Terrorisme en geestesziekte

Uit een lezenswaardig stuk in The New Yorker:

If military and political interference is such a dominant driving force in terrorism, why aren’t these kinds of attacks more common? Out of the more than one million Canadian Muslims, only a handful have committed terrorist acts, and fewer than a hundred people are being actively monitored by Canadian authorities as likely to join in terrorist activities abroad. Something more is obviously often at work.

Rather than hastily framing attacks in the context of a battle between the West and the Muslim world, it may be more productive, in terms of diagnosis and prevention, to look at more profiles of self-styled ISIS fellow-travelers who commit attacks as individuals. What we know of Zehaf-Bibeau’s biography offers some instructive clues. According to reports published in the Globe and Mail and elsewhere, he had a history of mental illness and of run-ins with the law, involving drug possession, theft, and making threats. He battled an addiction to crack cocaine and, in the weeks leading up to the attack, he was living in a homeless shelter. Dave Bathurst, a friend of Zehaf-Bibeau and himself a Muslim, told the Globe, “We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him.” Bathurst said his friend often spoke of the presence of shaytan—the Arabic term for devils and demons. “I think he must have been mentally ill.”

According to Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, the director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Zehaf-Bibeau fits a profile of “converts with a history of delinquency among the Westerners in ISIL. He’s a little older than average; otherwise, there is nothing unusual about his profile.” Conversion to Islam itself isn’t a cause of violence, as we well know […]. What seems to be the problem, rather, is the fusion of radical jihadist ideology with other personal problems, whether they be alienation, anomie, or various shades of mental illness. In a world where “clash of civilizations” rhetoric is pervasive, it is possible that radical Islam offers the same appeal to some unstable individuals that anarchism had for Leon Czolgosz, who killed President William McKinley in 1901, and that Marxism had for Lee Harvey Oswald. If you are alienated from the existing social order, the possibility of joining, even as a “lone wolf” killer, any larger social movement that promises to overturn that society may be attractive. For a person radicalized in this manner, the fantasy of political violence is a chance to gain agency, make history, and be part of something larger.

Maar ja, of je nu wordt vermoord door een psychiatrisch geval of een overtuigde islamist, dood ben je toch. En dan is er nog dit:

“Islamic-extremist online recruiters are very good at pulling in people who are mentally vulnerable,” Heather Hurlburt, of the Washington-based think tank New America, said.

Bovendien is er natuurlijk nooit een absolute lijn te trekken tussen geestelijk gezond en geestelijk ongezond.

Maar dat er meer nodig is dan een overtuiging om te doden, lijkt me duidelijk. En dan is de vraag ‘Wat is dat dan?’ een zinvolle.

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