The two deadly suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta Indonesia in July still leave some confusion and mysteries about understanding terrorism.
How can normal people or even those who appeared to be good people deliberately choose a path of bloodshed and destruction?
How can terrorism still exist in Indonesia after the capture of its most important members? How can we stop terrorism?
Some social scientists of political violence, more specifically terrorism, suggest that the main step to understand terrorism is to distinguish it from any other types of violence and crimes. Terrorism is a unique secretive movement.
However, many, including the Indonesian government, still treat terrorism just like any other individual and collective violence in terms of its characteristics and organizational structure. In fact, better understanding of terrorism correlates with the successful strategy to destroy and deter terrorism.
A criminologist, Richard Rosenfeld, argues that the difference between general violence and terrorism is like the difference between water and holy water. Drinking water can just be directly understood as an effort to satisfy one’s biological needs, but drinking holy water cannot be understood the same way.
Drinking holy water is very symbolic, apart from fulfilling biological needs. Thus, terrorist violence is different from general violence.
The following are some common myths and misunderstanding about terrorism that stem from treating it the same as any other violence.
First, poverty and low levels of education are the sources of terrorism, and terrorists are usually crazy, mad, frustrated, uneducated and poor. This argument has been embraced almost entirely on faith rather than on scientific evidence. Alan B.Krueger (2007) in What Makes a Terrorist argues that the impoverished and uneducated are unlikely to participate in political processes, let alone in terrorist activities. Terrorists mostly have better education and are wealthier than the people from their own society.
Similarly, Marc Sagemen (2004) in Understanding Terror Networks argues that the members of global salafi jihad were generally middle class, educated young men from caring and religious families, who grew up with strong positive values on religion, spirituality, and concern for their community.
Second, terrorism is a rational organization with a hierarchical and identifiable chain of command. In fact, some research on terrorist groups show that terrorism is conducted by a conspiratorial cell structure or by individuals directly or indirectly influenced, motivated, or inspired by terrorist ideology.
Under hard repression and military scrutiny from international and national communities, it would be impossible for terrorists to form traditional or modern-bureaucratic organizational styles. Cell structure might therefore be the best strategy for terrorist groups to survive.
For example, in the case of global salafi Jihad, like al-Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah, they might not exist any more, but their splinters and cells might be still active and spread across the world.
Thus, there might be no central leadership of terrorist organization, like Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda and Noordin M. Top of Jamaah Islamiyah who have control in all terrorist operations. Bin Laden and Noordin M. Top might be best understood as sources of ideology rather than sources of material and organizational leadership.
Third, the root of terrorism is Islamic ideology, like the concept of jihad. Michael Chertoff, second secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, however objects that global terrorism is related to Islam. Referring to Bernard Lewis, he argues that no religions, including Islam, enjoin terrorism and murder. Extremist Islamism is not Islam, but politicized perversion.
Instead, the terrorist ideology is the interpretation of normative Islam shaped by twentieth-century Western totalitarian ideas, like fascism and communism. At least there are three similarities between Muslim terrorism and Western totalitarianism.
First, both used the same language, like “vanguard” and “revolution” for self-definition and “imperialist,” “capitalist” and “colonialist” for their enemies.
Second, both applied indiscriminate violence, there is no difference between the methods of killing between Adolf Hitler and bin Laden.
Third, they both share the macabre celebration of death. In doing so, Jose Millan Astray, a pro-Nazi general exploited the concept of Viva la Muerta, or “Long Live Death,” while bin Laden exploited the concept of syahid or martyrdom.
In short, understanding the nature of terrorism is a key point to the success of combating terrorism. Mistreating the very nature of terrorism may result in ineffective strategies for counterterrorism efforts.
The writer is a lecturer at STAIN Salatiga and PhD Student of Sociology at Texas A&M University, US.
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