The following is a segment from a paper I wrote last Fall about defining, rationalizing, and codifying the “Other” in the context of terrorist organizations:

Terrorism has emerged as one of the major focal points of foreign policy in the United States.  Since the tragic events on September 11, 2001, American intelligence and security agencies have increased their resources to attempt to stop terrorist attacks before they happen.  This policy goal has often resulted in heavy-handed tactics that are often ineffective.  One reason why policies towards terrorists are ineffective is because we do not yet understand why someone would become a terrorist.  It is hard to explain why someone would commit such atrocious actions against innocent communities.  There are many factors that can help explain the reason for participating in a terrorist organization, however I have chosen to focus on the process of rationalization that terrorists pursue in order to justify their attacks.  I argue that by understanding how terrorists justify their actions, we can better understand why someone would be willing to commit terrorist attacks, which will help us create more effective policy to fight terrorists.

In most instances of terrorist attacks, the first step to committing the atrocity is to create an “other” out of the people who will be harmed.  Throughout history, it has been clear that “it is difficult to belittle and kill a person whom one knows and for whom one has no personal antipathy.”[1] Therefore, societies that focus on an “us” versus “them” mentality, as extremist organizations tend to do, demonize the “other” as a “faceless collective enemy” to make it easier for their members to carry out attacks against ordinary people.[2]  It is much harder to kill someone who you can relate to, while it is much easier to justify murder when it is done to general enemy.[3]  The dichotomy between “we” and “they” has existed throughout history and within this dichotomy the further away the “they” can be from the “we,” the greater the ease in which the “other” is destroyed.[4]  In this paper, I will focus on how Islamist terrorist groups define the “otherness” of their targets and how they rationalize and codify this demonization of their victims.

I will first discuss how terrorist organizations define the other, and how some organizations differ in their consideration of who is unworthy to live.  Then I will discuss the rationalization of the other, including the ideology that is used to justify their definition of the other, where the need for creating an “other” comes from, and how organizations have codified their definitions.  Finally, I will discuss implications of demonizing the other, and how we can use this knowledge to counter terrorist tactics.

Defining the Other

The definition of the “other” according to Islamist terrorist groups has changed over the last few decades.  Some of the first modern dialogue that began to distinguish between “true” Islam and how it has been corrupted in the modern age focused on reviving traditional values in the face of communism.[5]  In fact, the first years of Al-Qaeda were spent with a mission to expressly fight communism.[6]  The United States actually encouraged these groups as they were fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which helped the American cause.  However, rather than centering their ideology around fighting the Soviets, the Islamist focus was primarily a reaction to materialism, which both communism and capitalism embrace as a key tenet of their philosophies.[7]  When the threat of communism had disappeared, the only materialist threat that Islamist groups saw in competition to the spirituality of Islam was capitalism, which was tied to America and their colonizing influences.[8]  For this reason, Al-Qaeda and other similar groups turned their attention to alienizing Western influences, specifically American influences, and defined anyone who was colluding with the West as “other.”

Today’s most influential group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) has a different definition of targets.  While they share Al-Qaeda’s disdain for American influence in the Middle East, they focus their definition of the “other” on one’s religious practices.  ISIS has a very narrow interpretation of Islam, and anyone who does not behave in accordance to their definition becomes an “other” whose life needs to be sacrificed in the name of recreating the Islamic Caliphate.  With this belief system, ISIS has expanded the “other” to include other Muslims who do not live up to ISIS’s standard of purity.[9]

The danger in defining the “other” is because it provides a narrow definition of who belongs in the group and who does not.  In her discussion of ideology that leads to acts of terror within totalitarian states, Hannah Arendt explains how the logic of an idea can take precedent over the idea itself.[10]  Once the line between “us” and “them” is drawn, the logic behind implementing that idea into practice can turn the idea into a target to kill because they are not in the group.  Once the group of the “other” has been defined as a target for killing, the action of killing them is easier because there is no expectation that the other deserves to live.

For example, Al-Qaeda focused their attacks on Westerners, but attacks against other Muslims were taboo.[11]  This applied to Sunni Muslims, the sect that Al-Qaeda members belong to, as well as Shi’a Muslims, who are often considered heretics who do not follow the true path of Islam according to Sunni Muslims.  In the definition of “other” according to Al-Qaeda, Shi’a Muslims were “forgiven because of their ignorance” so they still humanized and therefore were not targeted in attacks.[12]  In contrast, ISIS defined Shi’a Muslims as apostates, who are worse than heretics because apostates have renounced the true word of God.[13]  As apostates, the Shi’a became part of the “other” that can be killed without blame to the perpetrators.[14]  The strength of defining the “other” can have life or death consequences.

 

[1] Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003) 173.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. 173

[4] Ibid.

[5] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11, (New York: Penguin

Random House, 2006) 17.

[6] Ibid. 150.

[7] Wright, The Looming Tower, 17.

[8] Ibid. 150.

[9] William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015).

[10] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Cleveland: First Meridian, 1951) 471.

[11] McCants, ISIS Apocalypse, 34.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.