In my post yesterday, I wrote about the "Jihadi Army of One" offering a way for an otherwise marginal young Muslim man with minimal prospects to gain status. Ken Spiker pointed out in his comment that most Jihadis are not necessarily marginalized individuals:
I think there's evidence that a majority of terrorists are not the wretched of the earth but often as not educated and seemingly with prospects for the future. Of course that's in the real world; in their minds they live in a fantasyland of religious lunacy in which they're heroes and favored of God. The Palestinians, it appeared at one time, were on their way to having a viable society. Many were working in Israel and many had access to education.
How can we resolve the conflict between these two sets of facts, that Jihadis are often well educated, often spending time in the West, often with opportunities for, at least material, success yet they can become involved in the kind of "Jihadi Army of One" terrorism I described?
Start with the concept of the Self-Representation:
Early in life we take the various images we have developed of ourselves (our self representations, in Psychoanalytic terms) and merge them to form a relatively stable, and usually only moderately distorted, sense of who we are and how we fit into the world around us.
Now, add in the idea of the Ego Ideal:
From the various self representations the child develops his ego ideal. The ego ideal is the collection of abilities, traits, strengths and weaknesses, that make up the person who the child wishes he could be. This will include identifications with various important people in the child's world (including fantasies of people, but that takes us farther afield) and can include famous people as well. Many adolescents and pre-adolescents long to be like their favorite athlete or movie star (though what they want to be like is their fantasy of the person based on the celebrity's carefully crafted persona. Despite the celebrity culture in this country, most people give up their longing to be someone else well before they reach adulthood.)
The Ego Ideal is in part a social construct. Every society determines who and what kind of people are idealized and worthy of emulation by their young. In our society, the choice of people available for identification ranges from Presidents Bush and Clinton, to Secretary of State Rice and Senator Clinton. We offer acclaim to Doctors and lawyers, teachers, firemen, and policemen; most Americans reserve a special place of honor for our military men and women. Of course, we also exalt Manny Ramirez and Paris Hilton, yet for all the short comings of our celebrity culture, we certainly offer a wide range of individuals to serve as a model for our young.
Who are the heroes for the Muslim World? The Palestinians have a cult of the Suicide Bomber. Osama and Hassan (Nasrallluh) are popular names for babies. Those with power and acclaim are those who espouse murdering innocents infidels in the name of Allah. Hitler is a popular name in the Palestinian territories. A mother who has offered multiple children to murder Jews is in their Parliament and a recognizable figure.
If Suicidal murder is the highest of aspirations, many will be drawn to such a "career" as a way to capture what is missing within them. In my posts on The Suicide Bomber, Narcissism, and the Ego Ideal: Part I and Part II, I described a failed suicide bomber, whose only hope of redemption for herself was by murdering Jews. What I wrote in relation to the Palestinian culture is applicable to much of the radicalized Islamic world:
What we would consider the most wonderful of opportunities for our children, that they would wish to go to school and do well, perhaps to graduate or professional school, or into the military, or into some other productive field of endeavor, where they can make a life for themselves, a family, perhaps to give us grandchildren one day, are options that in Palestinian culture are relatively devalued. In Palestine, the suicide bomber is the one who has his or her picture in the papers, posted on walls throughout Palestine, glorified in their death, not in their life.
Islam itself is in grave danger of becoming a death cult (after all, isn't that what their "leaders" proclaim?)
I worry that an American Muslim, Emilio Karim Dabul, has put himself at risk by his bold statements today:
WELL, here it is, five years late, but here just the same: an apology from an Arab-American for 9/11. No, I didn't help organize the killers or contribute in any way to their terrible cause. However, I was one of millions of Arab-Americans who did the unspeakable on 9/11: nothing.
The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.
....
Five years after that awful day, it's time for all Arab-Americans, and Arabs around the world, to protest against Islamic fascism, to raise our voices - and, where necessary, our arms - against these tyrants until their plague of terror has been driven from the face of the earth forever.
What have we come to when an American Muslim is afraid to speak out against those who hate in his name?
The danger to Dabul and me and you is the "Jihaid Army of One."
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