Talking to the Enemy

March 23, 2011 4:17 PM

Scott Atran, has appeared previously on Metafilter. He released a book a few months ago called, Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists. Atran has spent many years studying terrorists, particularly suicide bombers. His research disputes the assertion that terrorists are primarily driven by religious belief, but instead youth culture and group dynamics.

For instance, according to his research, participation in soccer is a stronger indicator than attending a madrasah for identifying potential suicide bombers.

He has also been outspoken, as an atheist, in criticizing other major atheist figures, like Sam Harris, about their lack of data.

Beyond Belief 2007 SLYT. Well worth watching, as Atran pulls no punches about the misinformation being spread as truth about terrorism.

posted by KaizenSoze (42 comments total)

Thanks. I look forward to watching this.
posted by entropone at 4:28 PM on March 23, 2011

So I should sell my Caliphate 2015 Championship hat?
posted by jsavimbi at 4:32 PM on March 23, 2011

For instance, according to his research, participation in soccer is a stronger indicator than attending a madrasah for identifying potential suicide bombers.

Slight problem here. If the soccer bombers are converts, or otherwise reborn, they would have much more to prove, and this would run straight through their devotion. These typically show all the signs of religious fervor because they chose their god, but are desperate to see it as God choosing them.
posted by Brian B. at 4:40 PM on March 23, 2011

I've heard terrorism blamed on sexual frustration in a few places. A religious studies teacher pointed out that a fear of lack of meaning is greater than a fear of death. They're all factors, I think. I was a pretty angry, confused adolescent but I had nothing to channel my rage into so it ended up pretty harmless.
my go-to explanation for this stuff is Terror Management Theory - it's all motivated, by some degree, to fear of death. But the youth idea makes so much sense to me.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:46 PM on March 23, 2011

See also Louise Richardson's What Terrorists Want. She comes to much the same conclusion as Atran.
posted by asterix at 4:49 PM on March 23, 2011

So it's basically The Sex Pistols, but with explosives?
posted by GuyZero at 4:57 PM on March 23, 2011

So it's basically The Sex Pistols, but with explosives?


You're not that far.
posted by KaizenSoze at 5:07 PM on March 23, 2011

A religious studies teacher pointed out that a fear of lack of meaning is greater than a fear of death.

Religious people/scholars say things to the effect that "we need meaning" etc quite frequently, and I don't get it. I never needed it, and when I came to the realization that you can create your own meaning it was a relief to discover that 99% of the time the conclusions you reach are more or less in line with the core values of humanity.
posted by Hoopo at 5:08 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

The awful culture young men and women are forced to endure and which makes suicide a tempting choice is very much the product of the extreme religiosity of those societies. Yes, religion is certainly still to blame. Ignoring what creates these social dynamics is being purposely disingenuous. Atran's axe grinding is far, far from convincing and only legitimizes extreme religiosity and those who believe it to be the only moral path for society.

I also am greatly skeptical of Atran's claims that these terrorists see religion as "poetic metaphors." Devotion to religion is a prerequisite to suicide bombing. Unfortunately, prominent western academics justifying hateful third-world societies is nothing new and yet another case of white males doing their best to bring back the "noble savage" sentiment with a dash of the old religious apologetics.

Atran is now the posterboy for all the corn-fed religious types who can't ever see anything wrong with their "gentle faith" and how they are so glad there's this nice man to say bad things about those awful, awful atheists. Sorry religious types, if we remove religion from the earth, we cross off one thing off the list of things to kill people over and feel justified in doing so. On that long list religion is in the top 3. The idea that suicide bombing, beheadings, genital mutilation, institutional homophobia, etc would occur in the same frequencies without religion is so foolish I don't know where to begin. The idea that pagans would be doing it in same frequency is also flawed. Some religions, in practice, are much, much worse than others. The externalities matter, but in the end, its easier to get justification for horrible acts in some religions than others, especially in religions that openly advocate murdering and punishing unbelievers.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:11 PM on March 23, 2011

So it's basically The Sex Pistols, but with explosives?

[OFF TOPIC]
there was a Micheal Moorcock tie-in novella to 'The Great Rock and Roll Swindle' that did feature the Sex Pistols bombing London from a blimp
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:13 PM on March 23, 2011

Sorry religious types, if we remove religion from the earth, we cross off one thing off the list of things to kill people over and feel justified in doing so.

I'm not religious, but the feelings of anger and frustration would get channeled into hatred at pop music, dance music, mainstream society... basically anything I could use as an excuse for how I felt the way I felt. If I grew up in a religious society I'd use that organizing metaphor but if you took it away the feelings would still be there.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:14 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

For instance, according to his research, participation in soccer is a stronger indicator than attending a madrasah for identifying potential suicide bombers.

Slight problem here. If the soccer bombers are converts, or otherwise reborn, they would have much more to prove, and this would run straight through their devotion. These typically show all the signs of religious fervor because they chose their god, but are desperate to see it as God choosing them.


Good point, but the thing they are re-born into is not necessarily religious based. Tamil Tigers, which pretty much invented modern suicide bombing, were a nationalistic, not religious, group. I think Atran's point is that we are over focusing on the religion instead of the youth culture and group dynamics. Most suicide bombers are educated, engineering and science, in particular, upper-middle class people in their societies, looking for meaning, a cause.
posted by KaizenSoze at 5:15 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Not to mention, the belief of an afterlife (Muslims) or reincarnation (Tamils) empowers warriors. I imagine its such a powerful meme because humans are are such a warring species that it makes sense to me that natural selection would favor those who are born with some kind of religious gene, as a warring tribe does a better job of aquiring resources and making babies than some non-expanding pacifist tribe.

If we take away this harmful belief via atheism, then warriors will need to think twice about throwing their lives away to a cause. I can't see how thinking twice about conflict could ever be a bad thing.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:19 PM on March 23, 2011

Memes, if there was ever a science fad without ever a shred of research to back it up...

Atheistic culture like communist Russian and China did not stop them from engaging in several wars and kill a great deal of people. If anything, those societies kill more of their own people than any other in the 20th century.
posted by KaizenSoze at 5:27 PM on March 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

If anything, those societies kill more of their own people than any other in the 20th century.

Straw man is strawy.
posted by Aquaman at 5:28 PM on March 23, 2011

I'm not religious, but the feelings of anger and frustration would get channeled into hatred at pop music, dance music, mainstream society\

I find it very hard to believe that these items would necessarily lead to mass murder when they don't have murder justification built into their art/literature like religion does. Its one thing for an angry and angsty person to express himself in this manner and another thing to have a religion that is ready to accept and use his or her anger for its own ends along with the tempting promise of an afterlife. As well as cynically scouting for loners at religious events to perform murder for them via coerction and justication via religion-based social norms and scripture. Somewhere in this process there is an enabler to the suicide bombing. I'm skeptical that a dance troupe would have this such enabler and be motivated to constantly throw away human life without a deep spiritual connection to hateful ancient texts.

Atheistic culture like communist Russian and China

This shitty strawman? For real? If you believe this then its understandable that you find Atran so convincing that you need to make an FPP about him. Soviet and communistic systems as well the politican forces at play there have nothing to do with atheist or secular philosophies and have everything to do with collapsing the church as a power structure as an attempt to assert complete social control. I can't think of any conflict that had atheism as its major justification, yet we have countless examples of religion as justification for several conflicts.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:32 PM on March 23, 2011

If anything, those societies kill more of their own people than any other in the 20th century.

Straw man is strawy.


He implied that atheism would reduce violence and possible wars. China and Russian which were atheistic, were very violent and war-like. I don't see the straw man here.

Quite willing to say I'm wrong, but I would like more details.
posted by KaizenSoze at 5:32 PM on March 23, 2011

So wait...whats popularly known in the US as "gangs" comes in benetton colors?

Wow.
posted by hal_c_on at 5:40 PM on March 23, 2011

Quite willing to say I'm wrong, but I would like more details.

Western nations with the least religiosity (via & of non-religious people and self-reporting on how important religion is to daily life) like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, etc have low crime rates, don't often engage in warfare, have excellent human rights records, etc compared to nations with high religiosity and low % of non-religious people. Its pretty obvious that non-religious societies have it much better than their counterparts.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:42 PM on March 23, 2011

The new thing in this centuries old struggle between faith and reason is the internet. I've seen more progress made in the fight against the scourge of faith* in the last 10 years than I'd ever dared to hope to see.

*I define the exercise of "faith" to be the deliberate attempt to be more certain of something than is warranted by the available evidence, which despite the protestations of the faithful, seems to me to be what it is. To me, faith is quite obviously just about the most stupid activity that has ever been conceived in the entire history of mankind. For foisting the concept of faith upon humanity alone religion deserves humiliation and extinction.
posted by smcameron at 5:48 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

So it's basically The Sex Pistols, but with explosives?

Well, why hasn't Johnny Rotten blown up Canary Wharf yet? I think its obvious that the punk ethos does not have the justifications and motivations for mass murder like religion does. Equating religious violence to punk or gangs is really missing the point. Religion, especially Christianity and Islam, justify violence against non-believers and the sinful.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:54 PM on March 23, 2011

I find it very hard to believe that these items would necessarily lead to mass murder when they don't have murder justification built into their art/literature like religion does. Its one thing for an angry and angsty person to express himself in this manner and another thing to have a religion that is ready to accept and use his or her anger for its own ends along with the tempting promise of an afterlife.

well, yeah. religion channels it, and if you remove religion you remove a major cause of violence. but sometimes people do just go on rampages without any religious motivation and its pretty easy for charismatic figures to channel people into violence with any justification
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:54 PM on March 23, 2011

Quite willing to say I'm wrong, but I would like more details.

Western nations with the least religiosity (via & of non-religious people and self-reporting on how important religion is to daily life) like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, etc have low crime rates, don't often engage in warfare, have excellent human rights records, etc compared to nations with high religiosity and low % of non-religious people. Its pretty obvious that non-religious societies have it much better than their counterparts.


How exact are Soviet Russian and China not atheistic?

How do they not have lower life expectancy than European countries? How have they not killed millions of their own people?

Maybe the religiosity of country isn't that important. Maybe the wealth of country has more to do with the religiosity, not the reverse.

I think Atran's point is that over focusing on the religion, misses the underlying causes.

Using religion as the single cause of a complex issue is not useful, probably not even right. Complex problems do not have single causes.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:17 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

For instance, according to his research, participation in soccer is a stronger indicator than attending a madrasah for identifying potential suicide bombers.

As damn dirty ape pointed out above, the elephant in the room here is religion's effect on society, not just the individual.

Given the way statistics work, I'd be willing to bet that some equally ordinary thing (as an entirely made-up but conveniently parallel example, let's say participation in football) might be a stronger indicator than attending a fundamentalist church for identifying homophobes in the US... but even if so, that doesn't mean football has more to do with the causes of institutional and societal homophobia than fundamentalism does.
posted by vorfeed at 6:26 PM on March 23, 2011

Well, why hasn't Johnny Rotten blown up Canary Wharf yet? I think its obvious that the punk ethos does not have the justifications and motivations for mass murder like religion does. Equating religious violence to punk or gangs is really missing the point. Religion, especially Christianity and Islam, justify violence against non-believers and the sinful.

Because he's old and not that involved anymore? There's been violence at punk shows. The lead singer of Screeching Weasel just lost his band for punching a woman in the face, and I'm sure there have been many mosh pits that got out of hand.

Punk's a healthier channeling of aggression than religion is, sure.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:27 PM on March 23, 2011

For instance, according to his research, participation in soccer is a stronger indicator than attending a madrasah for identifying potential suicide bombers.

As damn dirty ape pointed out above, the elephant in the room here is religion's effect on society, not just the individual.

Given the way statistics work, I'd be willing to bet that some equally ordinary thing (as an entirely made-up but conveniently parallel example, let's say participation in football) might be a stronger indicator than attending a fundamentalist church for identifying homophobes in the US... but even if so, that doesn't mean football has more to do with the causes of institutional and societal homophobia than fundamentalism does.


I have to go back to China or Russian, or even 19th anarchist terrorists. Non religious nations and movements, which engaged in violence very similar to religious nations and movements.

I think fixating on religion is the not right way to approach the terrorism problem, focus on the underlying grievances and perceptions of injustice. I'm not saying that less religiosity is bad, I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying don't fixate on a single cause, when the problem is complex.

Now, to concede a point to Ape, those European countries he mentioned do have greater religious freedom of expression than China and Russian. Maybe the requirement for a peaceful world is religious plurality.

FYI, I'm not religious.
posted by KaizenSoze at 6:45 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Western nations with the least religiosity (via & of non-religious people and self-reporting on how important religion is to daily life) like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, etc have low crime rates, don't often engage in warfare, have excellent human rights records, etc compared to nations with high religiosity and low % of non-religious people.

That's interesting. What are the suicide rates like in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, et al?

I wonder because to me there are several factors here:

disenfranchised youth (well, honestly, mostly young men);
who feel despondent (suicidal);
and find a group to which they can belong (a cult, or a soccer team?);
yet still have no desire to live in this world (have been convinced that they will find acceptance in some version of heaven, or be reincarnated into something better);
with the added component of wanting to take others with them (different religious group, different race, different political party), in the belief their death has meaning (making a statement, a religious calling, etc).
posted by misha at 7:25 PM on March 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's interesting. What are the suicide rates like in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, et al?
pretty high among teenagers in Australia

that religion teacher said 'people fear lack of meaning more than they fear death'. I'm not sure what I'd do if somebody could make all my existential doubts go away
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:36 PM on March 23, 2011

Western nations with the least religiosity (via & of non-religious people and self-reporting on how important religion is to daily life) like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, etc have low crime rates, don't often engage in warfare, have excellent human rights records, etc compared to nations with high religiosity and low % of non-religious people. Its pretty obvious that non-religious societies have it much better than their counterparts.

Woah there, back that truck up, mister. Guess what, those countries have a shit load of other things in common, too. Literacy rates, mortality rates, per capita income, percentage of McDonalds restaurants - whose to say those aren't the differences? You can't just cherry pick the two metrics that happen to support your point and ignore everything else.

Ironic, that you're so opposed to Atran, when you're committing exactly the statistical errors he's criticising.
posted by smoke at 7:46 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Soviet and communistic systems as well the politican forces at play there have nothing to do with atheist or secular philosophies and have everything to do with collapsing the church as a power structure as an attempt to assert complete social control.

While it's true that the ideology of those states can not be reduced to atheism alone, it nevertheless was absolutely a fundamental part of their foundational principles. Marxism-Leninism- the guiding ideology of the Soviet Union and all the states that followed in its footsteps- was an attempt to put the ideas of Marx into practice, and Marx saw the end of religion as a necessary step in achieving the communist utopia that would be the end stage of history. Accordingly, the Soviet government (at least in its early, ideologically driven days) viewed the elimination of religion as one of its long term goals, and as something necessary to establish true communism. The position of atheism in the Soviet Union might be compared to that of Catholicism in Franco's Spain- though it wasn't the be-all and end-all of the official ideology, it was nevertheless the officially sanctioned and supported outlook, and considered one of the fundamental parts of the whole thing. The early Soviet government made a very active attempt to spread atheism through groups like the Society of the Godless, and though they never outright banned religion for fear of the resulting backlash, to be openly religious in the Soviet Union (regardless of the religion- they targeted every sort of religion, not just the Orthodox Church) was something that made one's life more difficult in various ways, just as not being Catholic under Franco did.

Unless one believes that the whole thing was a completely cynical power-grab from the beginning and that Lenin and his cronies didn't actually believe a word of what they claimed to (and I think that position is pretty hard to support), the Soviet Union most certainly did have something to do with a secular, atheist (indeed, anti-theist) philosophy. Now, all this does not mean in any sense that the Soviet Union's atheism was the specific thing that made it the repressive human rights nightmare that it was. I know some people make that argument, but it's not the one I'm making- that argument is completely and obviously false and insulting. What the Soviet Union's outlook on religion does demonstrate, though, is that a great many bad things which are frequently attributed to religion can indeed happen without the presence of religion, and that a secular state is not automatically a nicer one by virtue of being secular.

On the subject of Atran's argument, it's always seemed pretty convincing to me, and I think it's more than a bit ironic that people can be so rah-rah about science and then completely dismiss what a scientist who has thoroughly studied the matter says about it when they don't like his conclusions, along with various dire and unsupported warnings about the dangers of making the argument he does. (i.e. that he's legitimizing religious extremism.) To me, that seems way more like the kind of thinking that religion is accused of fostering than it does scientific rationalism. (Granted that all this is in the domain of soft science rather than hard science, but still, I'm not seeing any cites or any sort of scientific backing for the counter-Atran arguments here.) When it comes to suicide bombing, the Tamil Tigers who pioneered the tactic were a secular organization, and from all I've read about them they did not motivate their suicide bombers with the promise of a good rebirth, but with an appeal to nationalism and the glories of martyrdom for the cause. And then you have the case of Japanese kamikaze pilots, who, though you can argue that they were motivated by a quasi-religious belief system, did not expect that there would be some sort of post-mortem reward for their deeds, from all I've read. To say that "devotion to religion is a prerequisite to suicide bombing" seems to me to be provably false- certainly it doesn't seem to require belief in a post-mortem reward. Atran's argument, in this light, looks all the stronger.
posted by a louis wain cat at 7:59 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the "religion causes terrorism" argument falls apart on a number of fronts. First, it's a needle in a haystack issue where you have billions of devout but only a small number of terrorists. Second, it ignores the fact that mostly secular nations at war are not above making heroes of soldiers engaged in suicidal acts, or of tacitly encouraging atrocities.

The last problem is that it's a historically flawed premise based on current ideological readings of a specific current form of terrorism. To add more alternate data points, Bloody Kansas, KKK lynchings, South American death squads, dissappearing citizens under toltalitarian governments, and gang violence are a bit harder to explain in terms of religious ideologies.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:19 PM on March 23, 2011

I disagree to quite some extent with Atran. Comparing Tamil Tigers to Islamic terrorism is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Many religions are inherently proselytizing, with the belief that getting others to accept one's religion is the sacred duty of all individuals.

The misguided Islam preached in many countries goes a step further - anyone not following it is an "infidel" and therefore can be warred upon. Combined with economic-social-political reasons (right from the Crusades onwards), it makes for a very volatile combination.

Brainwashed from childhood that strict observance of religion is the only way of life, the youth are taught that Western values are immoral. As we continue to intervene in their politics, their economy and try to impose our values, their religious belief system is threatened. When religion further exhorts them to fight "holy wars" against "religious infidels", the cycle is completed and the modern terrorist is born.

I am probably rambling, but my opinion is that religion is the value system around which life revolves for them. When political and economic factors put additional pressure, the pipe bursts through the "channel" of religion.

Does this make sense?
posted by theobserver at 8:24 PM on March 23, 2011

Maybe the requirement for a peaceful world is religious plurality.

Those countries have the highest percentage of non-believers. Those countries all have a secular tradition, something that Islamic nations lack because its considered apostasy to be anything but Islamic. These societies never had a Western style enlightenment. Again, religious defenders refuse to acknowledge that its the effect of religion on society that's part of this equation. Those young Islamic men might not be so prone to killing people if they could drink, fuck, get high, change religions, etc which is why we don't see the equivalent in the west eg Johnny Rotten blowing up London. Ignoring the effect Islam's strict codes has on people is being foolish.

As far as China being atheist, well, between the believers in Chinese Traditional Religion/Taoism/Folk Religion/Shenism, Buddhism, etc you're really not talking about an atheistic society at all, regardless of the propaganda you believe from the Chinese authorities. Russians are at least 70% Russian Orthodox and were even during the Soviet Union. The Red Army and the party was full of religious types and per usual, they just wern't free to openly proclaim it.

The lead singer of Screeching Weasel just lost his band for punching a woman in the face

Punched a woman! Seriously? Don't make false equivalents. We're talking suicide bombing not bar room brawls.

Again, Atran and his gang keep ignoring the effect on religion on society and hope to backdoor their argument through purposely limiting their argument on the individual level. Its incredibly dishonest and unconvincing. The old "but but soviet union and china and religion isn't so bad if we ignore a lot of things" chorus is thoroughly and incredibly unconvincing as usual. Every so often it gets repackaged and sold to a new brand of sucker.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:34 PM on March 23, 2011

Literacy rates, mortality rates, per capita income, percentage of McDonalds restaurants - whose to say those aren't the differences?

Those things don't happen under strict sharia law and under the umbrella of theocracy. Again, don't ignore the elephant in the room - religion's effect on society. A lot of these gains are directly related to secularism and western enlightenment.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:36 PM on March 23, 2011

A lot of these gains are directly related to secularism and western enlightenment.

So prove it.
posted by smoke at 8:50 PM on March 23, 2011

So it's basically The Sex Pistols, but with explosives?

Judas Priest with explosives, surely?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:31 AM on March 24, 2011

As far as China being atheist, well, between the believers in Chinese Traditional Religion/Taoism/Folk Religion/Shenism, Buddhism, etc you're really not talking about an atheistic society at all, regardless of the propaganda you believe from the Chinese authorities. Russians are at least 70% Russian Orthodox and were even during the Soviet Union. The Red Army and the party was full of religious types and per usual, they just wern't free to openly proclaim it.


This in particular sounds like the no true scotsman argument.

How we to determine what is an atheistic society?

Denmark, which you use an example still has an official state religion, China does not.

I personally think nationalism is more dangerous than religion.


Ignoring the effect Islam's strict codes has on people is being foolish.


Thinking Islam is a monolithic block, where all nations practice the same way is foolish.
posted by KaizenSoze at 2:32 AM on March 24, 2011

Judas Priest with explosives, surely?

Well, now we get into a homo-erotic subtext which the author of the linked paper didn't seem to mention, so no.
posted by GuyZero at 8:58 AM on March 24, 2011

His research disputes the assertion that terrorists are primarily driven by religious belief, but instead youth culture and group dynamics.

Indeed. But, put another way, isn't religion itself an expression of group dynamics? (If not, you know, God.) It's all part of a contiguous and intractable system.
posted by bicyclefish at 9:28 AM on March 24, 2011

Thinking Islam is a monolithic block, where all nations practice the same way is foolish.

Islam lends itself to theocratic power on the national level, therefore it is nationalistic. Absolute power derives from claims of purity or legitimacy, and spiritual purity tends to be the most dangerous to because it condemns people at the local level based on bad laws, rather than racial lies or dogmatic reasoning.

Sadly, history tends to forget the people condemned for their sins.
posted by Brian B. at 7:35 PM on March 24, 2011

Religious belief is very often the expression of the group dynamics, so they're not separable in such a binary way. Yes, many are involved because of the community, but just as that community finds expression in attacks against infidels and bus stations, it finds definition in a distinctly personal, closed owned religiosity.

The best test, in my own experience, is to judge how inclusive the "organization" is. There will be outsiders to everything, but does your group/religion/soccer team define itself as something, or primarily (though secretly) in opposition to something else? When you define yourself by your enemies, well, then you've got enemies.
posted by TheLastPsychiatrist at 4:36 AM on March 25, 2011

There is a lot of insanity on this thread, but I have a more banal question: is the sound really low on the Atran video for everyone else? I can barely hear what he's saying. Is this just me and my speakers? Is there a better clip?
posted by johnasdf at 10:09 AM on March 25, 2011