Imagine you are contacted by a recruiter and have been asked to go get an explosive belt from their agents. Then you are instructed to go to one of the most crowded places near you and kill as many people as you can before you detonate your vest. Yes while you are still wearing it.

Probably you cannot imagine that. Or you may be thinking what kind of psychological illness you should have to be able to even picture such a scene. But at the moment, there are quite a large number of people around the world who are following such instructions. What can make a sane human being be able to commit mass murder? What is the voice inside their heads when they are about to kill themselves on their own volition for the cause of a group or organization? Almost none of these people suffer from any form of acute or chronic mental illnesses. They are not intrinsically deranged or psychotic. So how do they do evil? What’s going on in their brains that can hush their instinctive urge not harm themselves or others?

Lieutenant General Robert E. Schmidle, from the US Marine Corps, who was part of a study on the cognitive and social underpinnings of Daesh, argues that Takfiri terrorists are not abnormal – in the sense that they are suffering from any specific kind of malady – as they are actually behaving in accordance with the norms of rationality within their own organization. “What we classify as evil is influenced by the local moral order or culture in which we live. It has been said before and remains historically valid that what one culture calls a terrorist another culture calls a freedom fighter.”

In only the past few weeks, terrorists – most of them followers of Daesh Takfiris — killed hundreds of civilians around the world. As the group is losing land in the territories under its control, the Takfiris are becoming a sophisticated stateless terrorist institution. This is because they recruit locally. But how?

Most of the recruits join terrorist groups because they feel frustrated, estranged or disenfranchised, or believe they are the victim of some sort of injustice.

Political psychologist John Horgan, who is a professor of global studies and psychology at Georgia State University and has written a number of books on terrorism, says scientists have been trying for over 50 years to understand the defining characteristics of a terrorist mind; the continuous ebb and flow of chemical and cultural influences that make a terrorist.

Psychologist Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, believes that adolescent boys are more prone to recruitment and radicalization because at this age they are looking for a sense of purpose and belonging.

Us versus them

Once the young recruits feel they are part of a family, the leaders start developing the us-versus-them mentality that will enable them to turn off or hold back their empathy for the victims of the group’s terrorist operations. This also help the recruiters make perfect operatives because the new members are less likely to form independent opinions as an individual and more likely to support the group’s decisions or actions. The groupthink will even further their radicalization.

Social psychologist Clark Richard McCauley, the director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, notes that stripping recruits of individuality will make them place the goals of the group first, and points out that this is a strategy used by modern militaries. This way, even a member who disagrees with a group’s decision will remain silent for the fear of consequences of voicing dissent, and won’t be able to leave the group either because such groups have no sympathy for deserters.

Despite the Islamophobic propaganda abounding in the Western mainstream media, it is too facile to blame the ideology of the group since the Takfiri faith that Daesh uses to justify their killings has nothing to do with any religion, let alone Islam. However, young converts to Islam are more vulnerable to radicalization because they lack a deeper knowledge and understanding of the religion that can help them reject extremist arguments.

According to Max Abrams, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, members of groups like Daesh are “ignorant people with respect to religion and are generally the newest members to the religion.”

Now it’s on us to try to understand the source of agony that drives the youth to the path of terrorism and not to simply call terrorists evil. As philosopher Alain de Botton says, to be mature is to learn to imagine the zone of pain in others in spite of the lack of much available evidence. People may not look as if they are going through a psychological ailment but “we need to imagine the turmoil, disappointment, worry, and sadness beneath an aggressive surface.”

presstv.com

Countries sponsoring and harbouring terrorists should be made to pay the price, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday, calling for a united global fight against terrorism.

In an address to BRICS Youth Summit, Swaraj said the fight should be carried out without any distinction being made between “good” and “bad” terrorists.

Swaraj said BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) was shaping the global discourse significantly to deal with a range of challenges like climate change, poverty alleviation and corruption and that it must also work to eliminate terrorism.

“We also need to work and fight together to eliminate international terrorism in BRICS, UN Security Council and its various Committees. This should be done without any differentiation of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ terrorist.

“A terrorist is a terrorist and is someone who is acting against humanity as a whole. Those countries which sponsor and harbour terrorists should be made to pay the price,” Swaraj said.

India will host the eighth annual Summit of BRICS in Goa in October in its capacity as chair of the influential bloc comprising the five countries account for 42 percent of the world’s population and combined GDP of over USD 16 trillion.

“We also need to work together for early reforms of the UN Security Council, so that this body continues to be relevant to the needs of the 21st century,” she said.

Noting that building “responsive, inclusive and collective solutions” would be core to India’s BRICS chairmanship, she said in its short journey, the bloc has left an indelible mark on the global economic and financial architecture.

“The establishment of New Development Bank and Contingency Reserve Arrangement have been landmark achievements in this regard,” she said.

Talking about youth power, Swaraj said 800 million citizens of India are under the age of 35 and they are the driving force in making India the fastest growing major economy in the world.

“In Prime Minister Modi you will find the biggest champion of youth. He had stressed the role of youth in his address at the Fortaleza Summit,” she said.

Youths from all the BRICS member nations are participating in the summit.

“All five BRICS countries have rich resources in terms of youth and BRICS countries’ youthful and democratic profiles, combined with our economic vibrancy, can be an asset in consolidating exchanges between our people,” she said.

During India’s BRICS Chairmanship, a series of events are being organised with special focus on youth.

firstpost.com

From Benyamin Gholizadeh to Arash Sadagheh and Mansour Arwand, the plight of Iranian political prisoners is quite dire. Iran is so determined to go after the dissidents that they are even willing to engage in cross-border raids, to create obstacles for Iranian refugees in foreign countries, and to hold an innocent professor hostage just so they can harm political dissidents.

After Iranian refugee Benyamin Gholizadeh had an interview with JerusalemOnline that exposes the plight of Iranian refugees in Turkey, UNHCR has decided to stop giving him his monthly stipend of 30 euros. Following this, his existence within Turkey is even more precarious and without being accepted by a third country, a horrible fate awaits him if he will ever be forced to go back to Iran.

According to Iranian human rights activist Shabnam Assadollahi, Iranian Canadian academic Homa Hoodfar recently came to Iran in order to conduct research and despite not being involved in politics, she was arrested and is now being held hostage so that Iran can use her as leverage so that Canada will be compelled to send duel Iranian-Canadian citizen Mahmoud Reza Khavari to Iran: “After the Iran deal and 5+1 empowering Iran and since the West has lost her sanity and is in friendship with terrorism, I would not be surprised if Iran even bargains with Trudeau liberals asking Canada to hand over the Iranian Canadian patriots to Iran.”

According to the Globe, Hoodfar is being held in the notorious Evin Prison where prisoners are routinely tortured. The report noted that Professor Hodfar has a neurological disorder and where she is being imprisoned, she is unlikely to have access to the medical treatment that she needs. However, Professor Homa Hoodfar is not the only apolitical person in Iran to face persecution from the regime.  According to the Boroujerdi Civil Rights Group, 35 college students were arrested and given 99 lashes each for attending a mixed gender graduation party, where the women did not dress in accordance with Islamic law.  In addition, 23-year-old Mohammed Mohsen Bakhtayri is now getting prosecuted merely for publishing forbidden books and engaging in activities in cyberspace that the regime did not like. It should be noted that Iranian prisoners who are political active and are on the frontlines of the struggle against the regime can expect an even worse fate than Professor Homa Hodfar, Mohammed Mohsen Bakhtayri and these 35 college students.

Arash Sadaghi, an Iranian student activist and human rights defender, used to document human rights abuses that occurred inside Iranian prisons, where he reported on the torture, maltreatment, lack of visitation rights and access to a lawyer, and the lack of medical treatment for prisoners. He also protested on behalf of imprisoned Iranian human rights activists Narges Mohammadi and Gholamreza Khosravi.  For these crimes, Sadaghi is now serving a 15-year-prison sentence for insulting Khomeini, disseminating false news and rumors, colluding against the state and engaging in propaganda against the system.

Via this sentence, Sadaghi’s 4-year suspended prison sentence was activated for assembling against national security and spreading propaganda against the state that he received after protesting against the regime in 2009, 2010 and 2012. Thus, in total, Sadaghi will serve 19 years in prison, even though Iran’s Newly Revised Penal Code limits a prisoner to serving only the most serious out of the sentences, which in this case is the 15-year-sentence. When Sadaghi was being sentenced, he was denied access to a lawyer. His wife Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee also got a 6 year prison sentence for insulting the sacred and spreading propaganda against the state.

According to the Boroujerdi Civil Rights Group, the Iranian authorities have a long history of mistreating both Sadagheh and his family. When the Iranian authorities raided his father’s home in 2010, his mother suffered a fatal heart attack and died. In 2014, Sadaghi was tortured by the Iranian authorities, which resulted in him suffering from a broken rib and shoulder.   To date, he has not received medical treatment for this condition. Given that he is now at the beginning of serving his 19-year-sentence, it remains a huge question mark whether he can survive this sentence and if so, what his health condition will be like afterwards.

“I have not seen many who can survive 19 years of imprisonment in Iran under conditions like malnutrition, illness and many other unexpected dangers and challenges like cancer which is the newest fast spreading situation going on in prisons. If we don’t help Arash and keep silent on this accusation and punishment or if we censor him based on our thought differences, then we have crossed the line of humanity,” Behrouz Javid Tehrani, the former political prisoner and human rights activist, said.

“This is the regime with which six super powers signed a nuclear treaty. Iran’s deal supporters are absolutely responsible for our loved ones’ lives in the Iranian prisons. Unfortunately, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the human rights situation is astonishingly in grave danger, but the international community and so-called human rights organizations are not taking the proper and effective steps toward solving the problem. I kindly ask global villagers to urge their governments to bring a real pressure upon the Islamic Republic of Iran to release the political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the country,” Kaveh Taheri, a political activist, journalist and human rights activist, told the BCR Group.

According to Muhammed Alizadeh of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, there are many Kurdish political prisoners within Iran and they are suffering the worst fate out of the political prisoners. Recently, Iran just executed one of their activists, Mansour Arwand: “Mansour Arwand was a patriotic and revolutionary Kurd who chose to join the ranks of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran 10 years ago as part of his efforts to struggle for the Kurdish nation and he started to work with the KDP’s underground team in Eastern Kurdistan. It is also important to note that Mansour Arwand was involved in many patriotic activities and many efforts to support the freedom of the Kurdish people even before he joined the KDP. He was a sportsman and was greatly respected by the Kurdish people, especially the youth, for his patriotic, pro-freedom and pro-democratic activities. Mansour Arwand was one of those KDP members and activists that greatly empowered and energized other activists and organization members in Mahabad. Although he had a family and was aware of the fact that the secret service was monitoring him because of his activities, he was always committed and dedicated to this struggle and his activities related to the KDP. Duo to his efforts, a large number of youth in Eastern Kurdistan has engaged with the KDP and become political activists.”

According to Alizadeh, Arwand was arrested in 2011 and was brutally tortured for over a year while he was imprisoned in Mahabad: “All government efforts were centered around torturing Mansour Arwand in order to break his will so that he will make false confessions and the government can execute him on false grounds.”  In 2012, he was given the death penalty but the regime continued to torture him and threaten his family: “He was transferred from prison to prison and the government came up with excuses after excuses but they did not manage to break his will or his dedication to his nation. With the execution of Mansour Arwand, the Kurdish Democratic Party lost a precious member. We send our condolences to Arwand’s spouse and to all of his relatives, the people of Mahabad, and all of the activists who are striving for freedom and democracy in Kurdistan.”

The execution of Mansour Arwand is part of Iran’s efforts to systematically persecute the Kurds. In recent days, at least 5 Kurdish civilians including 3 children were injured as part of Iran’s cross-border shelling into Iraqi Kurdistan: “Many residents have fled the bombing. A witness in the area reported an Iranian military helicopter flying very low along the border. It is believed the aircraft was providing information for forces on the Iranian side of the border firing artillery into the Kurdistan Region on the pretext of the presence of forces and bases belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran.” According to Alizadeh, this action highlights that Iran does not limit their actions against political dissidents to ones located within their borders for the Iranian regime is even willing to engage in cross-border attacks in order to attack Kurdish Iranian dissidents based in Iraqi Kurdistan.

This means that Iranian activists like Benyamin Gholizadeh are not safe in Turkey or even in far-away countries like Canada for the Iranian regime is dedicated to going after all political dissidents regardless of their location. This is why Iran arranged to sabotage Gholizadeh receiving political asylum both in the US and Canada. This is why Iran arranged for Gholizadeh’s UN aid to get cut off after he spoke to an Israeli journalist.  And this is why Iran took an Iranian Canadian professor hostage so that they could pressure Canada into getting their hands on another Iranian that they want to prosecute. For the Iranian dissidents, there is virtually no safe location in the entire world.

In the three months since the EU-Turkey migrant pact came into force, the number of migrants arriving on Greek shores has dropped precipitously. But the number of migrants making the even more dangerous crossing to Italy has increased substantially. After months of chaos, Rome—having adopted a variety of measures in partnership with European authorities—is now much better prepared than last summer to deal with a new migrant surge. But, despite its efforts, Italy—like its peers—cannot possibly cope on its own with a new wave of migration on the order of magnitude as the one witnessed last summer.

Yet that possibility is real. With almost 19,000 arriving from Libya in the first three months of this year, an EU-Libya migration compact is urgently needed. But for it to work, Europe as a whole must engage with Libya comprehensively and across policy areas. That will require time—and an interim solution in the meantime.

Fewer arrivals in Greece, more in Italy

Notwithstanding its many flaws, the EU-Turkey deal appears to be working at deterring people from making the treacherous crossing from Turkey to Greece. Although weather conditions have improved, the number of migrants reaching Greece dropped by 90 percent in April, to less than 2,700. Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans, and Iraqis made up the bulk of new arrivals, as has been the case for the last few months. Further north, along the Western Balkans route, the number of migrants reaching Europe’s borders in April dropped by 25 percent, down to 3,830. In this case, Macedonia’s de facto closure of its southern border with Greece clearly contributed to stemming the flow.

With the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans routes sealed, the Central Mediterranean pathway presents new and worrying trends. In the month of April alone, 9,149 migrants arrived in Italy. As in the past, they were overwhelmingly from Sub-Saharan Africa (mostly Nigeria), many of them economic migrants unlikely to be granted asylum. For the first time since May 2015, more migrants are now reaching Italy than Greece. Many more are likely to have lost their lives trying to do so.

Learning from past mistakes

Italy is doing its homework. A revamped headquarters for the European Union Regional Task Force (EURTF) overseeing migrant arrivals across the Central Mediterranean opened at the end of April in the town of Catania. Five of its six hotspots—first reception centers fully equipped to process new arrivals—are now in place, with a combined reception capacity for 2,100 people and the involvement of Frontex, the European Asylum Support Office, Europol, Eurojust, the International Organization for Migration, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Fingerprinting rates have now reached virtually 100 percent at all active hotspots. Long-term reception capacity across the country is currently at 111,081, and plans are in place to boost this to 124,579. This would probably not be enough to host the share that the country could be expected to take under a permanent and fair pan-European relocation mechanism. And yet, at least for the time being, the European Commission judged the Italian reception system to be more than sufficient.

Within this context, European partners seem to be slowly becoming more confident in Rome’s willingness to take up its responsibilities. It is no coincidence that on the same day that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble invited Vienna to support Italy in its efforts to control migrant movements within the Schengen area, Austria’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka announced that work on building a “migrants protection fence” at the Italy-Austria border was halted.

A sustainable solution before it’s too late

Still, should a new massive migrant wave reach its shores, Italy could not cope on its own. Indeed, no single European country could. Should such a new wave materialize, Libya would be by far the most likely country of origin. Italy is the key to fighting ISIS and stabilizing Libya, but it would be unrealistic to expect Italy to do so on its own.

The current European migrant crisis is part of a broader global refugee crisis and Europe has a shared interest and responsibility in dealing with it. Because of that, an EU-Libya deal is now necessary. This must—and can—be better than the agreement between the EU and Turkey. But a strategic pan-European approach is urgently needed. As Mattia Toaldo recently highlighted, a joint EU-Libya migration plan would be one of five priority areas for Libya. These would also include supporting a Libyan joint command to fight ISIS, a diplomatic offensive in support of the recently-established unity government, a reconciliation of local militias through power devolution, and the re-launch of the country’s economy. In April, Italy shared proposals with its European partners for a new migration compact with Libya but which also involves the broader region. That might be wise: since Europe is certainly unable to stabilize Libya in the short term, its leaders should start thinking about the country as a variable within a far broader equation.

What can Italy do in the meantime?

The European Union should step up its support for Italy and an interim solution to migrant crisis in the Central Mediterranean must be found. Meanwhile, Italy has to brace itself for the potential arrival of over 800,000 migrants currently in Libya and waiting to cross the Mediterranean. While Rome could never cope with such a surge in migrant flows on its own, it still can—and must—plan for such an eventuality.

Three measures could be taken to address this challenge. First of all, Italy could consider setting up a seventh—and possibly even an eight—hotspot. This would be an important step given that an idea Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano floated—to set up “hotspots at sea”–is unlikely to be viable on both legal and humanitarian grounds. Second, Italy should increase its long-term reception capacity to around 150,000 people. The exact number would depend on the calculations that the European Commission is currently finalizing. Crucially, this should mirror the number of individuals beyond which an emergency relocation mechanism would be activated to re-distribute asylum seekers from Italy to another EU member state. Finally and should a sudden surge in the number of arrivals materialize, Italy could prepare contingency plans to mobilize virtually its entire navy to support ongoing EU efforts with its Operation Sophia. These policy proposals involve a significant effort in terms of state capacity. Yet, Italy has both a moral responsibility as well as a vested interest in implementing them.

brookings.edu

Muslims who kill in the name of their religion frequently evade punishment in Western courts by pleading insanity or mental incompetence. Jurors, judges, and forensic psychiatrists are prone to accept the claim that some form of mental incapacity, not religious belief, accounts for “homegrown” jihadist terrorism in North America and Europe.

This state of affairs results from the failure by prosecutors to frame acts of jihadist violence as expressions of faith. This failure to prosecute jihadists vigorously stems from several sources: a deep-rooted, Western reluctance to impugn religion; a cult of political correctness; and culturally naïve wishful thinking. Viewing jihadists as crazy offers a comfortable conceit that ignores the stark reality that disaffected but sane Muslims are seduced by an ideology that espouses violent hatred of Western civilization.

Lone Wolf Jihadists

Jihadism is a supremacist ideology that seeks to bring about the establishment of a global Islamic state and the application of Islamic law, the Shari’a. It relies both on political efforts and on acts of violence against “infidels.” According to terrorism specialist Steve Emerson’s review of Justice Department statistics, radical Islamists account for more than 80 percent of all terrorist convictions in the United States since the 9/11 attacks.

In the past, most jihadist violence was carried out by organized terror networks. Today, however, the most effective means of striking the United States is to convert and radicalize U.S. citizens and residents into carrying out terrorist attacks on their own. So-called “lone wolf” jihadists are typically radicalized through local, Islamic institutions and the Internet (chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, etc.) where religious teaching, propaganda videos, and bomb-making directions are disseminated widely. Some go abroad for further instruction; others simply download a “how-to” manual.

Perhaps the most influential source of contemporary jihadist indoctrination was the late Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen whose sermons have been directly linked to more than a dozen terrorist plots. His message, which lives on in cyberspace, is simple:

We will implement the rule of Allah on earth by the tip of the sword. We need men who are willing to go all the way and not hold back anything from Allah. The religion of Allah cannot be given victory by part-time service. This is not a weekend religion. The contract is to sell our souls to Allah. The compensation is paradise.

While the lone wolf jihadist usually acts alone from an operational standpoint, he is part of a well-defined, Internet-based pack whose killings are often meticulously premeditated. He may plan the attacks on his own, but he does so with the instruction, support, and direction of a greater community of radicalized Islamists—and with the tacit approval of a significant percentage of Muslims (well over ten percent by most estimates) who admire Islamic terrorists. The Internet enables lone wolf jihadists to acquire the “networks of support and ideologies of validation” that fuel their transformation into killers. The November 2009 massacre at Fort Hood by U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, which left thirteen people dead and twenty-nine wounded, was apparently inspired by the defendant’s correspondence with Awlaki. Los Angeles-born al-Qaeda propagandist Adam Gadahn, known to have a powerful influence on converts, later stated:

The mujahid brother Nidal Hasan has shown us what one righteous Muslim with an assault rifle can do for his religion and brothers in faith and has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere.

In this, Hasan and his co-jihadists have succeeded, judging from the multitude of homegrown attacks on American soil that were foiled in 2011. Two American converts to Islam, Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh, were charged with “conspiracy to murder officers and agents of the United States.” Marine reservist Yonathan Melaku was indicted on charges of firing weapons at the Pentagon and other military sites in northern Virginia. Army private Nasser Abdo was in the final stages of preparing another attack at Fort Hood when he was arrested. Emerson Begolly was arrested for posting bomb-making instructions on the Internet and attacking federal agents while his house was being searched. Khalid Aldawsari, a Saudi chemical engineering student, was arrested on charges of researching targets for attack, including the home of former president George W. Bush, and attempting to build a bomb. Rezwan Ferdaus nearly succeeded in his plot to bomb the Pentagon and Capitol building.

Legal Insanity and Mental Incompetence

There are two ways that a defendant who has undeniably killed or maimed someone without provocation can avoid prison—either win a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) or be continuously judged mentally incompetent to stand trial, both of which have the practical effect of landing him in a psychiatric facility. Psychiatric facilities have obvious advantages over prison; besides the day-to-day relative comfort, these facilities offer the defendant the opportunity for periodic appeals to assess his sanity. In the case of Omeed Aziz Popal, who ran down sixteen pedestrians in San Francisco, he is entitled to a release hearing every two years. Popal seems to prefer life at a psychiatric facility: When he was transferred to Fremont prison pending separate charges for the murder of a local resident, he asked, “Is there any way possible I can go back to the Napa hospital.” Yusef DeJarnette, who wounded two people in separate shootings, has been living in a psychiatric facility since he was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. At a hearing, Northcoast Behavioral Healthcare recommended DeJarnette be placed in a group home: “If he is released, the judge would be able to monitor him and set the conditions of his freedom.” Patrick Gott, a student of Islam whose actions briefly evoked fears of terrorism eight months after the 9/11 attacks, remains in state custody at the Feliciana Forensic Facility at Jackson. Doctors evaluate him regularly, and should they ever declare him sane and no longer a danger to himself and others, the law allows a judge to release him. Whether the jihadist appeals periodically to determine if he has recovered his “sanity” and hence tries for release, or the insanity plea results in superior living conditions, the salient issue is that jihadists are perceived as insane rather than driven by religious obligation in both the case law and public perception. This misperception is self-perpetuating, because as jihadists continue to be labeled insane there is consequently a lack of preventive action as a result of misidentification of the actual motive.

A diminished capacity or “partial insanity” defense can be used to argue that the defendant’s mental condition at the time of the crime merits a less serious charge or reduced sentence though it does not constitute grounds for acquittal. Hammad Samana in 2008 plotted to attack U.S. military, Israeli, and Jewish facilities in California. The lone Muslim-born member of his cell, his sentence was shorter than his three fellow cell members because he had a smaller role in the plot and suffered from mental health issues. Samana was declared unfit to stand trial and was placed in psychiatric care. He was eventually sentenced to seventy months in 2009 but received less than half the sentence of the other cell members because of his mental condition. “In light of Samana’s mental health issues at the time of the offense, such a disparity is warranted and justified,” Judge Carney said. Nadim Haque was declared not guilty of murder because he suffered from an abnormal condition of the mind. He was found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder because he acted “while under the influence of extreme anger… The theory behind these defenses was that Haque’s traditional Muslim Indian upbringing, immigrant experience, and psychological condition strongly influenced his perception.”

Although definitions of legal insanity vary from country to country (and, in the United States, from state to state), virtually all require that a person be unable to distinguish between legal right and wrong. Under U.S. federal law, an insanity defense requires that “at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts.” Under federal legislation passed after John Hinckley, Jr.’s acquittal for shooting President Ronald Reagan, the burden of proof lies on the defense, which must show “clear and convincing” evidence of insanity. Hinckley enjoys unsupervised weekend furloughs as a result of his status hearings. The living conditions within the facility’s pleasant grounds are eminently more desirable than a life in prison. As Hinckley described in a Penthouse magazine interview shortly after his arrival, on a typical day at St. Elizabeth’s [Hospital]: “I see a therapist, answer mail, play my guitar, listen to music, play pool, watch television, eat lousy food, and take delicious medication.”

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, a defendant is competent to stand trial if he has “sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding” and a “rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him.” Such determinations are made by court-appointed psychiatrists, not by juries.

While the late Supreme Court justice Benjamin N. Cardozo famously maintained that someone who sincerely believes that God instructed him to kill is ipso facto suffering from an insane delusion, this so-called “deific decree” standard is not widely accepted. Although a case can be made that “someone who genuinely believes he has heard God’s voice command him to kill another… lacks the ability to reason about the moral quality of his action,” this does not imply that he is unaware of its illegality or its consequences. Absent compelling corroborating evidence of schizophrenia or other severe hallucinatory disorders, claiming to have received divine or other supernatural instructions is not ordinarily sufficient to convince a jury to acquit.

It is also important to bear in mind that the horrific nature of a crime alone is not sufficient evidence of a “severe mental disease or defect” (otherwise, cannibalistic killer Jeffrey Dahmer would have been acquitted). Because of these constrictions, the insanity defense is employed in less than one percent of felony murder cases in the United States and is successful in only a quarter of those.

Insanity Defenses by Jihadists

While there is little reason to believe that recognized terror group operatives are any less maladjusted than lone wolves, insanity defenses by the former are rare (and rarely succeed). This may be due to the political component ascribed to an acknowledged terror group member, whose actions can be understood as political in nature. Recognized terror groups are generally considered to be in political rather than religious conflict with the West, and there is, therefore, a disassociation when this “war” is waged by a lone “soldier of God.” Thus, it is the solitary, Muslim extremist taking it upon himself to carry out God’s will who tends to strike Western jurors, judges, and even forensic psychiatrists as crazy.

Most jihadists are too committed to their creed to plead insanity as this would be a rejection of the teachings that led them to commit murder. Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted terrorist linked to the September 11 attacks, testified that he “rejects his court-appointed defense team’s theory that he is mentally ill.” Asked if he was crazy, Moussaoui said, “Thank God, I am not.”  Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo Van Gogh’s murderer, said at his trial in the Netherlands, “What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. Islam compels me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the Prophet.” Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad warned: “Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the blood that will follow me.” The 31-year-old Pakistani immigrant justified his plot in the name of Islam, saying that “the Koran gives us the right to defend, and that’s all I’m doing.”

Defense attorneys are eager to magnify any history of mental illness, no matter how tenuous, in seeking to gain acquittals, avoid trial, or win reduced sentences for their jihadist clients. They will cite mental instability, depression, lack of medication, post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing voices, and delusions of persecution to name a few.

Not guilty by reason of insanity: Although jihadists who plead insanity may have some history of mental illness, or at least a host of relatives testifying to it, this alone is not sufficient evidence of innocence. Even when a radical Islamist who goes on a murderous rampage happens to be a diagnosed schizophrenic, it does not necessarily follow that he was legally insane in commission of the act—it could be that his ideology drove him to it even if his illness initially facilitated the underlying radicalization.

In principle, evidence of jihadist indoctrination should render an insanity plea untenable because it puts forth a compelling, presumed motive that the defense is obliged to disprove with “clear and convincing” evidence. This is very difficult to do even if the defendant has a history of mental illness. A crack addict with schizophrenia who kills someone in the course of a robbery will have a hard time disproving that crack addiction was the motivational driver unless the prosecution omits or downplays the fact that the defendant is a crack addict.

In practice, jihadists have repeatedly fared well and won acquittals even when there is substantial evidence of ideological motivation.

• In 2002, Nabil Ouldeddine was found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) for stabbing an Orthodox Jew twenty times on a London bus. Although he later told psychiatrists that the voice of a woman named Jennifer commanded him to kill, the reason he gave to the police officers who arrested him was far more prosaic: “Israel are [sic] the murderers. They kill women and children, so I stabbed him.”
• In 2003, Yusef DeJarnette was found NGRI for wounding two people in a series of random shootings from his bicycle in Shaker Heights, Ohio. In his home, police found writings conveying his hatred of white people, a poster of Osama bin Laden, and books about making gun silencers. He was clear-headed enough to avoid capture until police traced the bullets back to him.
• In 2008, Omeed Aziz Popal was found NGRI for injuring sixteen pedestrians with his SUV in a long rampage that ended outside the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Mike Mahoney, the police inspector who investigated the case, scoffed at the acquittal: “He knew exactly what he did. He told me exactly what he did.”
• In 2005, Muslim convert Patrick Gott was found NGRI for opening fire inside a New Orleans airport, killing one woman. Gott, who carried a Qur’an and chanted “Allah!” during the shooting, later told police he was enraged when someone made fun of his turban. Although the defense produced evidence of severe mental illness, their argument that this illness led him to commit the crime was weak. Two forensic psychiatrists testified only that “it is more likely than not” that Gott was “psychotic, delusionally paranoid, and experiencing auditory hallucinations at the time of the shooting,” hardly meeting the burden of proof normally required of the defense.

The insanity defense is not always allowed by judges. In 2009, Muzzammil S. “Mo” Hassan beheaded his wife after she filed for divorce. He later claimed that he was emotionally “out of control” when he killed her. He requested and underwent psychiatric examination, but the judge in the case ruled that his lawyers could not use an insanity defense due to the delay by the defense in presenting their case.

The Fort Hood killer’s civilian defense lawyer, John P. Galligan, initially said that an insanity defense was under consideration although it was never clear whether Hasan himself was willing to make such a plea. However, Galligan backed off after a three-member military mental-health panel evaluated Hasan and details of his methodical preparations in the months before the massacre came to light. “That much planning implies he had a clear understanding of his actions and he understood the consequences,” said Anthony Ng, former president of the American Association of Emergency Psychiatry. “It’s possible to be mentally ill [and] still be held liable for your actions if you’re aware of the consequences.”

Incompetent to stand trial: Winning a ruling of incompetence to stand trial has the same practical result as an NGRI verdict—the defendant is confined to a psychiatric facility. The facts of the case are not relevant—the defendant’s mental state at the time of evaluation is at issue.

• In 2009, Hammad Samana was declared unfit to stand trial on charges of plotting to attack U.S. military, Israeli, and Jewish facilities in California. He is now in psychiatric care.
• In 2010, a Paris court ruled for the second time that Adel Amastaibou is a paranoid schizophrenic and unfit to stand trial for sadistically stabbing his neighbor to death in 2003. “I have killed my Jew. I will go to paradise,” Amastaibou declared to police after the murder.

Diminished capacity defenses: Diminished capacity or responsibility defenses are typically used to cast doubt on whether the defendant acted with premeditation and intent to kill. Such defenses can result in conviction on lesser charges.

• In October 2010, a judge sentenced Hosam Smadi to twenty-four years in prison for attempting to blow up a downtown Dallas skyscraper—less than the thirty years allowable under his plea agreement with prosecutors—after hearing defense testimony that he suffered from schizophrenia.
• In 2007, Bosnian war veteran Asim Cejanovic attempted to smuggle a bag filled with explosives into the U.S. embassy in Vienna. Under interrogation, he fingered Mehmed Djudjic, who had long-standing ties to Wahhabi, jihadist circles in Bosnia, for giving him the backpack. On the first day of his trial, Cejvanovic declared that he had important information about Wahhabi extremists that he wished to “offer” the United States. However, taking note of Cejvanovic’s psychiatric treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of plotting to bomb anyone as his frequent telephone and e-mail contact with the embassy prior to the incident was “not a typical strategy for somebody who tries to enter the U.S. embassy to detonate a bomb.” The court sentenced him to fifteen months in prison for illegal possession of explosives.
• In 2008, Khalid Alzghoul brutally beat nine people with a hammer at a Vancouver gay-pride march while screaming, “This is judgment day!” After his history of mental illness was raised in court, Alzghoul was acquitted of hate-crime charges and sentenced to two and half years in jail for simple assault.
• In 2005, Jordanian-born Ali Warrayat drove his car into a Home Depot, blasting Arabic music with a Qur’an and a Palestinian flag in the trunk, hoping to set fire to the flammable goods department. After a court-appointed doctor diagnosed Warrayat with schizophrenia, he was sentenced to just five years in prison.

The insanity plea strategy does not appear to work as well if the defendant is uncooperative. In 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar said that the Qur’an gave him permission to drive a jeep into a crowd of people at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, injuring nine, so as “to punish the U.S. government, the enemy of my brothers and sisters in religion.” Taheri-Azar’s lawyer pleaded for leniency on the grounds that “a severe mental illness” affected his actions, but the defendant’s lack of remorse led the judge to give him the maximum possible sentence.

Overzealous Defense, Under-zealous Prosecution

Although each of the above legal strategies hinges on different judicial actors (juries, forensic psychiatrists, and judges, respectively), all three have proven successful for jihadist defendants. So much so, in fact, that jihadists have a legitimate gripe about the U.S. judicial system—they are coming under undue pressure from public defenders to plead insanity.

This was evident in the case of Carlos Bledsoe, a convert to Islam who now calls himself Abdulhakim Muhammad. Bledsoe opened fire on a military recruiting station in Arkansas, killing one soldier and wounding another. After his capture, he promptly confessed to carrying out what he called a “jihadi operation” and later offered to plead guilty to murder charges.

Astonishingly, his lawyers refused his request, and the judge ruled that he was not mentally competent to make the decision himself. Legal pundits explained that it would not “make sense” for a mentally competent defendant to plead guilty to capital murder charges. Interestingly, he was not ruled mentally unfit to stand trial—he was considered legally competent except for his desire to claim responsibility for murder in the name of God. Bledsoe’s lawyers decided to mount an insanity defense over his objections and called to the witness stand forensic psychiatrist Shawn Agharkar, who testified that the defendant suffered from delusions of grandeur and persecution.

Bledsoe protested vehemently, insisting that the shooting was an act of war and claiming loyalty to al-Qaeda. “I wasn’t insane or posttraumatic, nor was I forced to do this act,” Bledsoe wrote to the judge, adding that it was “justified according to Islamic laws and the Islamic religion.” While Bledsoe was ultimately allowed to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors dropping their demand for the death penalty, the spectacle of a defendant being forced to disown his ideological convictions and mount an insanity defense is striking.

While the proclivity of lawyers for jihadists to mount mental-illness defenses is troubling, this in itself is not the problem. Criminal defendants are entitled to a vigorous defense under U.S. law, and this is exactly what their lawyers have striven to do. More troubling is why lawyers are succeeding. There is little particularly new or imaginative about their arguments—they have been effective because jihadists have not been subjected to spirited prosecution as a recognized group of offenders.

Time and again, prosecutors have failed to position jihadist defendants within a larger community of like-minded extremists carrying out similar acts around the world even though defendants frequently affirm their jihadist motivations during their attacks (particularly with the trademark phrase “Allahu Akbar!” or “God is great!”), upon arrest, while incarcerated, or in the course of court proceedings. In addition, they often have Islamist indoctrination material in their on-line presence or among their possessions. These identifying elements constitute the characteristics of the syndrome.

The two trials of Naveed Haq underscore how important this can be to the jury’s verdict. In July 2006, Haq gunned down six people at the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, killing one. In prison telephone calls to relatives, he later said he was “proud” of the murderous rampage, calling himself “a soldier of Islam” and “a martyr” who is “going to go to heaven.” When Haq’s lawyers put forth an insanity defense in his first trial, prosecutors chose not to present the recorded calls as evidence, apparently fearing that they would make Haq sound crazy and support the insanity plea. The jury deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. However, when this evidence was presented in his second trial, Haq was convicted. When jurors are informed of the context in which a jihadist attack is perpetrated, they are more likely to reject an insanity plea. “The jury held that holding extremist views does not make you insane, but it does make you dangerous,” victim Carol Goldman stated at a news conference after the verdict.

Public Misperceptions

Deprived of relevant information about the acquired radicalization and virtual socialization underlying jihadism, jurors and judges alike are more prone to accept insanity pleas. The brutality of these crimes and the pursuit of heavenly rewards that motivate them seem crazy. Who in his right mind would kill people indiscriminately? Juries are rarely asked to consider whether the behavior they are evaluating fits a pattern exhibited by thousands of others in the same on-line community. Likewise, prosecutors and judges are reluctant to dwell on the religious beliefs of defendants. The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion and implies that courts are not allowed to consider whether a person’s religious beliefs are false. However, the architects of the U.S. Constitution likely never envisioned that religion would one day be used by an identifiable segment of a population to attack Americans. While aggressive prosecution of jihadists can hardly be considered a threat to the free exercise of religion, it, nevertheless, is at odds with how some policymakers in Washington choose publicly to frame the Islamist threat.

In its zeal to avoid the appearance of impugning Islam, the Obama administration adopted a new national security policy, two years in the making, which uses the general term “violent extremists” to avoid emphasis on the threat posed by radical Islam. The Department of Homeland Security’s secretary Janet Napolitano replaced “terrorism” with “man-caused” disasters while the administration’s national security strategy replaced the term “Islamic terrorism” with “violent extremism.” In May 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder’s acrobatic refusal to concede during a congressional hearing that radical Islam might be a factor fueling homegrown terrorism became a minor YouTube hit.

This reframing is reflective of a broader trend in the mainstream media. The official guidelines of the American Society of Professional Journalists recommend “avoid[ing] using word combinations such as ‘Islamic terrorist’ or ‘Muslim extremist'” and suggest defining jihad as the desire “to exert oneself for the good of Islam and to better oneself.” The effect of such guidelines is to scrub public discussion of the jihadist threat.

Fearful of reinforcing the “Muslim terrorist” stereotype, reporters often minimize the religious component of violent actions by Muslims and ignore evidence of Islamist indoctrination. This was particularly evident after the Fort Hood massacre. “I cringe that he’s a Muslim… I think he’s probably just a nut case,” Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas said of Hasan. Joe Klein of Time magazine decried attempts to argue that the massacre “was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.” In the words of Warren Richey, a Christian Science Monitor staff writer, the “only apparent connection between Abdo and Hasan is that they are both Muslim-Americans who served in the U.S. army.” This attitude makes it ever more challenging to identify cases.

Such commentaries display a strong subtext of wishful thinking. No one wants to believe that any sane Muslim serving in the U.S. army was radicalized through on-line socialization with al-Qaeda into massacring his comrades. Many refuse to accept that “a true American, [who] plays football, helps his grandmother and mows the lawns of his neighbors,” as Bledsoe was described by his lawyer, could radicalize to the point of murdering U.S. servicemen without being crazy.

Law enforcement, hampered by bad policies and fear of profiling, assumes (or at least publicly maintains) that religion is incidental to crime. As a Seattle FBI agent explains, “Ideology is less important than action… it does not matter if it is Christian identity or radical Islam. We have to focus on these guys committing crimes.” Of course, Christian extremists are not carrying out terror attacks the world over. Despite concerns about antiabortion violence by Christian fundamentalists in the United States, such attacks accounted for only nine deaths since 1970 (all of the perpetrators were convicted; none pled insanity). In contrast, it is estimated that 51,319 people have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists in the past seven and a half years alone, and more than 84,323 have been injured.

Unfortunately, juries are not asked to consider whether the behavior they are evaluating fits a pattern exhibited by thousands of others in the same worldwide community. Only when the jihadist is a member of a known terror group will this commonality be recognized and the insanity defense rejected since it is perceived as a hostile, political act rather than an expression of religious belief.

Whether stemming from ignorance, political correctness, or wishful thinking, these misperceptions effectively efface a critical element of investigating and punishing crime—motivation. If law enforcement intends to ignore the motivation, commonalities, and shared characteristics of jihadist attacks, it cannot possibly hope to prevent them. If jurors are not informed of such things, they cannot deliver impartial justice.

Conclusion

Michael Leiter, National Counterterrorism Center director, has bemoaned al-Qaeda propaganda “designed to inspire like-minded individuals to conduct attacks in their home countries,” but this begs the question of what made them “like-minded” in the first place. The vast majority of those who answer this call are not crazy; they are radicalized.

Melvin Bledsoe shed a great deal of light on the indoctrination of his son Carlos in recent testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. Carlos converted to Islam and changed his name after going off to college in Nashville (hardly a hotbed of terrorism) and frequenting local mosques in the fall of 2003. On visits home, he tried to convert members of his family, even tearing down Martin Luther King’s picture from the wall. In 2005, his family visited him, only to find that he had dropped out of school and turned his dog loose in the woods, claiming that the animal was considered impure under Islamic law.

Bledsoe blamed his son’s radicalization on Muslim groups in Nashville that converted him and facilitated his travel abroad, as well as the culture of political correctness that allows Islamists to organize freely so long as they abide by the letter of the law. “Fear of stepping on a special minority population’s toes, even as a segment of that population wants to stamp out America and everything we stand for,” is what radicalized Carlos, he testified. It is this fear that drives the misguided efforts of media and politicians to rationalize jihadist acts as born of insanity.

U.S. policymakers’ strenuous efforts to deny that radical Islam is a driver of jihadist violence have served only to compromise the American people’s right to thorough investigation and vigorous prosecution of those who threaten their security. As homegrown terror plots continue to proliferate in the years ahead, law enforcement must be trained to recognize the telltale signs of jihadist radicalization and freely report their findings to the public while prosecutors must not shy away from putting the belief systems fueling the violence on trial. The legal definition of insanity should be changed to exclude more explicitly those who are indoctrinated to believe that God wants them to murder innocent men, women, and children.

meforum.org

When the 2011 Jasmine Revolution catalyzed a major shift within Tunisian society, contemporary European observers noted that this movement exhibited similarities to the European model of revolution. Many argued that Tunisia’s experience had and would continue to remain distinct from those influences shaping the Egyptian, Yemeni, Libyan, and Syrian revolutions, which had quickly become influenced by militarism, tribalism, and fundamentalism.

French and Tunisian researchers Emmanual Todd and Youssef Courbage, who conducted a Tunisian census on demographics and education that they published in their book Le rendez-vous des Civilisations (2007), confirmed this notion. The authors presented the changes in social and familial makeup that Tunisian society witnessed in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Their research focused on the literacy rates, marriage and kinship ties, family sizes, and tracked these demographic changes’ impact on societal rights and freedoms in Tunisia. According to this data, it was social progress that led to such a different popular revolution than those seen in other iterations of the Arab Spring. The Tunisian experience lacked the otherwise dominant element of “political prayer” in public squares, as well as the emergence of mosques and minarets as revolutionary platforms.

Yet paradoxically, researchers also began to take note of a large number of young Tunisians in the ranks of al-Qaeda’s branches in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa, and later in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). In fact, both official and unofficial reports indicate that the number of young Tunisians joining ISIS is the highest of all Arab and Muslim nationalities, with approximately 6,000 fighters fighting abroad from a country with a population of around 11 million. Moreover, sources in the Tunisian Ministry of Interior have reported the prevention of an additional 15,000 young Tunisians from traveling to Syria via Turkey to join ISIS.

The Jasmine Revolution brought to light what might be called the “open” jihadist migration out of Tunisia. After Tunisia’s first legislative elections, the successful Islamic Ennahda Party began an “open door” policy for Tunisian youth joining radical Islamic movements in the Levant and in Syria to leave the country. Reportedly, the primary motivation for this policy was to remove the Salafist-jihadist influence from inside the country by encouraging its members and supporters to join Al Qaeda and ISIS abroad. Internally, the Salafists constituted a major source of disruption for the Ennahda party, which had not yet consolidated its support and government. Those Salafists who ultimately joined the jihadist movement apparently came to place revenge against tyranny above all other concerns, and subsequently began targeting Arab society as a whole.

Researchers have often since suggested that poverty, unemployment, marginalization, and the historical legacy of colonialism are the most important catalysts of Tunisia’s jihadist migration. Of these issues, the legacy of colonialism in Tunisia is perhaps one of the least discussed in its relation to fundamentalism. After France gave up its dominance over the cultural and economic life of colonized countries, these states were freed geographically but not intellectually from the weighty legacy of colonialism, which led to the split of Tunisian society into two contradictory sides. The first is fascinated by Tunisia’s colonialist legacy and has attempted to hold onto those aspects of colonialism it has deemed beneficial, while the second side has taken it upon itself to attempt to erase all traces of colonialism through religious extremism and a return to fundamentalism. Because both Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali fought the latter group vigorously from Tunisia’s independence in 1962 until 2011, this voice remained subdued.

Yet the hibernating movement of fundamentalism only needed a spark to combust. That spark came with the Tunisian revolution and the subsequent atmosphere of freedom. Simultaneously, the phenomenon of extremism and Salafism-jihadism began to rebound under the Ennahda Party. Within a very short period, Salafism became part of the political and ultimately social and cultural landscapes of Tunisia. Manifestations of masculinity spread, represented by long beards and so-called “Shari’a” clothing, and women increasingly wore the niqab in Tunisian streets. The societal shift towards fundamentalism presented an excellent environment for Tunisian youth to become interested in Salafism and, ultimately, jihadism.

Other factors motivating Tunisian foreign fighters include the entrenched religious-sectarian imagination on one hand and radicalizing transnational discourse on the other. Although Tunisian society is not characterized by sectarian identities because its inhabitants are overwhelmingly Sunni, there is a regional media machine that propagates the idea that ​​Sunnis are being murdered in Iraq and Syria. This idea meshes well with the fact that many youth from the Maghreb or North Africa have a poor grasp on the societal mosaic that makes up the Levant and do not understand that what Sunnis are experiencing is also being experienced by Shiite, Alawite, Kurdish, Druze, and Ismaili communities in the region.

Instead, the regional situation appears bleak and one-dimensional: Sunnis are being killed. As Tunisian researcher Huda Hawas has noted, this interpretation is fueled by “a knowledge vacuum and ignorance of the religion, which easily infuses any vision or perception in the minds of young people.” In her view, collective imagination, rather than reality and knowledge of reality’s necessities, has become the driving force in many youths’ decisions to join foreign terrorist organizations.

Hawas believes that the absence of the humanities in education curricula and dominance of superficial knowledge or outright ignorance regarding religion, combined with marginalization and poverty, leave popular imagination accepting of extremist views. All these factors have turned the Tunisian youths “migrating” to jihad into ticking time bombs.

The most important reason for this combustibility, which can be described as “free immolation,” is the absence of socio-cultural and economic development projects to confront extremist ideology, whose speech has become transnational. It has become common for Tunisians to pray behind a Salafist imam from the Gulf, whose sermons began broadcasting via satellite in the last years of Ben Ali’s rule and have continued after Ben Ali’s overthrow. And whereas the state traditionally controlled the language of friday sermons in Tunisian mosques, this language is now controlled by religious charities, who are often using the pulpit to sow sectarian hatred and racism.

These extremist views face little backlash, since North African religious education is generally poor. Consequently, historical religious identity has become easy to co-opt by forming a composite of religious doctrine and local culture and merging this with a new identity formed to Salafist-jihadist standards.

Just as the mosque and other religious institutions in the European and American Muslim diaspora have become a major force in attracting youth towards extremist ideologies under the banner of “charity work,” satellite channels and social media networks play a similar role in majority Muslim countries. In the Arab world, most media outlets are not committed to the rules of professional ethics, and there is a lack of control over violent images broadcast by official and social communication streams.

Another often ignored issue—of no less political significance than other issues related to the crises of Arabs—is the Palestinian cause. This movement has and continues to attract the attention of Arab communities the world over. In this sense the Levant is influential not only symbolically as the Holy Land but also practically due to the partition of Palestine and the emergence of the State of Israel. The Palestinian cause, in which the issue of nation and land mixed with political Islam, became a template for the whole region. This marriage between religion and politics, which in turn necessitated the advocacy of a dual national and religious solution, had a significant impact on groups ranging from Islamists to nationalists and leftists in the Arab world.

Tunisian writer and journalist Walid Mejri has discussed at length the historical factors that developed into a pattern of Tunisian youth migration outside the national borders to participate in pan-Arab conflicts. According to Mejri, 1948 and the Arab-Israeli war began the first major migration. Later spikes in migration corresponded with subsequent Arab-Israeli conflicts, in 1967, 1973 and during the 1982 Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Based on these patterns, Mejri has posited that Tunisian youth migration to join al-Qaeda and ISIS is simply one iteration of a tradition of participation in conflicts across the Arab world, particularly those supporting the Palestinian cause.

Based on Tunisian presence among the ranks of al-Qaeda in 1980s Afghanistan and other radical organizations, it appears that the catalyst of the Palestinian cause partially morphed into a the desire to support a new symbolic homeland among the Afghani mountains of Tora-Bora.

Moreover, there is a deep link between elements of the Palestinian movement and the emergence of Salafism as a political force. The Palestinian diaspora throughout the Arab world was among the first incubators of a Salafist movement that cut ties with apolitical Salafists by espousing armed, globalized jihad, as well as labeling a variety of secular and Muslim regional political actors as infidels. Palestinian figures such as Omar Abu Omar (Abu Qatada), Hisham Sharidi, and Abdullah Azzam  severed their ties with the diaspora by building an imaginary homeland, consecrating the absence of a nation and its memory. Under their leadership, these prototypical groups turned “no-place” into an imagined, alternative homeland within Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and any other location where jihadist heroic acts could be carried out.

The magic of an “imagined homeland”—devised by political Islam to replace the continuing failure to make a Palestinian state a true geopolitical reality—attracted huge numbers of youth from other Arab and Muslim countries, among which Palestine held the lion’s share. The spell this concept cast dragged those captured by it to the bottom, a world of sectarian rejections and “free immolation.”

In summary, this is a historical migration, driven by overlapping layers of nationalism, politics, and religion. But above all, jihadist imagination has become a substitute for a the tragedies of the present reality. It moves from the absurdity of post-liberation to the search for the “Garden of Eden” close to the colonizer, from the walls of despotism to the courtyards of the “Arab spring.” Among all those phases, the involvement of Arabs in extremism and “free immolation” remains one of the questions that emerged in the twentieth century and promises to profoundly shape our current century.

fikraforum.org

In 2016, there is no reasonable doubt about what the biggest threat to world peace is, Daesh. Despite being universally stigmatized, they never fail to recruit new converts. The reason behind the success is that Daesh borrows tools from the Western pop culture, video games and social networks to win the people’s hearts and minds.

Militant Islamist groups worldwide have pledged allegiance to Daesh, which today claims to have established “provinces” in 14 countries, including Libya. Daesh are ruthless, uncompromising and utterly fanatical. They slay their enemies in gruesome ways and call it jihad. Even with the inhuman cruelty, the terrorists continue to recruit newcomers from all parts of the world.Perhaps somewhat abnormal for anti-Western militants, Daesh relies heavily on Western propaganda tricks and pop culture gimmicks.

“Daesh are very skilled at using propaganda and other instruments. They use language that young people recognize and fall under the spell,” Jon Fitje Hoffmann, technical director for analysis at Norway’s Police Security Service (PST), told Norwegian national broadcaster NRK.

Terrorist organizations have used propaganda as an instrument for ages. But Daesh are not your garden variety terrorists, Oscar-nominated Norwegian director Stefan Faldbakken pointed out, after having closely followed the terrorist organization’s methods.

“They use our whole popular culture against us and still say ‘death to the Western culture.’ They turn it all upside down. I think that is very interesting artistically speaking,” he said.

The difference between Daesh and al-Qaeda in terms of propaganda methods is therefore even more striking. Whereas al-Qaeda’s publicity relies on bearded men, preaching in Arabic for hours, Daesh stakes on artistically captivating footage shot from multiple cameras with an ideological twist. Besides, the concise and action-packed style melds together with the spotless production striking similarities with American film and television.

“I would like divide their videos into two categories. On the one hand, you have those pure bragging videos, showing how Daesh have beaten all their opponents. You can see their enemies dig their own grave and being executed. <…> The second category looks more like travel videos, which show how great it feels to live in the Islamic State,” Faldbakken said, pointing out the “Visit Daesh” feel about them.

Apart from videos, Daesh use computer games to appeal to the younger public, Norwegian game developer Jon Cato Lorentzen said. In particular, shooting games are “improved” in a way that allows you to play as a Daesh soldier.

“They use games because it is a place where young people meet. If you work within marketing and want to target a specific audience, try to stay where they are. This is a common mantra in the advertising industry,” Lorentzen said.

Another one of Daesh’s features is that it has a large number of followers who have grown up in the West and thus possess knowledge of software, games and movies, which also accounts for their fluency in the social networks. Compared to Daesh, other militants mostly rely on local resources and therefore have a limited capacity. With internet slang evolving with lightning speed, it becomes increasingly difficult for an outsider to follow.

“They have enough people who have grown up with video games, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube — the whole internet culture. They know very well how to respond and how to create a ‘meme,’” Faldbakken pointed out.

Daesh do not hesitate to take Western popular culture mottos and reverse them to achieve a dramaturgical and ideological impact. An example of this includes aptly turning the motto acronym YOLO (You Only Live Once) into YODO (You Only Die Once).

sputniknews.com

Sunday’s terrorist attack in Orlando, and in Paris yesterday night, underscores an increasing threat of “lone wolf” terrorists whose actions are fueled by an Islamic State group propaganda machine luring recruits at an alarming rate, experts say.

And while there were two perpetrators in the Dec. 2 terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were both, like Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, radicalized Muslims, not part of any terrorist cell or extremist group, and pledged their allegiance to ISIS before carrying out their attacks.

Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League in New York City who has studied lone-wolf terrorists in the U.S. for 25 years, said Monday that, unlike Mateen, Farook and Malik would not technically be considered “lone wolves” because their attack involved two people instead of one.

Farook and Malik, however, did operate on the periphery of ISIS, used simple and easily acquired weapons, mainly firearms, and never succeeded in committing a second act of violence, all of which are the traits of a lone-wolf terrorist, Pitcavage said.

Brian Levin, a counterterrorism expert and director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said ISIS instituted an intensive multiplatform internet recruitment and training campaign that exploited its successes in Syria to encourage new members to launch attacks on soft targets where they reside.

“Even though their fortunes have soured somewhat and fewer Americans are signing up as foreign fighters, there is still a subset of angry and unstable people who are susceptible to radicalization over the internet or through peers,” Levin said.

According to a report published by the Anti-Defamation League in March, 80 U.S. residents were linked to terror plots and other activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology in 2015, up 180 percent over the previous year and a level of activity never before seen.

The ADL attributed the sharp increase in terrorism activity to a combination of global trends, technological advances and the “constant tide of terrorist messages and propaganda.”

The report noted the December arrest and indictment of Riverside resident Enrique Marquez Jr., accused of providing the assault rifles used in the Inland Regional Center attack in San Bernardino to Farook and Malik.

The ADL report also noted Farook played a primary role in radicalizing Marquez, using online propaganda to teach Marquez about extremist ideologies, including online videos and lectures by former al-Qaida recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki and the English language online jihadist propaganda magazine Inspire.

Levin said the government and private sector have significantly countered ISIS recruitment efforts online.

But the ISIS threat is still very real, as ISIS has developed its own encryption program and is figuring out other ways to circumvent authorities, Levin said.

What makes the idea of lone terrorists most chilling is the difficulty law enforcement faces in identifying and tracking them.

“They’re a needle in the haystack,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League in New York who has studied lone-wolf terrorists in the U.S. for 25 years. “We have 315 million people in the U.S. right now. Even the fringe of the fringe is a large number. If you’re reclusive to begin with, you’re not necessarily drawing attention to yourself.”

He cited the November 2009 mass shooting in Fort Hood, Texas, carried out by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32.

“When law enforcement is diligent, they absolutely can and do get a number of lone wolves before they can commit a violent act, but some will always slip through the cracks,” Pitcavage said.

The drastic spike in Islamic extremist-related terrorist plots and attacks in 2015 illustrates how sophisticated and successful the ISIS propaganda machine is, said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“They’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince their average, everyday person if they want to make something of their lives, now they have the opportunity,” Segal said. “ISIS is offering those things to people through a set of circumstances and propaganda that we’ve never seen before.”

ocregister.com

The recent events in Libya hit headlines. Alarm bells about militants’ expansion in Libya are ringing. The Islamic State (IS) has strengthened its position in the stronghold of Sirte, a key city less than 400 miles away from the Italian island of Sicily, which now has become a new focal point for the group.

The massive Sirte Basin is the centre of Libya’s oil industry. About 80% of Libya’s accessible oil is located there. Although IS militants do not control these reserves, they can disrupt production, or launch an attempt to take control of the resources for themselves. The group has already increased its influence by absorbing jihadists from the al-Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Sharia. It is gradually expanding its reach out from Sirte and towards the rest of the surrounding region. About 125 miles of territory along the Libyan coast is de facto under IS control. Last month, the Libyan government warned that IS could seize most of the country if it is not halted soon.

It is estimated that there are 6,000 Islamic State fighters in Libya. IS’s consolidation of territory in Sirte gives the group a foothold in close proximity to Europe – and near a number of potentially fragile neighboring states. The international community is concerned that the Islamic State could further destabilize nearby countries such as Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Italy and Spain are particularly worried because Libyan insecurity could affect their oil and natural gas interests if the IS group starts to advance westward. There are at least 400,000 illegal immigrants waiting in Libya to cross to Europe. The situation in the country is a security threat of global scale.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council have agreed to supply Libya’s internationally recognized government with arms to fight the Islamic State group and other armed factions in the divided country.

Top officials from Russia, China, the UK and France along with some 15 other countries and international organizations said in Vienna on May 16 that they will approve exemptions to a UN arms embargo on Libya to supply weapons to the government of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, head of the UN-backed “Government of National Accord” (GNA).

A joint statement from the attending countries drew attention to Libya’s role as a major transit point for migrants trying to reach Europe. “We look forward to partnering with the GNA and neigbouring countries to tackle the threat posed throughout the Mediterranean and on its land borders by criminal organizations engaged in all forms of smuggling and trafficking, including in human beings,” it reads. “We are ready to respond to the Libyan government’s requests for training and equipping the presidential guard and vetted forces from throughout Libya,” the statement stresses.

The UN arms embargo prevents Libya from purchasing fighter jets, attack helicopters, tanks and munitions. The Prime Minister of the GNA, Fayez Sarraj, said he would submit a list of weapons his government wanted to the UN Security Council for approval.

The Vienna meeting also agreed to train the presidential guard, drawn from police and army units from around the country, to protect government installations and vital infrastructure. In the meantime, the GNA is forced to rely on militias from the capital and the allied formations from the city of Misurata.

The crisis-hit country has been in chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-time ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011. It’s an open secret that weapons from Libya are being smuggled as far as Mauritania and Somalia. Those that remain in Libya have largely been seized by the militias, as well as the Islamic State group.

In March the UN-backed GNA arrived to Tripoli defying threats by rival factions that it was not welcome in the capital. It is supposed to replace the two rival administrations – one based in Tripoli, the other in the eastern city of Tobruk dominated by General Khalifa Haftar, who has returned to Libya from exile in the United States. The three are bickering over who is in charge.

The Tobruk-based parliament, which is the one recognized by the international community, still hasn’t formally approved the UN deal. While some members support Serraj’s government, others outright reject it, viewing it as a compromise to their Tripoli rivals. GeneralKhalifa Haftar has remained silent on the deal and many of his loyalists oppose it. Analysts fear that weapons provided to the GNA could fall into the hands of IS militants and lead to clashes between factions loyal to the internationally recognized government and the General.

Earlier this month there was a series of deadly skirmishes between Haftar’s forces and militias from Misurata in Zilla, south of Sirte, where the General had said he had sent his soldiers to fight Islamic State.

The international community seeks to integrate General Haftar in the government structures and avoid a split of the country.

It should be noted that Turkey is on the other side of the fence than the international community. It is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya.

It has been reported that theLibyanbranches of the Islamic State, al–Qaeda, and theMuslim Brotherhood are in talks to form a shared governing council (a “mega-merger”).

As in Syria, Turkey stands in the way of international effort to bring peace to a war-torn country.

Russia will be ready to consider the possibility of arms deliveries to legitimate Libyan government only if the UN Security Council approves the lifting of weapons embargo in force since 2011, the Russian Ambassador to Libya said on May 23. “The issue of lifting the weapons embargo was discussed. It is premature to say that the embargo will be lifted soon as it should be decided by the UNSC and involves consideration of a wide range of criteria and conditions,” stressed Ivan Molotkov, who took part in the meeting. “The issue will be decided by the UNSC, and if Russia supports at least a partial lifting of the embargo that would mean that we will be ready to go ahead with plans to deliver arms to Libya,” he added.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the issue of lifting an arms embargo from Libya can be discussed only after political processes inside the country are completed.

This century three Western foreign military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been aimed at government change and, actually, all have ended in disaster. The parallels of Libya with Iraq and Afghanistan are uncomfortably suggestive. No matter what kind of regimes has been toppled, the ensuing lack of law and order has brought about much more trouble and instability affecting adjacent states. In each of these “nation building” cases military have been dispersed, governments disbanded, the judiciary dismantled and armed gangs and militias left free to run riot spreading anarchy around. Little or no attempt was made to replace the created mess with a new order.

This time it’s different. It’s an international effort applied according to the norms of international law, not a US-led Western unilateral endeavor. Russia, the West, Middle Eastern and North African international organizations are in the same boat facing the common threat.

Germany’s Foreign Minister has stressed the importance of Moscow’s role in dealing with the world’s most serious conflicts and crises. Saying that “isolation” is not a policy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier predicted that Russia’s “involvement” might be necessary to stabilize Libya. “I venture to predict, in the efforts to stabilize Libya, we will also need Russia’s involvement,” he stated.

Mr Steinmeier hit the nail right on the head.

Like in Syria, the West needs Russia to tackle a major security problem.

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