Similarities and Differences Between Terrorism and Cults
Similarities and Differences between Terrorism and Heterodox Teachings [1]
Definitions of Terror and Cultic Worship
To understand terrorists and cult followers, one must first establish appropriate definitions for both. The legal definition of terrorist organizations used by the United States is somewhat unsatisfactory, as it suggests terrorists are fundamentally personnel who commit terrorist crimes. The European Union's definition is more helpful: "A terrorist group is a 'structured organization of more than two persons... established over a period of time and acting in concert to commit terrorist offenses,' which include murder, kidnapping, destruction of public property, and urban violence, with the aim of intimidating or seriously altering or destroying the political, economic, and social structures of a country" (BBC News, September 20, 2001).
North American and Western European definitions of cults [2] describe them as: An organization or movement that exhibits excessive devotion to a person, idea, or thing and employs unethical manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g., isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressure, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency upon the group, and fear of leaving it, etc.) to advance the goals of the leader, to the actual or potential detriment of members, their families, and the community. (West and Langone, 1986).
One immediately notices that a cultic organization can be a terrorist organization, and a terrorist organization can also be a cultic organization. However, the distinction lies in the difference of tactical focus: one is extroverted, focusing on what the organization does to non-members; the other is introverted, focusing on what the organization does to its own members. Terrorist organizations may employ cultic practices, but their goal is to achieve political change rather than simply increasing their own size and wealth. In practice, many terrorist organizations prefer to maintain a low profile, carefully selecting members based on their reliability and utility toward organizational goals.
Cultic or heterodox organizations may also desire to transform society, and may occasionally use terrorist means to achieve their goals, as did Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo. However, the primary aim of a cult is self-preservation and member expansion. Anyone who can ultimately accept cultic control and absolute loyalty to the organization can be recruited. Thus, Aum Shinrikyo can be defined as a heterodox organization that used terrorist methods, while Peru’s "Shining Path" is considered a terrorist organization led by a cult-like figure. Most terrorist organizations do not have cult-like leaders, as such a structure is very fragile and prone to rapid collapse. For example, because the personality cult surrounding Abimael Guzmán was so extreme, the entire Shining Path movement moved rapidly toward failure after his arrest. Non-terrorist political groups can also develop into large-scale cultic organizations. Tourish and Wohlforth suggest that political cults generally possess rigid belief systems and immutable ideologies. Within political cults, there are elite figures who hold authority, are exempt from organizational rules, and exploit lower-level members for personal gain. Such organizations also treat a living or deceased person as an icon of absolute wisdom. In a strict sense, religious cults share these characteristics. In this regard, religious cults and political cults are very similar; both may prophesy the coming of an apocalypse. Such extreme views convince followers that, in the face of imminent doom, they must take extreme actions to save humanity.
Similar Recruitment Methods of Terror and Cults
When recruiting personnel, Islamic terrorist organizations exhibit certain cultic characteristics. Like cultic organizations, terrorist groups focus their recruitment on young people in their teens and twenties. However, recruitment methods vary according to the specific organization. Many recruits come from Arab countries, where they witness social corruption and feel despair about the future. Many have visited or even settled in the West, where they despise Western materialism and sexual permissiveness. They believe that secularism corrupts life, whereas Islam emphasizes virtue and harmony.
Published profiles of Al-Qaeda members indicate they are typically young people seeking high moral standards and a society of fairness, justice, and piety. Traditional social concepts of success do not motivate them; instead, they want to reshape society and themselves, rejecting Western lifestyles in favor of wearing the uniform dress of believers, growing beards, and wearing traditional attire. "We must follow proper Islamic dress requirements, as this is the way to revive Islam and end the influence of the infidels." Al-Qaeda seeks out like-minded individuals to absorb as extremist Islamic believers. Simultaneously, Al-Qaeda members shun their families and the broader society, believing "we" are absolutely different from "them," who are filled with evil. Taliban representatives and Al-Qaeda monitor Islamic society, seeking these pious individuals to train them to fight for the Islamic nation and sacrifice their lives when necessary.
A second type of recruit consists of individuals marginalized by Western society. Islamists offer these people comfort and support. These are typically Europeans, often from immigrant families, struggling at the bottom of society. Many have criminal records and have been imprisoned. These personnel may be secular Muslims or new converts with extreme worldviews. Islamists actively search for and cultivate them. Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French prosecutor and expert on terrorist organizations, explains: (The recruits) have no jobs. They lack information and have no hope for the future. One day, they meet an interesting fellow who knows a lot about Islam. (The recruiter) says to them, "I can offer you something; I can give you a mission for your future." They explain Islam, give a global meaning to their lives, teach them skills, and then say, "In the future, you will achieve a goal for us." For Al-Qaeda, some European countries became focal points for specific activities, such as forgery (Spain and Belgium), deployment to Afghanistan (the UK), operational bases (France), and credit card fraud (Spain).
The third category comes from South Asia, consisting of locals who are often deceived by lies. Some foreign recruits captured by NATO forces actually believed they were going there to fight the Chinese, Russians, or Indians.
The final category comes from Islamist families or institutions where they are raised to participate in Jihad. Large numbers of volunteers grew up in extremist schools, such as those supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It appears common for parents to let their children participate in Jihad and accept a fate of death. One Islamist mother stated: "In the name of God, I am willing to sacrifice my son, even if he is my most beloved. As for my six sons, I hope they join the Islamic Mujahideen; even if they are sacrificed, it does not matter."
We should note with alarm that Islamists are actively seeking support within the United States. In 1999, the respected Islamic scholar Hisham Kabbani said that 80% of mosques and charitable organizations in the United States were controlled by extremists and posed a threat to national security. Islamist propaganda is ubiquitous. Almost all the Islamic literature cited in this article can be found either online or in Muslim restaurants within three miles of the author’s home.
Terrorist Training and Control
Before the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda had very safe havens to train recruits. Once selected, recruits were trained in small cells or sent to Afghanistan for full military training. Military training included urban warfare, demolitions, and even training in weapons of mass destruction. Training lasted four to six weeks. Trainees piously accepted teachings on sacrificing oneself for the Islamic nation. Personal needs and individual consciousness were suppressed. Trainees were taught to kill infidels.
Those young people understand that the reward for fighting you Americans will be twice that of fighting others. They want nothing more than to kill you and enter paradise. Infidels like you, enemies of God like you, cannot reside in the same hell as the executors of justice (Bin Laden, 1996).
Recruits are divided into groups: those who are poor and less educated become Taliban infantry soldiers, while those who are educated and more sophisticated become Al-Qaeda members. These individuals understand the enemy, understand the outside world, and are capable of becoming part of non-Islamic societies or planning and leading military operations, such as the mass killings of 9/11. Organization members receive traditional intelligence and "game-of-war" training, such as codes, intelligence drops, security, and forgery.
Captured terrorist manuals corroborate various media reports that, even in the midst of a battlefield, terrorists are organized into tiny units, isolated from society, obtaining extra funds through petty theft, and using inflammatory rallies and propaganda videos to inspire morale. Like other elite military units, members remain loyal to their squad or operational cell to minimize dissent. Limited language skills and a lack of free time further alienate them from the society being targeted. However, for many Al-Qaeda members who spent long periods in the West, the sense of alienation in their hearts is purely a product of fanaticism. For instance, one journalist noted that a Saudi soldier wounded in a Pakistani hospital could speak New York slang very fluently.
The Personality Cult of Al-Qaeda
As Islamists, the views of Al-Qaeda members, though extreme, are essentially accepted and celebrated within Islamic society. They distance themselves from corrupt materialist society and Western social structures. They are taught to hate non-Muslims and those who betray Muslims. They believe the answer to all problems lies in the total acceptance of the Quran as a divinely mandated code of conduct and the creation of a righteous society.
Rather than calling Bin Laden a cult leader, it is more accurate to say he is a pious Muslim. He abandoned wealth and comfort to fight the atheist Soviets for the sake of Islam. His incremental victories demonstrated that Islam is not in decline, and that through selfless decision-making, trust in Allah, and the conduct of war, a powerful nation can be defeated. He captured the Muslim imagination, causing fighters to come to his side to fight and die to realize his ideals. Many Muslims view Bin Laden as a "Robin Hood" figure, naming their children after him and speaking approvingly of his actions to defend Islam. On video tapes, he appears as a quiet, dignified aestheticist, simply referencing the contents of the Quran and discussing the current world situation. Like other heads of terrorist organizations, Bin Laden serves an indispensable motivational role within the organization, identifying the values to be achieved and interpreting the struggle from a strategic and comprehensive perspective.
Bin Laden's success lay in his ability to gather and organize young people seeking a pious society, guiding them onto the path of Jihad as he envisioned it. In his view, this Jihad was merely a war used to defend and expand the Islamic nation. He provided training to these volunteers, framing the United States and the Western Christian world as their primary enemies, world Zionism as their chief threat, and the existing governments of the Islamic world as adversaries needing to be eliminated. Good and evil were divided so clearly that the warrior stood at the center of this "cosmic war."
Muslims are conducting a war for Allah against an opponent far more powerful than themselves; therefore, Bin Laden claimed that all means are just and all targets are legitimate. In support of his views, Bin Laden repeated Iraqi propaganda—"UN sanctions are starving Muslim children"—and wept for dead Palestinians. In reality, however, he had not a shred of sympathy for those two regimes. Bin Laden believed the killing of American women and children was justified because the United States had also killed women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Al-Qaeda is a form of suicide cult.
On September 11, 2001, suicide attackers struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In Arab society, such suicide attackers are not difficult to find. A leader of Hamas once remarked, "Our biggest problem is that crowds of young people come to us, competing to go."
Unfortunately, among today's Islamic extremist forces, suicide attacks have become a moral act. They are lauded and praised by certain religious organizations in the Middle East and even by secular terrorist organizations. Bin Laden believed these young people would prove the difference between the religious and the secular:
These youths are different from your soldiers. Your problem is how to convince your army to fight, while our problem is how to restrain our youths and make them wait for their turn to join the fight. These youths are worthy of praise (Bin Laden, 1996).
"Sacrificing oneself for jihad [3]" is considered an obligation; this is the religious education Islamic children receive. Palestinian calendars feature illustrations of "martyrs," and children chant their names. Those who volunteer for these operations are treated as "living martyrs" and receive great respect; backing out is morally impossible and would bring shame upon their families. In this way, fighters focus their energy on completing their missions and sacrificial rites to realize their faith. In Palestine, the deaths of suicide attackers are announced in official newspapers as if announcing a marriage to the "dark-eyed" virgins waiting in paradise. A powerful organization—including its emotional support, peer recognition, positive psychological reinforcement processes, and the designated location of the act—are all keys to the completion of the mission. Al-Qaeda never suffers pangs of conscience for killing fellow Muslims or involving unsuspecting Muslims in suicide attacks. Al-Qaeda not only believes the indiscriminate killing of innocents is justified, but also feels there is nothing wrong with killing believers who once supported its movement. Bin Laden explained:
Islamic teachings say that Muslims should not live for a long time in the lands of the infidels. The targets of the September 11 attacks were not women and children. Its main targets were two icons of America, symbols of American economic and military power (Mir, 2001).
Although the general public often associates suicide attacks with terrorism, many armies have used similar tactics when facing a much stronger enemy. Countries that have used suicide methods in the past or present include North Korea, Iraq, Iran, the Soviet Union, and the Empire of Japan during World War II. Modern suicide bombers in Islamic societies are direct descendants of Iran, which used people as human minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq War. History is full of military operations where the likelihood of participants surviving was minimal.
Terrorist organizations are a type of suicidal cult, yet there are differences. Because the act of sacrifice is celebrated, Al-Qaeda does not need to demand that its members choose death in the same way a cult does. For the attacks on the United States to succeed, it was only necessary to encourage and entice participants to devote themselves; there was no need for coercion or suppression by a cult leader.
Terrorism and Cults: Differences and Similarities
Al-Qaeda is a representative terrorist organization, differing from typical terrorist groups only in its scale and global reach. It possesses many characteristics of political, moral, and religious terrorist movements, but it also possesses certain characteristics of a cult.
Al-Qaeda believes the world is in a universal struggle between good and evil. Bin Laden may be seeking a final showdown—searching for the battlefield of Armageddon (the great battle between good and evil before Judgment Day in the New Testament). By launching extremely cruel and inhuman terrorist attacks to trigger a massive U.S. counterattack, he could unite the sympathetic Muslim world around him. Alternatively, Bin Laden believes that brave terrorist offensives will force the U.S. to retreat into isolationist policies, thereby giving him the freedom to deal with the secular governments in the region that have betrayed Islam. In either case, Bin Laden’s reasoning is similar to Aum Shinrikyo and all apocalyptic cults.
Other characteristics that terrorist organizations share with cults include: recruiting cynical young people; using deceptive tactics in recruitment; practicing morality within the organization while losing humanity toward the outside world; and isolation and segregation, training members to be jihadist warriors and claiming that answers to all problems come from a single theoretical source or social form. Many other organizations also possess similar characteristics to varying degrees, existing even within elite organizations and groups.
Al-Qaeda, along with terrorist organizations in general, differs from most cults in several respects. Terrorist organizations capture and typically exaggerate the political and religious views within a society, identifying with the theory that "external forces cause their social instability." The organizational systems of terrorist organizations differ from cults; they must rely on extensive grassroots organizations and broad mass support. Wealthy Saudis and "charitable groups" provide funds to Al-Qaeda, while Muslims provide them with moral support. Although the leader of a terrorist organization plays an inspirational role, Muslims and organization members do not "deify" him, nor do they believe he possesses supernatural powers or special powers gifted by Allah. By using violence, Bin Laden expresses Islamist doctrine and clearly displays a vision for a better world. Although Bin Laden has the authority to issue religious decrees, he does not add new content. He has not claimed to be the "Guide" who reshapes justice on Earth. Whether Bin Laden lives or dies, his story will not end. The world is watching him, and a new, more powerful religious cult and fanaticism may emerge from this.
Experience and Lessons to be Learned
After the death or loss of charisma of a cult leader, cult organizations either collapse or merge into mainstream society. If Bin Laden dies, the armed forces of the Islamic movement will lose their effective organizer, and Al-Qaeda may suffer irreparable losses. But the Islamic movement will continue because it is the main ideological line of contemporary Islamic theory.
An internal civil war is taking place within Islam regarding how to successfully govern Islamic societies. Although Bin Laden’s violent actions are primarily directed at the West, his ultimate goal is to remove corrupt secular governments from Islamic societies and replace them with Islamic law. His terrorist actions target the West, but his focus is on Islamic society. Whether his views have a future in Islamic society ultimately depends on Islamic society itself.
This war over the core meaning of Islam may last for generations. As the pro-Bin Laden website Azzam.com stated on November 20, 2001:
The war in Afghanistan will be the beginning of a long war that will last for years, perhaps decades, and will end with the victory of the Muslim believers and the Islamic nation. This is not just our optimistic view; it is part of our religious faith. We believe that Islam will achieve final victory, although the infidels may hate this statement.
Westerners must admit the author’s statement regarding the duration of the war is correct, but they strongly hope the prediction regarding the outcome is wrong.
No external force can determine the future of Islam. They can try to consolidate moderate Islamic regimes by increasing trade and improving relations (even with countries currently excluded by them). Iran is an Islamic society hostile to the United States, but it is also striving to promote democracy; for this alone, it deserves diplomatic and political recognition.
Foreign aid can also be utilized to build schools and provide secular regimes with the cultural foundation they need. Arab and Muslim schools frequently provide an education that hates Jews and Christians and glorifies war and violence. Al-Qaeda often finds ready recruits in these schools. According to Pakistani officials' estimates, among the thousands of religious schools in the country, 10% to 15% are almost entirely factories for educating "jihad" warriors.
The national narratives written by Arab countries and peoples tell students not only about their current situation but also about important social ideals. These stories point young people toward idols to worship. The West can help write Arab history textbooks so they talk less about war and more about humanitarian values. Moreover, the West should examine Islamic popular culture while examining its own culture to find solutions and reduce views that suggest violence is a viable option.
Al-Qaeda is not the final threat to modern secular culture. We must recognize that armed fanaticism may be the greatest current threat; it often starts from a passion for blind ideology or religion. Fanaticism ignores rational debate and evidence and will not make concessions.
The United States maintains a very cautious attitude toward monitoring religious movements. The Constitution stipulates that citizens have the right to refuse government investigation. Therefore, intelligence agencies do not monitor religious movements; they only monitor terrorist organizations, and only label these groups as terrorist when they implement violence. Americans cannot expect the government to discover potential religious violent movements in their early stages of development.
When religious or ethnic movements move toward violence, the academic community should issue warnings to the government. Using Al-Qaeda as a basis, I propose seven early warning signs:
First, without a doubt, the unfair treatment received by previous generations becomes the cause of current behavior. This is very evident in Al-Qaeda. It is also reflected in some political and Christian movements in the United States.
Second, the political arena becomes a battlefield for the collision of good and evil in the universe. Likewise, this is clearly reflected in Al-Qaeda and domestic Christian terrorist organizations in the U.S.
Third, violence becomes a justified behavior for carrying out God's will.
Fourth, historical war heroes are elevated to or become religious icons. For example, Islamists often refer to the military exploits of Saladin and Muhammad.
Fifth, religious movements begin to intensify paramilitary or military training.
Sixth, relying on aid from non-members, the terrorist organization is able to maintain the operation of its grassroots and combat units, which means the organization reflects certain social views and is praised by society. Both Al-Qaeda and the "Army of God" have similar characteristics.
Seventh, the leader, representative, or role model of the organization possesses vision and is violent.
Notes:
① This article is from Cultic Studies Review, 2003, Volume 2, Issue 1. The Chinese translation was provided by Geng Geng, a director of the China Association for Atheism, with abridgments.
② The United States announced that Al-Qaeda leader Bin Laden was killed by the U.S. military in the early morning of May 1, 2011. In the post-Bin Laden era, the shadow of terrorism remains. The purpose of publishing this article is to further educate the public on recognizing and preventing terrorist and cult organizations.
About the Author: Christopher M. Centner is a senior intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He graduated from the Joint Military Intelligence College in Washington, D.C., and obtained a Master’s degree in Political Science from Auburn University (Montgomery, Alabama). He has published numerous analytical reports on chemical, nuclear, and integrated weapons in the Intelligence Community.
About the Translator: Geng Geng, Director of the China Association for Atheism, freelance writer.
Executive Editor: Wang Jiafei