For Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) - Softcover

Stein, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804763054 ISBN 13: 9780804763059

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Ruth Stein's pioneering study explains suicidal terrorism from a psychoanalytic perspective. She argues that most Islamic extremists undertake destructive and self-destructive actions not out of blind hatred, nor even for political gain, but to achieve an explosive merger with a transcendent awesome Father, God. The extremist is thus motivated more by his love for God than his hatred of the infidel. The contemporary Islamic terrorist kills "God's enemies" to express his intoxication with and complete submission to the God-idea. Stein further shows that this same leitmotif of filial submission and sacrifice runs through patriarchal monotheism in general.

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Ruth Stein is Associate Professor in New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Theories of Affect (1991; 1999).

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FOR LOVE OF THE FATHER

A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious TerrorismBy Ruth Stein

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6305-9

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................................................xiPreface...........................................................................................xvIntroduction......................................................................................11 Evil as Love and as Liberation: The Mind of a Suicidal Religious Terrorist.....................212 Fundamentalism as Vertical Mystical Homoeros...................................................453 Purification as Violence.......................................................................614 Regression to the Father: Clinical Narratives and Theoretical Reflections......................745 The Triadic Structure of Evil..................................................................102Appendix A: Mohammed Atta's Letter................................................................143Appendix B: From Dr. Ali Shariati's After Shahadat................................................149Notes.............................................................................................157References........................................................................................191Index.............................................................................................211

Chapter One

Evil as Love and as Liberation

The Mind of a Suicidal Religious Terrorist

The letter to the hijackers that was found in Mohammed Atta's luggage in the car that was left at Logan Airport before the World Trade Center attack is a striking document. A highly revelatory testimony, it may provide us with some understanding of how the mind of a suicide killer works. As psychoanalysis, indeed society, faces the emergence of new kinds of mass-destructive attacks on human beings, we must seek whatever additional knowledge we can about the states of mind that are conducive to such attacks. In particular, I believe, we should try to comprehend the mentality behind intensely religious self-sacrifice. We need to learn more about the psychodynamic issues involved in a decision that caused (and may go on causing) horrible suffering and grief to masses of people. We need to inquire what are the themes linked with and explanatory of this kind of evil.

In their anthology of studies by religious theorists and political scientists who authenticated and translated the letter from the Arabic, Hans Kippenberg and Tilman Seidenstricker describe the letter as a collection of rituals. The purpose of the letter and the mandated rituals, in their view, was to transform a young Muslim into a warrior, instilling spiritual motives that create inner peace, fearlessness, obeisance, and lack of feeling during the killing. But the letter is more than a document tracing the initiation and transformation of a man into a warrior. Had it only been a means of contacting and fortifying the minds of terrorists about to commit an act of mass destruction, we would expect such a document to be filled with a raging rhetoric of hate, a cry to destruction and annihilation. Instead, we hear a voice that reassures, calms, calls for restraint and thoughtful control, and appeals for a heightened consciousness in its readers. One might say that this is the voice of a wise father, instructing his sons in the steps they are to take on a mission of great importance, and reminding them of the attitude suited to accomplishing that mission. The letter calls for the terrorists to wash and perfume their bodies; to clean and to polish their knives; to be serene, confident, patient, and smiling; and to remember and renew their intentions. It reminds them that the task before them demands their attentiveness and, even more, their devoted adherence to God.

The letter frequently mentions love of God and God's satisfaction with the act to be accomplished. Essentially, it details some things that have to be done in order for the terrorists to gain entry into God's eternal paradise. We know that these acts involve the murder of human beings, those who are considered the enemies of God, as well as the self-annihilation of the terrorists themselves, who are going to be tools for the elimination of other humans. But the letter does not spell this out. While doing the work of killing and destruction, the doer, God's faithful servant, must remember to make supplications to God wherever he finds himself and whatever he does. Basically, the letter describes a ritual at the end of which the supplicant is to receive God's approval by doing what pleases God-purifying the world of contaminating infidels. Again, this is not mentioned in the letter. What is indeed stressed is that, if one is to merge with God, the most elevated Being human thought can envision, one has to perform the act accurately and mindfully.

How can we explain the tone of the letter? Can it teach us something about the state of mind in which the terrorists were steeped, either by themselves or by others (by special "training," including the formulating and reading of the letter we are studying)? What is the mental atmosphere of anticipating and preparing for such a destruction of other and self? What is the place and role of a smiling, calm, confident state of mind with which one passes from life into death, a state of mind so diametrically inverse to the turmoil, terror, and rage that would be the expected accompaniments to committing such destruction?

The Son's Supplicating Love for the Father

I have always been deeply impressed by the intimate, loving discourse a believer holds with God while praying and supplicating. Particularly poignant to me is the theme of a son praying to his God-father. One can practically hear the sweet plaintive murmur of the Psalmist, "My God, so numerous became those who hunt me, so many are those who stand over me, who say to my soul, you have no redemption in God, and You, my God, giveth back to me my breath and saveth me with Thy love." And one is riveted not only by the music but also by the lyrics of Jesus Christ's love songs to God in Bach's Passion According to St. Matthew, "Dein Mund hat mich gelabet mit Milch und ser Kost" (Your mouth has fed and replenished me with milk and the sweetest nourishment). Both the psalm and St. Matthew are profound works of great beauty and inspiration, where joy and pain intertwine.

The letter to the terrorists does not speak of hatred. It is past hatred. Absurdly and perversely, it is about love. It is about love of God. We can palpably sense the confident intimacy of a son close to his father and the seeking of a love that is given as promised and no longer withheld. If this feeling is sustained inside one, it does not have to be demonstrated externally. The letter is a reminder: "Everywhere you go say that prayer and smile and be calm, for God is with the believers. And the angels protect you without you feeling anything"; and, "You should feel complete tranquility, because the time between you and your marriage [in heaven] is very short." Inasmuch as nothing further is said about that marriage, and particularly whom one will marry (the famous paradisiacal virgins are not mentioned at this point), the idea that the marriage is that of the son(s) to God does not sound absurd at all.

The thought that there might be a root affinity between the theme of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804763054
• ISBN 13: 9780804763059
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 245
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande