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Amil Imani
The Making &
Dealing with Jihadists
December 9, 2009
Bewildered by what fanatic Muslims do, some conclude that Muslims are
brainwashed. Otherwise, how can their totally illogical belief system
and barbaric behavior be explained? But the notion of “brainwashing”
that is bandied about is the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood
movies such as the Manchurian Candidate.
The human person arrives in this world with his brains already washed in
the sense of being what John Locke called tabula rasa, blank
slate—ready for experience to imprint its script on it. John Locke was
only partly correct. The brain also arrives with numerous
predispositions already in place. It is a combination of life’s
influences and a person’s own decisions that determine which of these
dispositions develop and which ones fail. It is through this process
that a unique human being is formed.
Many animals come with already in-place programs that automatically run
much of their lives. Birds’ migration, mating courtship and thousands of
other complex behaviors are instances of this type of specific
programming. A catchword for this type of behavior is “instinct.” As a
general rule, the higher the organism the less is its rigid pre-programs
and the greater its latitude to exercise choices.
Making choices depends on what there is to choose from and to what
extent a given choice appeals to the person. And the human newborn
enters the arena of life without the means of being other than a passive
recipient of “things” already chosen for him.
It is like the old joke by Henry Ford who reportedly told his customers
that they could have the choice of color for their car as long as it was
black. Things are almost as bleak for the new arrival. He didn’t have a
say in choosing his parents, his socio-economic condition, his
environment of birth and much more. All are already in place and he is
to start in life from the context of his birth.
The development of a newborn in any family is importantly influenced by
many factors, among them how hands-on the parents are; how religious
they are, how severely they micromanage him in an attempt to make him
not only a good person but also a person better-one than they
themselves.
Parents tend to live vicariously through their children by programming
them, the best they can, so that the children become or achieve much of
what they themselves had failed to become or to accomplish. This
attitude covers all areas of life such as giving the child the education
they didn’t have, helping him with fame and fortune, nurturing him to
become a topnotch athlete and so forth.
It is a fact that early influences play a cardinal role in shaping the
person. For this reason, for instance, the overwhelming majority of
Muslims have born into Muslim families, Catholics into Catholic
families, Hindus into Hindu families and so on. It is also a fact that
the degree of religiosity ranges from mild to strong, with most people
falling somewhere between the two extremes.
Interestingly, two siblings raised by the same set of parents under the
same influences may end up at the opposite extremes in their religious
views and practices. It is here that the human dynamic of freedom of
choice comes into play and steers one to one extreme and the other to
the other extreme. Occasional extreme deviations notwithstanding, the
great majority of siblings of a given family end up with various degrees
of that family’s overall religious and other values. The same general
principle of subscribing to a set of common values exists in all human
groupings, in some cases with a broad flexibility and inclusiveness
while in others with rigidity and exclusivity.
In order to enjoy the privileges of belonging to a group, the person
must also pay his dues of membership.
The very young human faces, beginning with the minute he can make some
sense of the world, a bewildering array of mysteries, challenges, and
enticements. There are questions at every step, fears, and hopes
entangled with the need to survive and possibly thrive.
Who am I? What is this world all about? What’s the purpose? What am I
supposed to do and how? Where am I headed? People die. Where do they go?
And on and on and on. The information booths available to him in the
fairground of life provide him with answers that may help relieve his
innate existentialistic anxiety. And it is here that religion plays its
critical role and holds a great appeal. Religion provides a surefire
answer to those who are willing to take it on faith.
And Islam is a powerful magnet for the masses that are unable to deal
with the uncertainties of life and death on their own. It is from this
population, many already thoroughly indoctrinated from birth, that the
majority of diehard jihadists emerge.
It is the bargain the jihadist makes. He surrenders totally to the
religion of surrender in exchange for blanket security. Islam gives him
all the answers he really seeks for dealing with this world and promises
him a most lush and eternal paradise of Allah once he leaves it. And
leaving this world in perfect submission as the foot-soldier of the
paradise’s creator gives the faithful unimaginably glorious sensual
eternal reward in his next life. It’s a bargain that some buy in whole,
some in part, some refuse and seek other means of dealing with their
questions and the unrelenting existentialistic anxiety.
The great majority of jihadists emanate from the ranks of those born
into the religion of Islam, simply because they are the ones who are
most thoroughly indoctrinated and influenced by the Islamic dogma in
their most receptive early years. Yet, there are others who embrace
Islam in adulthood, on their own, and enlist themselves as devoted
jihadists for the same rewards that Islam offers them.
Islam has a great advantage of the first call on the new arrival. It is
an omnipresent system with masses of believers, mosques and madresehs,
and a host of other social and economic organizations that overpower the
person and steer him into the same fold; it is a sea of people who seem
to know what they are all about, what life and death are all about, and
what one must also do.
Within this sea of surging humanity composed of some 1.5 billion
Muslims, each individual believer—a drop—through a combination of choice
and forces beyond his control, ends up in one of its many waves. It is
the jihadist wave that is highly attractive to the deeply-indoctrinated
and poorly-adjusted in dealing rationally and independently with life.
Here, he finds the iron-clad perfect solution to his anxieties and
perplexities.
To a jihadist, death is nothing more than casting off a shell of the
worthless earthly existence and donning the suit for winging joyously to
the life of bliss promised by none-other than Allah’s beloved final
emissary, Muhammad.
Eradication of jihadism is a daunting task, since Islam is truly a
virulent persistent pandemic disease. Massive education efforts,
combined with resolute confrontation of all sources and people that
support and promote this deadly philosophy, hold the best promise of
dealing effectively with this affliction of humanity.
In addition to the family, places such as mosques and madresehs,
Islamic associations and charitable organizations, prisons, and the like
are incubators of jihadists. Massive efforts are required, on the one
hand, to drain the breeding swamps of the Islamic virus, while on the
other hand helping Muslims adopt an alternative perspective of life that
addresses their perplexities and offers a degree of comfort that
religions dispense without pitting one segment of humanity against
another.
In the
monumental task of dealing with jihadism, every individual, group and
government must combine their resources and energies to prevail. The
destiny of the civilized life hangs in the balance. It is an
unpardonable act of shirking responsibility for anyone to adopt the
attitude of “let George do it.” George is you. George is I. George is
every enlightened human being and organization that values human liberty
and dignity. |
