These days whenever my phone beeps with a new message from one of the different news websites I follow, my heart skips a beat and I pray that it is not about some terrorist attack in any part of the world.
Unfortunately, most of the time it is news about some deranged individual blowing himself up or taking innocent hostages, sometimes far away in the United States, or in France and sometimes a few blocks away in my city or in one of the dearest cities to all Muslims around the world, Madinah.
I fail to understand as to how could a person renounce everything he own and decide to leave this world in the worst manner possible.
The world, including our beloved country, is at war with terrorism. I feel that we also need to understand the psychological and social factors that force an individual to carry out suicide missions. It is necessary to study this phenomenon to effectively fight terrorism. We need to understand the mentality that turns a person into a walking death machine.
Labeling these individuals as crazy or psychopaths could not be further from the truth. Psychologists who have studied terrorist groups have found that terrorists tend to be stable individuals, not paranoid or delusional. “What seems to make terrorists essentially different from others is their ability to “switch off” their sense of empathy in service to their beliefs and goals,” wrote Dr. Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer of psychology at Leeds Beckett University.
For human beings, feeling empathy toward other beings like animals, plants and nature in general let alone toward their fellow human beings, is one of the things that makes us human in the first place. By nature we want to help others, to alleviate their pain, and to respond to their sufferings. “To become a terrorist means disengaging this natural empathy, so that a person can treat certain other human beings, the members of the groups he feels he is fighting against, as objects, and kill them without remorse,” continued Dr. Taylor.
Social psychologists Stephen D. Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam confirmed the same findings that most terrorists are not psychopaths or sadists, much as we would like to believe. Instead the majority of them are ordinary people, shaped by group dynamics to do harm in the name of a cause they find noble and just, as published by the Scientific American.
The problem then starts to form when a normal individual finds nothing but extremism to identify with, to form a bonding with its ideas and beliefs that are based on conspiracy, lies, and hatred toward those who do not agree with his or her views. That is beside false promises of supremacy, power and the highest level in paradise.
“Terrorists use a number of techniques to (disengage empathy). They dehumanize members of other groups, seeing them as a collective rather than individuals, and viewing each member of the group as responsible for the crimes of others. Morality is withdrawn from the other groups, and their suffering is minimized. The terrorists’ behavior is “neutralized” with the belief that the magnitude of their cause makes individual acts of brutality necessary and insignificant,” wrote Dr. Taylor.
Growing up with an open mind toward those who are different, showing respect to different groups of faith and mindsets, and emphasizing on a culture of empathy and support toward others could be the first line of defense against terrorism. It starts at homes, schools and mosques.
Unfortunately, most of the time it is news about some deranged individual blowing himself up or taking innocent hostages, sometimes far away in the United States, or in France and sometimes a few blocks away in my city or in one of the dearest cities to all Muslims around the world, Madinah.
I fail to understand as to how could a person renounce everything he own and decide to leave this world in the worst manner possible.
The world, including our beloved country, is at war with terrorism. I feel that we also need to understand the psychological and social factors that force an individual to carry out suicide missions. It is necessary to study this phenomenon to effectively fight terrorism. We need to understand the mentality that turns a person into a walking death machine.
Labeling these individuals as crazy or psychopaths could not be further from the truth. Psychologists who have studied terrorist groups have found that terrorists tend to be stable individuals, not paranoid or delusional. “What seems to make terrorists essentially different from others is their ability to “switch off” their sense of empathy in service to their beliefs and goals,” wrote Dr. Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer of psychology at Leeds Beckett University.
For human beings, feeling empathy toward other beings like animals, plants and nature in general let alone toward their fellow human beings, is one of the things that makes us human in the first place. By nature we want to help others, to alleviate their pain, and to respond to their sufferings. “To become a terrorist means disengaging this natural empathy, so that a person can treat certain other human beings, the members of the groups he feels he is fighting against, as objects, and kill them without remorse,” continued Dr. Taylor.
Social psychologists Stephen D. Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam confirmed the same findings that most terrorists are not psychopaths or sadists, much as we would like to believe. Instead the majority of them are ordinary people, shaped by group dynamics to do harm in the name of a cause they find noble and just, as published by the Scientific American.
The problem then starts to form when a normal individual finds nothing but extremism to identify with, to form a bonding with its ideas and beliefs that are based on conspiracy, lies, and hatred toward those who do not agree with his or her views. That is beside false promises of supremacy, power and the highest level in paradise.
“Terrorists use a number of techniques to (disengage empathy). They dehumanize members of other groups, seeing them as a collective rather than individuals, and viewing each member of the group as responsible for the crimes of others. Morality is withdrawn from the other groups, and their suffering is minimized. The terrorists’ behavior is “neutralized” with the belief that the magnitude of their cause makes individual acts of brutality necessary and insignificant,” wrote Dr. Taylor.
Growing up with an open mind toward those who are different, showing respect to different groups of faith and mindsets, and emphasizing on a culture of empathy and support toward others could be the first line of defense against terrorism. It starts at homes, schools and mosques.
