’ So I invited her over and twenty other Muslim women contacts- from 18 to 45- for tea and talk.

What a meeting that was. Two middle class wives had hired private detectives to find out if their husbands were involved not with other women, but sinister groups: ‘Families are last to know. He is out too many hours and not explaining’. Mothers said their sons appeared lost vacant and didn’t really communicate. One rued: ‘I shouldn’t have chosen his bride. I am telling them to divorce, both are so unhappy. No children yet so better now’. Singles were afraid of marrying: ‘ What if I find out I am sleeping with a bomber? They fool everyone.’. Childless Munira said her husband had sexual problems and was now turning ‘suddenly very religious but not in a good way’.

Sara, whose father is Muslim, mother English, is a trainee psychologist working with a small group of troubled Muslim men, not yet at the point of killing madness. Listen to the inner chaos she says: ‘Ethnic minorities don’t only have an outer culture, but an inner life and history. Why are thousands of British Muslim men are so unable to resist the ideologues while others can? What are the parental dynamics, self esteem, sexual difficulties, problems with their manhood?’

We know there is crisis of masculinity in our brave new world. In some Muslim communities, there are additional pressures. A culture of obedience to family and community diktats means men must crush their desires and selfhood. They turn ruthless and hopeless. Most have never been in love, or known soft delights except guiltily and with shame. Professional men are afflicted too. I know a malcontent academic, lawyer, a city banker who see only see a clash to the end between the west and Islam, a clash between two sides of themselves really.

There are indeed highly organised Islamicist networks whose leaders are evil. Their recruits though may be psychologically weak followers, susceptible to propaganda.
Therapy and psychological work with terrorist prisoners would teach us much about what kind of personality and upbringing makes such men into psychotics, which is what they are. We must attend to this group if we are to beat the threat.

Published in Evening Standard