Not all radical ideas are connected with violence. A radical opinion challenges the basic assumptions of a culture; so a radical is someone who wants deep change in society. Women seeking the vote were once considered radicals. Antiwar activism is a radical idea for many people, although it justifies nonviolence rather than violence. Radical ideas are common; political violence is rare.
Of course, some radical ideas are invoked to justify violence. In the United States, there are currently three kinds of radical ideas that have been linked with terrorist attacks: jihadist ideas (e.g., 9/11 attackers), right-wing ideas (e.g., Timothy McVeigh), and left-wing ideas (e.g., Animal Liberation Front and Environmental Liberation Front).
As we will show in the next section, only a few of those who justify violence for a cause ever try to perpetrate violence. Therefore, the connection between radical ideas and terrorism is weak in three ways: Many radical ideas are not linked with violence (i.e., pacifism), few who justify violence ever actually perpetrate violence (see the following section), and many terrorists don’t engage in violence because of radical ideas (e.g., status-seeking, unfreezing, and love; see Chapter 3). Taken together, these three weaknesses mean that the likelihood that an individual holding radical ideas is dangerous is about the same as being struck by lightning.
“Extreme opinion” and “extreme action” are often used interchangeably with “radical opinion” and “radical action.” Especially the US government’s efforts to fight terrorism have been framed as a program of “countering violent extremism.”1
A “conveyor belt” from extreme opinion to extreme action implies that everyone with radical ideas will sooner or later move to radical action. In fact, the connection between ideas and action is generally weak, except in special circumstances, such as a voting booth.
Research in social psychology finds that the correlation between attitude and behavior is weak because behavior is determined by many factors besides attitude: social norms, perceived control, means and opportunity, and moral judgment. My attitude toward helping others is positive, but perhaps I worry that others will think me a sucker for trying to help a street person, or I don’t know what to do to help this person, or I don’t have time today to stop to help, or I don’t want to be responsible for helping a drunk stay drunk.
Similarly, terrorism research has found that few individuals with radical ideas ever engage in violence. In the United States, about 10 percent of Muslims believe that suicide bombing of civilian targets is often or sometimes justified in defense of Islam. That 10 percent translates to about 100,000 US Muslims. But the number indicted or convicted for jihadist plots targeting the United States is only in the hundreds. In other words, less than 1 in 100 who justify suicide bombing will actually try to perpetrate violence.
The weak connection between ideas and action can be seen in studies of individual terrorists. Many had no radical ideas, or indeed anything like an ideology, before they joined a terrorist group. Some joined for excitement and status, some for love of a friend or relative or lover already in the group who asked for help, some for personal revenge, some to escape trouble with police or family, or to escape loneliness.
On top of individual motivation is the power of group dynamics. Both in-group dynamics and intergroup conflict dynamics can move individuals to terrorist action. In-group dynamics begin to work as soon as an individual joins an existing terrorist group; the individual learns the ideology and norms of the group and competes for status by trying to do more and risk more than other members. This competition leads the whole group, including the new member, toward escalating violence. The power of the group over its members, the power of in-group dynamics, is increased if the group becomes isolated, as when a radical group goes underground to evade government power.
Intergroup dynamics emerge from the conflict between a protest group and security forces. Once either protestors or police resort to violence, the conflict is likely to escalate, with both sides using increasing violence. Escalation occurs because each side sees its own violence as less than the enemy’s violence, so what looks like tit for tat to one side looks like tit for two tats to the other side.
Escalation also occurs because the stakes of the conflict change from material goals to status goals—for instance, from pro- and anti-nuclear missiles to who determines national policy, us or them. Material goals can be divided in a compromise (how many missiles? based where?) but “who will blink first” is not subject to compromise. They win or we win.
So, there are two ways group dynamics push for extreme actions: In-group dynamics give more status to individuals on the extreme end of opinion and behavior, and the dynamics of intergroup conflict can move a whole group from radical ideas to escalating levels of extreme action.
The same in-group dynamics and intergroup conflict dynamics that move individuals and groups toward violence also move individuals and groups on the government side of the conflict. Conflict escalation afflicts both sides of the conflict. We return to this point in a later section.
Radicalization of opinion only rarely translates into radical action, but it would be a mistake to conclude that the relation between ideas and actions is always weak. One direction of this relation is relatively strong: Radical actions are likely to lead to radical opinions. Humans tend to justify what we do. If an individual joins a terrorist group and joins in perpetrating violence, that individual will find reasons to justify the violence.
This tendency has been much studied in social psychology in relation to “cognitive dissonance theory.” According to this theory, doing something that goes against our positive self-image—something stupid or sleazy—gives rise to an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance. To get rid of this feeling, we seek new cognitions that will justify and make sense of what we did.
Normal people—and the great majority of terrorists are not suffering any kind of psychopathology—are likely to feel some dissonance about killing, especially killing women and children. Dissonance pushes terrorists to find new and stronger reasons for their violence. As already noted, many individuals join a terrorist group for reasons that are not ideological—for status and excitement, to help a loved one, to escape troubles or loneliness. Once involved in terrorist violence, these individuals will learn at least a simple version of whatever ideology justifies the group’s violence.
In short, radical action pushes individuals and groups toward more radical ideas and opinions. This tendency is strong, in contrast with the weak push from radical ideas to radical action.
One way to think about the strength of the path from action to opinion, and the weakness of the path from opinion to action, is to agree with Aristotle that virtue lies in doing what we find reason for, whereas dissonance is rationalizing what we do. Research, and everyday experience, suggest that virtue is more difficult and less common than rationalization.
Radicalization of opinion and radicalization of action are separately represented in our two-pyramids model. The opinion pyramid has four levels: no support for a political cause; sympathy for the cause; justification of violence in support of the cause; and, at the apex of the pyramid, personal moral obligation to take up violence for the cause. The first three levels can be tracked in poll results. For US Muslims, about 60 percent do not believe that the US War on Terrorism is a war on Islam (no support), 40 percent believe the War on Terrorism is a war on Islam (sympathizers), and 10 percent say that suicide bombing against civilians is often or sometimes justified in defense of Islam (justifiers). Changes in these percentages register success and failure in the war of ideas against neo-jihadists such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The action pyramid also has four levels: inert, legal activism, illegal activism without killing (sit-ins, property destruction), and terrorism (killing). These levels can be tracked in case histories of individuals and groups moving to terrorism—and moving back from terrorism.
It is important to notice that neither pyramid is a staircase or stage model that requires an individual or a group to traverse each lower level to reach a higher level of radicalization. For instance, an apolitical individual may go from inert to terrorist in one step if his brother, a terrorist, calls on him for help.
The two pyramids depend on very different psychologies. Radicalization to action almost always involves participation in a small group, bringing in the power of intragroup dynamics and intergroup conflict dynamics. (Lone wolf terrorists are a relatively rare exception discussed in Chapter 7.) Radicalization of opinion, described in Chapter 5, is a mass-level phenomenon that can be tracked by opinion polls. Radicalization of opinion occurs via mass-level events such as jujitsu politics, martyrdoms, and development of an essentialist perception of the enemy (hate).
An important implication of the two-pyramids model, with its contradiction of the conveyor belt from radical ideas to radical actions, is that anyone who opposes violent action is a potential ally. This is important because only a minority of Salafi (fundamentalist) Muslims justify violence against the West. Most Salafi, like many Orthodox Jews and some fundamentalist Christians, are quietist; they wish only to separate themselves from the impurities of modern Western ways. Rather than pointing to Salafi beliefs as the source of neo-jihadi violence, Western security services might better let quietist Salafi work to draw Muslims to their communities.
Similarly, there is an important potential ally in Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation). Hizb is an international Sunni Muslim organization that was founded by Palestinians in Jerusalem in 1953. It aims for restoration of an international caliphate—that is, it has the same aim as al-Qaeda and the same aim as Islamic State. There is a crucial difference, however. Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are committed to terrorist attacks against the West, but Hizb has condemned attacks on civilians, including condemnation of both the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 and the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005. Hizb does believe, however, that attacks on US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, including suicide bombing attacks, are justified as defensive jihad.
Thus, Hizb ut-Tahrir is not against violence in principle but is against terrorist attacks in the West. It has the same goals as al-Qaeda and Islamic State, but different tactics. Hizb has been banned in several European countries and in most predominantly Muslim countries; it has not been banned in the United States or the United Kingdom. Those who believe that Hizb is a conveyor belt to terrorism want Hizb declared a terrorist organization because its ideology is dangerous. As we have explained, the conveyor belt is a myth. Ninety-nine percent of those with radical ideas never move to radical action.
Those who believe in the conveyor belt claim that young Muslims become impatient with Hizb’s slow-moving and nonviolent progress toward a caliphate and form splinter groups that get involved in terrorist attacks in the West. They have one example: In the United Kingdom, a small group broke off from Hizb to form al-Muhajiroun, whose members have been convicted of terrorism offenses. One example since Hizb was founded in 1953 does not suggest a serious threat, and in any case no organization can be responsible for those who leave it.2
Precisely because Hizb wants what al-Qaeda and Islamic State want, Hizb competes with these organizations for status and recruits. Better they should go to Hizb. Western governments that ban Hizb are banning the strongest Muslim organization that stands against terrorist attacks in the West.
The internet is important—for commerce, for politics, for networking. The problem is not that it is difficult to imagine how the internet supports radicalization, the problem is that it is too easy.
Here are some of the possible internet contributions to radicalization that are suggested by the US Department of Justice in an “Awareness Brief.”3 For each possibility, we offer a parenthetical interpretation as an attempt to radicalize ideas or actions:
Using a combination of traditional websites; mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; and other online services, extremists broadcast their views [ideas], provoke negative sentiment toward enemies [ideas], incite people to violence [actions], glorify martyrs [ideas], create virtual communities with like-minded individuals [ideas], provide religious or legal justifications for proposed actions [actions], and communicate with and groom new recruits [ideas and actions]. Extremists post incendiary materials such as educational videos about how to construct explosives and operate weapons [actions], videos of successful attacks [actions], lectures espousing radical views [ideas], blog posts and messages supporting and further encouraging attacks and acts of violence [actions]. For example, terrorist groups have used Facebook to exchange private messages and information to coordinate attacks [actions] and Facebook pages that individuals can “like” to show their support [ideas], have disseminated propaganda and press releases on Twitter [ideas], and have uploaded extremists’ sermons [ideas] and training videos [actions] on YouTube. They have also used online message boards, chat rooms, and dating sites to meet and interact with one other and spread their messages [ideas].
There are several things to notice about this list. First is that the list is long: 17 possible ways that the internet contributes to radicalization, including 1 (communicate with and groom new recruits) that seems to be about both ideas and actions. Second, 10 of the cited internet contributions to radicalization are focused on transmission of ideas, whereas 8 relate to encouraging action. Third, notice that 3 of the possible contributions to radical action stand out as providing means and opportunity for action (educational videos about how to construct explosives and operate weapons, videos of successful attacks, messages to coordinate attacks).
The length of the list indicates the size of the problem: We do not yet have research that tries to test the effect of each possible internet contribution to radicalization, let alone research to determine which are more and less important contributions.
The fact that internet uses aimed at radicalization of action are almost as many as uses aimed at radicalization of ideas (8 vs. 10) points again to the importance of distinguishing radicalization of ideas from radicalization of action; terrorists are not just selling ideology on the internet, they are pushing action. In particular, 3 of the 8 possible contributions to radical action are of a special kind: They provide means and opportunity for violent action. Terrorism analysts usually focus on motivation—why individuals and groups turn to terrorism—but terrorists seem to recognize as well the importance of means and opportunity for violence.
Case histories of individual radicalization with sufficient detail to see the role of internet content are rare. Beginning with the 7/7 bombers, we look at three cases of radicalization to terrorism that do tell us something about what internet content was most important: victim videos and jihad videos.
Mohammed Sidique Khan is generally thought to be the leader of the group of suicide bombers who killed 52 and injured more than 700 in their July 7, 2005, attack in the London underground. Here is what the BBC had to say about how Khan was radicalized:4
While his path into terrorism had been linked to radical mosques, close friends reveal this was not the case.
They say he became part of a tight-knit group of young radicals who watched violent videos about Muslim suffering.
The documentary Biography of a Bomber spoke to a former member of his inner circle who tells of violent Jihadi videos being played in an attempt to radicalise young men.
. . .
The men used to spend time paintballing, trips that would take place immediately after watching extremely violent videos depicting Muslim suffering around the world.
Colleen LaRose ran away from a home in which her father was raping her and her sister. She did drugs. She prostituted herself. She found a boyfriend who indulged her, and moved in with him. Five years later, she argued with him in a bar in Amsterdam and went home with a Muslim man. After this one-night experience of Islam, she spent time on the internet learning more about the religion. She made her profession of faith to Islam on a whim, in an email, in early 2008. But she never went to a mosque, and her pledge to give up alcohol was soon lost; she spent her time flirting with men on websites and watching warrior films such as Braveheart and Spartacus.
For more detail, we move to an excerpt from Shiffman’s (2012) study of LaRose, which has a special claim on our attention because Shiffman was the only person to obtain an interview with LaRose after her indictment for terrorist offenses:5
Not until six months after the online conversion to Islam would she re-engage. In addition to passing time watching action movies, LaRose became riveted by violent YouTube videos of Israeli attacks on Palestinians and American attacks on Iraqis.
The videos of dead and wounded children moved her most. Sometimes while she watched she could hear the young American children in the duplex below hers, laughing and playing. The disconnect infuriated her. No one seemed to know or care about the plight of the Palestinians. It was so unfair.
By summer 2008, LaRose was posting jihadist videos on YouTube and MySpace. She used various names online, including Sister of Terror, Ms. Machiavelli and Jihad Jane. During the next year she exchanged messages with avowed jihadists.
They asked her to give money for jihad. She gave. They asked her to become a martyr. She agreed to travel to Europe to kill a Swedish artist who had blasphemed Prophet Mohammed. She traveled to Europe, but things didn’t work out, and she received a 10-year prison sentence for terrorism-related crimes.
LaRose left a trail of emails and postings that illuminate her trajectory of radicalization. An infatuation with Islam and Muslim men was transformed to action through the power of victim videos—especially Muslim child victims no one cared about, just as LaRose had been a child victim no one cared about. From watching victim videos to posting jihad videos, to giving money for jihad, to promising to kill for Islam and departing for Europe to do so—this is a progression of increasing radical action built from YouTube videos of Muslim victims of Israeli and US military actions in the Middle East.
Momin Khawaja’s thoughts and actions leading to his 2004 arrest for terrorism were recorded in his emails and his blog. A Pakistan-Canadian with a good job in information technology, he loved to write about both personal and political issues, especially to his fiancé in Pakistan. His emails became part of the court record when he was arrested for participation in a militant jihadist group seeking to detonate a bomb in London. He is serving a life sentence in a Canadian prison.
Tom Quiggin is a Canadian investigator who testified in court as an expert witness at Khawaja’s trial. The following are two excerpts from Quiggin’s description of Khawaja’s trajectory of radicalization.6 The first excerpt points to the importance of seeing Muslims as victims. As Khawaja describes his life prior to his arrest, he had a fairly normal upbringing. In an email to his fiancé, he states:
“[I] was once a normal kid too. I played basketball, went swimming, bike-riding, and did all the things that naughty kids do. But once I grew up, I felt that something was wrong, terribly wrong. Right around the age of 21, I realized that all the fun pastime activities that everyone was into were a waste of time and did not benefit Islam and the Muslims in any way. So I left everything. When the Palestinian Intifada happened, I started looking into my own life and questioning myself as to why our situation was so bad. I realized that ‘I’ must change myself first, I must be willing to make a difference.”
To Momin Khawaja, the Intifada highlighted the contradictions between his own life and that of other Muslims in the world. He was living a life of relative luxury and safety, whilst others were living lives of oppression and fear. He was healthy and well fed, while others were dying or leading lives of deprivation. Perhaps most glaring was the fact that he was a Muslim leading a good and safe life while living in a country that was—in his mind—collectively responsible for the suffering of Muslims overseas. (pp. 87–88)
By this account, Khawaja’s radicalization began with his reaction to the Second Intifada, which unfolded between 2000 and 2005 (Khawaja’s 21st birthday was April 14, 2000). We do not know exactly what Khawaja was watching as the Intifada unfolded, although the 5:1 preponderance of Palestinian to Israeli Jewish deaths was broadly covered in Western reporting of the Intifada. We do know, however, the particulars of some of the internet videos to which Khawaja was exposed. Again we turn to Quiggin’s description:
In addition to the personal political, religious and economic narrative, a series of five “motivational” videos produced by Ibn Khattab in Chechnya played an important role in the life and the subsequent criminal conviction of Momin Khawaja. Ibn Khattab was from a mixed Bedouin–Circassian family and has never been a member of or a follower of al-Qaeda, despite al-Qaeda’s attempts to co-opt him. Notwithstanding his lack of allegiance to al-Qaeda, his videos, depicting attacks against the Russian military in Chechnya, were popular among extremist Muslims and had great influence.
The videos are commonly referred to as the “Russian Hell” series and together they present a clear narrative. The videos suggest that with just a few of the “brothers” and some hand carried weapons, the oppressors can be defeated. In a typical scene from the videos, the group’s leader, Ibn Khattab, gives a military style pre-mission brief to his “soldiers.” Following the briefing, the soldiers are seen moving to the ambush site from which they will attack a convoy of Russian soldiers. The scenes are almost cheery and ooze with camaraderie and optimism. The videos also have a rich symbolism found in the overlaid graphics as well as inspirational music (nasheeds) playing in the background.
For Momin Khawaja, the videos must have formed part of his “education” of the ways in which the Mujahideen could defeat the oppressors and their forces. Not only did he have copies of the videos on his hard drives, he is also known to have given copies to a woman that he was recruiting. Her role was to assist him in financial transfers relating to the planned attacks. One video extract was played in court to demonstrate the nature of the material he was using in his recruiting efforts. (p. 89)
The woman Khawaja tried to recruit testified at Khawaja’s trial that he gave her several DVDs depicting jihadi activities and suggested that she “play them for others.” At least one of the videos Khawaja gave her was entered in evidence at the trial: Russian Hell I: Chechnya. We can be confident that Khawaja believed the Russian Hell videos were a strong call to action because he recommended them to others.
One possibility is to recognize that these two kinds of video are complementary parts of what social movement theorists refer to as a “mobilization frame.”7 A frame is a view of history and experience that allows us to make sense of and react to new events. An effective political frame accomplishes three functions: It identifies an injustice or grievance and the perpetrator (diagnostic), it identifies what must be done to right the wrong (prognostic), and it calls for individuals to participate in the solution (motivational) while providing knowledge and skills required for participation (means and opportunity). A frame thus has emotional value: Empathy and sympathy for victims bring anger toward the perceived perpetrator, and the call to participate in the solution can bring shame for not joining. Victim and jihad videos together create such a frame.
A victim video shows injustice in human terms: US attacks on Muslims that injure and kill women and children, or scenes purporting to show US soldiers raping a Muslim woman. A victim video also makes clear the perpetrator of injustice: US uniforms, weapons, and made-in-USA shell casings are made salient. Therefore, a victim video has intense diagnostic value, including emotion-arousing blood, pain, and destruction. US efforts to limit collateral damage of strikes against militants do nothing to reduce the power of images of suffering women and children. The emotional effect of these images is anger and outrage for viewers who identify with the victims.
A jihad video picks up where victim videos leave off: a dramatization of violent response to attacks on Muslims, with attractive militants inviting viewers to join them. A salient example of jihad videos is the Russian Hell series, which shows jihadists fighting Russians in Chechnya (1 hour 32 minutes, available on YouTube). These videos feature scenes of camaraderie and successful attacks, arousing music, and an explicit invitation: Join us, the brave, who are risking our lives to defend Muslim women and children. These videos show what to do and how to do it—the prognostic function.
Jihad videos are also motivational. They convey hope: The enemy can be attacked and killed despite their greater material strength. The men in the videos are models: If they can do it, so can I. As models, the men provoke a social comparison that can shame inaction: Am I less a man than they? The camaraderie and cohesion of a small group in combat is conveyed in the videos: I can join a band of brothers. The status of warrior is conveyed: I can be someone women look up to and men fear to challenge—a man with combat skills and brothers behind him.
The music of nasheed on the sound track is a stirring chant of male voices. The sounds and images of rocket and automatic weapons offer war-movie action; enemy trucks go up in noise, fire, and smoke. Close-ups of Russian bodies appear, booted up for inspection by the victors, then finished off with a few bullets. A helicopter, representative of Russian technological advantage, is shot down and falls dramatically from the sky. A dead mujahedeen is shown, unmarked with serene face, on a draped bier to convey the reality and nobility of sacrifice.
In sum, victim videos are diagnostic frames that elicit outrage against the perpetrators of injustice; jihad videos are prognostic and motivational frames that funnel outrage into joining the heroes who fight injustice. Social movement theory and especially framing theory make sense of our case histories, in which individuals who moved to join in jihadist violence point to victim videos and jihad videos as particularly powerful internet content.
Before moving on, it is worth noting what kind of content does not appear as important in our case histories. Study of the Koran and fundamentalist forms of Islam are not turning points in the trajectory to violent extremist action. From these examples, it is difficult to take seriously the popular idea that the center of gravity of jihadist extremism is Salafist, Wahabist, or other fundamentalist or extremist forms of Islam. Beyond some fighting verses from the Koran (“strive hard against the disbelievers and hypocrites”), Islam is represented in the Russian Hell videos only in the militants’ beards and their shouts of “Allahu akbar” on the attack. Victim videos and jihad videos are about intergroup violence represented in emotion-eliciting images and music—about empathy for victims and outrage against perpetrators. In our opinion, some neo-jihadist terrorists may be religious Muslims and some may not. Religion is not the source of the violence, identification with victim Muslims is the source.
ISIS has posted some barbaric execution videos, such as the video of burning to death a captured Jordanian pilot. It is important to remember that public beheading was commonplace in Europe for centuries—recall the guillotine of the French revolution—and is still practiced in Saudi Arabia. On one notorious day—January 2, 2016—the Saudis beheaded 43 prisoners for terrorism offenses. Many Muslims oppose Saudi beheadings and especially oppose terrorists’ use of beheading. In 2002, al-Qaeda released a video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl, but so many Muslims reacted with revulsion that al-Qaeda no longer uses beheading videos.
If Western audiences find public beheading barbaric, and many Muslims agree, why does ISIS continue to post execution videos? One answer is free publicity, as much of the world gasps in horror at each new video. But al-Qaeda’s turning away from beheading videos indicates that even among Muslims, much of the publicity is negative.
Another possibility is that ISIS aims to put fear in the hearts of its enemies. Fear must outweigh outrage and revulsion to make beheading videos a success for ISIS. We suspect that fear will indeed predominate in areas of Iraq and Syria controlled by ISIS but that outrage and revulsion will predominate among Western audiences, including Western Muslims. In this case, ISIS would be well advised to post the videos in their own areas but not post for Western audiences.
So why does ISIS use beheading videos? Who will they appeal to? Our answer is that the videos bring positive reactions and even recruits from a narrow range of Western Muslims who feel that the West is attacking Islam and feel the humiliation that Muslims do not have the power to retaliate. Beheading videos show power: ISIS is powerful enough to retaliate against the West with public executions. For the Muslims feeling most anger and most humiliation, the power message of a beheading video is its main attraction.
Unfortunately, many Muslims believe that the West is trying to weaken and destroy Islam. Many believe that the War on Terrorism is actually a war on Islam.8 Polls in 2006 and 2007 by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) found that over half of respondents in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia believed that the US-led War on Terrorism was aimed at weakening Islam or controlling Middle East resources. Only 10–22 percent in these countries believed that the primary goal of the War on Terrorism was protection from terrorism. Similarly, the 2007 Pew poll of US Muslims found that only 26 percent believed that the War on Terrorism was a sincere effort to reduce terrorism; 55 percent said it was insincere.
Because many Muslims believe that the West is waging a war on Muslims, those most desperate to retaliate will see ISIS beheading videos as inspiring.
What about the video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned to death in a steel cage? ISIS released this video in February 2015. The video is 22 minutes long, and the death by fire appears at the end. Earlier in the video, the pilot is shown in an orange jumpsuit being taken through bombed out buildings supposedly destroyed in air attacks by the United States and its allies. The logic of the video is justice and revenge: Muslims die horrible deaths in buildings crushed and burned by air attacks; now one of the pilots responsible for such attacks dies a similar death. The orange jumpsuit is another piece of payback: Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay wear orange jumpsuits.
Like the beheading videos, the death by fire video will bring revulsion to most viewers but will appeal to the small number of Muslims who are desperate to avenge Muslim victims of Western attacks. This is the audience from which new recruits are drawn to ISIS.
If our analysis is correct, it will be very difficult to prevent online radicalization. The West could try to keep victim and jihad videos off the internet, or at least prevent access to these videos in Western countries. This might lead Western countries to the same techniques of information control that China imposes on its citizens.
At the bottom of radicalization is identification: caring about a group enough that what happens to them produces emotional reactions in us. The West might try to prevent young Muslims from identifying with other Muslims, or at least prevent Western Muslims from identifying with Muslims in non-Western countries. This is a tall order but perhaps not impossible. Identification requires feeling similar to that group, and common religion is not usually enough similarity to produce strong identification. In recent centuries, common blood and common culture have been stronger than religion as a source of political mobilization. That is, nationalism has been a stronger force than religion in mobilizing people for conflict.
Perhaps Western Muslims can be turned away from identification with Muslims whose blood and culture are seen as different from their own. The West might try to raise ethnic nationalism as an antidote to a religious nationalism that aims to make Muslim identity the foundation of a multinational caliphate. In predominantly Muslim countries, most Muslims probably feel more attachment to their country than to the umma; most Moroccans, for instance, are probably not willing to sacrifice for an international umma as much as they would sacrifice for the welfare of Morocco and Moroccans.
We know that this will not always work. Momin Khawaja, born in Canada, made fun of Muslims “off the boat” for their baggy clothes and crude manners yet in the end tried to join the Taliban to fight the US invasion of Afghanistan.
Another and perhaps more practical possibility is to make Western Muslims feel more welcome as immigrants. Momin Khawaja, despite being the son of a professor and despite his own educational and occupational successes, did not feel welcome in Canada. He felt that his darker skin, his religion, and his foreign name kept him from being a “real” Canadian. This feeling led him to turn to his religion as his political identity: If he was no longer Pakistani and could not be Canadian, what could he be but Muslim? Identifying more with his religion than with Canada and Canadians led him to see the Canadian armed forces engaged in Afghanistan as part of the Western war on Islam—which pushed him still further from caring about Canadians and toward caring about Muslim victims.
In short, it might help reduce identification with Muslim victims in predominantly Muslim countries if Muslim immigrants felt less suspicion and more acceptance in Western countries. ISIS realizes this and tries to use jujitsu politics to keep walls between Muslims and non-Muslims. Every time a Muslim engages in a terrorist attack in the West—for instance, the San Bernardino attack—the wall between Muslims and non-Muslims is raised.
Finally, there is the possibility that radicalization of Muslims might be reduced by reducing US military involvement in predominantly Muslim countries. In recent years, US drones have brought death from the sky in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. It is not possible to avoid civilian casualties when pressing a button in the United States produces explosions half a world away. The collateral damage from US drone attacks brings hatred of the United States and new victim videos.
General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, 2009-2010, had this to say about overreliance on drones:
“What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world,” he said. “The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes . . . is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one.”9