>> i'd like to welcome you heretoday for scott atran's lecture, looking for al qaeda, the,does it say it up there? oh, it doesn't have a subtitle here,the evolution of terror networks. scott's current academic home is in paris wherehe's the director of anthropological research at the centre national dela recherche scientifique, but he's also a very well known figure aroundthe campus here at the university of michigan. over the years, he's had appointmentsat isr, at the anthropology department, the psychology department aswell as here at the ford school. he's written many, many papersand 5 books covering topics
in anthropology, psychology, sociology. and his work has been widelycited in major media outlets. his latest book will be publishedby mit press in march. it's titled the native mind and thecultural construction of nature. in it, he and his co-author, douglas medin,draw in nearly two decades of cross-cultural and developmental research to examinethe relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it, and how these two phenomena areaffected by cultural differences. he was here on campus this past academic yearand taught a very well received course here
in the ford school called transnationalterrorism, religion and the limits of reason. we're really delighted to have him backhere today to deliver this public lecture. we will try to leave some time at the end ofthe lecture for your questions and we hope that you will then, after that, join us for ourreception and more conversion after the lecture in the hall just outsidethere, outside the auditorium. so with all of that, i nowwelcome scott atran to the podium. scott. [applause] >> thanks. i'm glad to be back here.
i'm going to walk a little so i'm going to movethis like this so i can see a little better. some of these slides i'mgoing to go through fast because bob wouldn't let me shorten mypresentation 'cause he said we had work to do. so it's a little bit long. and so don't read the slidesunless i really stop on them. i'm going to use them sort ofthese props to keep me going. this is a scene from the madrid trialwhich i attended, a very interesting trial. this will give you a picture of sort of what,what a group of terrorist look like, right? and there's nothing terriblyinformative about that.
and in fact these guys arepretty much a bunch of losers. is qaeda, or its viral movement, an existentialthreat to the united states or anybody else? and my answer is not unless we make it so andwe're doing a very good job of making it so. on october 25th 1962, there was a votein a nuclear submarine about whether to launch nuclear weaponsagainst the united states. united states didn't know at the time thatsoviet premier had given operational control of nuclear weapons to the submarine commanders, but release of those weapons depended upon aunanimous vote by the 3 commanders of the sub. two voted to launch them, one namedvasili arkhipov, probably saved the world.
he deserves 5 nobel prizes. there was an existential threat at the time. there were tens of thousands of nuclearweapons, each one on the average about 10 times more powerful thanthe one that destroyed hiroshima, and could have destroyed hundreds ofmillions of people within 90 minutes. nothing remotely like that exists today. nothing in the wildest dreams ofthese guys could compare to that. with the reaction of the united states, iconsider it to be fairly hysterical one, has led to the growth of this movementaround the world to where it has become now
on the verge of becomingtruly dangerous in places like pakistan, which does have nuclear weapons. what we're witnessed to do-- excuse me. what we'll witness today is a sortof leaderless decentralized jihad. there are no leaders, there'sno command and control. it has the properties of networks, and of coursenetworks are very different from hierarchies. hierarchies have command and control. they have a delegated responsibilities,networks are flatter, they are loser, they are more flexible.
they are also much more reliable to beinfiltrated and disrupted than are hierarchies. however, like criminal networks,terrorist networks overcome this problem by having very thick personal tiesespecially ties based on kinship and friendship, which overcome that. in addition, terrorist networks defer fromcriminal networks, gangs, drug cartels, by the fact that the people who belongto them are revolutionaries in the sense that they are committed to somethingthat they're willing to sacrifice for that goes beyond their material interests. you have to ask yourself, why do revolutions win
out against much more powerfulresource rich adversaries? and the reason is basically because ofthe commitments they're willing to make, of the sacrifices they're willing tosuffer in order to achieve their goals. and that's what makes revolutionsvery difficult to wipe out. and the jihad is a revolutionary movement. it is part of a massive transnationalmedia-driven, political awakening that has a fairly simple message. a message that muslims everywhereunder attack and that justice in the world can only be broughtabout by the violent overthrow
of the current world [inaudible]. i'm not going to go into the formalproperties of these networks. let me just give you a little notionof what the jihad is all about. people often conflate wahhabi,salafi, jihadi, arab, muslims. the jihadis are not wahhabis in general. wahhabi movement is a purest salafilike movement, fundamentalist movement, restricted pretty much to saudi arabia thatis devoted to the saudi regime and has been for quite some time, does not preachthe violent overthrow of the government, and does not preach attacks againstfellow muslims except for shia.
the salafi movement is a much more generalpurest movement similar to fundamentalism in the united states, but it would bewrong to equate the jihadi movement with the salafi movement ingeneral just like it would be wrong to quite the christian identity movementwith say christian fundamentalism or william peers [phonetic] and hisbrand of militant white supremacism with the christian fundamental--fundamentalist movement in general. this is a movement which can best bedescribed as the takfiri movement. the takfiri movement grew up in egypt inthe 1970s, first in the fairly benign form under shukri mustafa and preach takfirw'al hijra, which means excommunication
and withdrawal, the idea was to emulate ofthe flight of muhammad from mecca to medina where he withdrew with his friends, heregathered forces in order to go out again to spread the word of islamand eventually conquer mecca. the original takfiri movementwas a movement of withdrawal. it based much of its ideology onthe writings of a marginal leader of the muslim brotherhood name sayyid qutbwho had spent time in the united states. he was hanged by gamal abdel nasserin 1966 and his message of jahiliyyah of impurity having swept into the muslim worldwas having an enormous echo among students in egypt at the time especiallyafter the 6th day war and the defeat
of the egyptian armies andthe humiliation that caused. when mustafa died in 1978, the takfirwal-hijra movement turned violent. the students who were not originally part ofthe movement were imprisoned at the same time as shukri mustafa, and who are radicalizingthen drew upon his teachings about withdrawal but also argued that it was right and goodto kill fellow muslims who had become kafir, who had become infidel andcould be excommunicated. in 1980, they formed their first movement,it was called the tanzim al-jihad, one of the 6th m years of the cairo sectionof that movements name was ayman al-zawahiri who had since become the sort of number 2 ofal qaeda, and al qaeda itself is a development
of this branch of the takfiri movement. almost all of the leaders, the senior leadersof the al qaeda movement that began coalescing around bin laden in the summerof 1988, were egyptian. and the egyptian core of al qaeda is thistakfiri core is what made al qaeda what it is. the only difference is that under binladen's tutelage in the mid 1990s, the focus of the jihad went from attackingapostate governments within the muslim world to a cat tacking what they thought wasthe root cause of the continued existence of those governments which was the far enemy,meaning the united states and its allies. now the first, i'm going to give you some statsof the first wave of this movement in al qaeda.
our sample is 439 from al qaeda,164 from the jemaah islamiyah which is affiliated organization from southeastasia, and from recent sample of saudi jihadis, who were not explicitly partsof al qaeda given to me by the minister of interior of saudi arabia. and what we find is al qaeda members are olderon the average than other members of the jihad. they are also likely to be better educated. they are-- the leadership is mostly skilled,the members who actually do the attacks tend to be less skilled, but in any event they'remore skilled than on other members of the jihad. and the plurality among thosewho's skilled is that of engineer.
engineer is the largest categorywithin the al qaeda movement, an occupation followed by medical doctor. in terms of nationality, al qaedaitself is an expatriate movement. that this is a diaspora movement, like many revolutionary movements including thepalestinian movement, the ira formed initially in the diaspora not in the countries of origin. the other movements of course tend tobe much more localized than national. in terms of income, al qaeda also has a higheraverage income than this other movements. and in terms of marital status,most are married.
you can check the testosteronetheory about the virgins by the way. i mean no one dies for virgins, that's asexual fantasy that the west has by politicians and pundits, but at least within thatpart of the world, i've never come up, and i interviewed these guys all thetime, i never come up with anybody who is remotely interest than dying for virgins,probably interest in getting away from sights. the new wave of takfiri terrorismis very different. the new wave that tends to be much moremarginalized in their societies, poor, less educated and much more likely tobe involved with criminal networks, and that's a fairly reason phenomena.
at far as al qaeda itself, thereused to be about a thousand members of al qaeda mostly built aroundthis egyptian core of takfiris. there are maybe 100 less, 100 leftthat's a reduction by an order of magnitude, most of them are in waziristan. there are about a dozen small mobilecamps with about 6 people in each one and a trainer, sometimes in the system trainer. the largest one is a place calledmir ali in northern waziristan. it's commander is a guy namedabu ubaydah al-masri who was the former al qaeda representativefor nuristan and of course there were openings
in al qaeda after the united states attackand he filled up one of those openings. and he's a really dangerous guy. the only, really significant al qaedaplot since the bombings in tunisia in 2002 has been the airplaneplot, which is why you have to put your toilet kits in plastic containers. that was a very serious plot. he was going to blow, they were going toblow up 20 airliners over the atlantic and at very, came close to fusion. that's the only one.
there are a couple of other smaller ones inplaces like copenhagen that have existed. but for the most part, there arevery few true al qaeda plots, none have been successful since 2002. most of the al qaeda people don'tknow who the terrorists are, couldn't communicate withthem even if they did know. let me just give you an idea of whatterrorist networks are like in terms of trying to join up with al qaeda. most terrorist are caughttrying to link up with al qaeda. in fact, trying to link up with somethingthat pretty much doesn't exist anymore.
young people from all over try toget afghanistan and pakistan to find, make their way into waziristan or other partsof the border of the frontier to get training. and they find that most of the people who arewaiting to accept them are intelligence agents from the pakistani authoritiesor even american agents. some of them get there to a sort of a silk roadthat is they know somebody who knows someone, who may have had a relative, who have mayhave been in the training camp one day and they pay their own way, the peoplewho did the crevice plot, for example, the plot to blow up heathrow airlines, which washeadlined in the boston globe and new york times and lumondes [phonetic], al qaeda, al qaedaplot foiled were actually a bunch of friends
who decided to go and do something. they paid 3500 euros to get in an apartment,they finally found the traitor, a traitor, a trainer, who was a friend ofa relative, who trained them. they thought they were going to go to kashmirwhere the action was and the trainer said, you know, why don't you dosomething back where you come from? and so they went back home, and if you look attheir e-mails they're sort of, it's ridiculous. you know, one would say, how much of theammonium nitrate was i suppose to mix? i forgot what they told us. and that's about the level atwhich these plots have carried out.
the reason that these organizations arehitched up to criminal organizations now is because the united stateshas been largely successful at stopping large scale moneytransfers between these groups. so you go where the money can be found. and where can money be foundthat isn't traceable? in criminal networks. it's not that the jihadi's search forthe criminals, it's just that that's where the network exists where they can ridepiggyback and get the sorts of ammunition and arms and funds they need todo the actions they want to do.
they're mostly self-mobilized,self-generating guys who sit around, talk, smoodge and decide they wantto do something in life. there are no recruiters to al qaeda, there'snever has been any recruiters to al qaeda. there's no recruiters gone to europe, thereare no recruiters who go to saudi arabia. al qaeda used to be like a fundingagency like the nsf or the nih. you put in an application, alqaeda would accept maybe 15 to 20 percent if they thought it was good. they'd give you some money, give you someadvice, may be try to find a suicide bomber or [inaudible] but that was basicallythe extent of the involvement.
at good cases, the hamburg plotters,muhamed atta and his friends. we spent a lot of time with theirfriends, their neighbors, their family. now why did these guys self radicalize? well, in the 1990s, they werestudents at the technical university in the hamburg, suburb of hamburg. the interesting thing about themwas they were all middle easterners. that means they were doubly alienated. all the others were either german,christians, or turkish and moroccan muslims. so these were the middleeastern muslims who got together.
they also broke the al qaeda pattern. they were bachelors. they started talking to one another, eatingwith one another, getting the haircuts with one another, praying with one anotherand then they'd started to live together. the neighbors described 20 mattressesthat play stunk because like many takfiri, people trying to emulate the profit and hisfriends as they withdraw from mecca to medina, they would taken everybody from theneighborhood, anybody who is passing through and they'd start self radicalizing together. then they wanted to do something.
islam was under attack everywhere,they want to go to chechnya, didn't work out, they tried to go to kosovo. the alabanian said get lost, and theywere lost themselves about what they do. someone came up with an idea, why don't you goto afghanistan and find out what's going on. they eventually made their way toafghanistan where khalid sheikh muhammed, who himself had just come into basically alqaeda because his proposal had been accepted by bin laden and some of the others to blowup something in the united states to sort of rehash the plot that he hadtried out in the early 1990s. and basically he said, "heyboss, look what we've got.
we got europeans who don't need visas to getinto the united states, who can speak english who can get-- who are, can mix easily ineuropean-american society, let's use them." so again, the idea is al qaeda didn't go lookingfor them, they went looking for al qaeda, even the sort of err plot alqaeda was not something that came from any kind of command and control network. it's now taking place over the internet, okay? you've got 3 high school buddies incanada, a few more in the united states, couple of guys in denmark and sweden,a guy sitting in his basement, calls himself irhabi 007, terrorist 007.
now these guys have met each other, i mean,the high school buddies knew one another, friends in america knew one another, butover the internet they developed a chat room, they decided they're going to blow up thecanadian parliament, they're going to blow up the american embassy inbosnia, of all places. and you know what, they actually get togetherfor the first time at the airport in bosnia where intelligence authoritieshave been following them. they're arrested with suicide belts, ak47s and thousands of rounds of ammunition. what that tells you is anybody can becomea terrorist any time, any place today. you don't need recruiters, they never did.
the new wave of terrorism isabout youth culture, okay. it's not about the koran,never was about the koran. about 70 percent of the people whojoined the jihad are born again. they have no formal religious education,they don't even come from religious families. they come late in life and they have very littleknowledge or even interest in the koran itself. again the message from wherei've been, you know, jungles of-- remote islands in suluwasi or borneo tomorocco or london or the suburbs of paris', islam is under attack, we'vegot to do something. it's a flat message in a fairly flat world.
now, how do you change youth culture? that's a big problem. not bombing these peopleand hammering it, you know, like and spreading mercury all over the place. how do you deal with young people in searchof something greater than themselves? and what i'm going to show you now is thatno one's really done any control studies. but when you look at controls, what you findis tens of millions of people are sympathetic to the jihad and these notionsof universal justice. very few people, 2400 people in all in europe,3000 in saudi arabia, less in other place
of the world have actuallycommitted themselves in some way to violence, it's a very small proportion. and you know what the greatestpredictor is of who will commit violence versus who won't, does anybody have any idea? [inaudible remark] what? [inaudible remark] no. the greatest predictor is whenthey play soccer together. whether they play soccer together,whether they're paint ball buddies, whether they're bodybuildingbuddies, whether they're friends.
no one ever does it alone, okay? and as far as violence isconcerned, you know, we did studies. so far as i know the onlystudies of humiliation, people who are humiliated don't commit violence. they're count. people believe they're responding becauseothers they may love or be committed to, they feel are humiliated but people whoare humiliated don't commit violence. we regularly find a negativecorrelation between them. >> what about khaled qasim [phonetic]?
>> khaled qasim is a loner. he has nothing-- >> that's what i mean. you we're talking about [inaudible]. >> yeah, he's a crack-pot loner. >> okay. >> this is-- these people haveno criminal records to speak of, fairly well-educated, povertyisn't a big factor. they spend a normal distribution,
there's nothing in their individual psychesthat's different from any of us, okay? really it has nothing to do withindividual personality factors. it has to do with a small group dynamics,the patterns of friendship and of kinship and of neighborhood and of common activitieswhich determine who will join the jihad and whether or not they'll make it happen. it's not about hierarchical organization,command and control, recruitment or brainwashing, there's none of that. there's no brainwashing in the jihad. it's about fairly flat and fluid networks offriends, families, neighbors, schoolmates,
workmates, soccer buddies, camp buddies,body-building buddies, pin-ball buddies, who self-radicalize in groupsand go looking for al queda. and i'm going to give you some case studies,some of the sort of famous case studies. this notion that there are cells, you know, youhear guys like george tenet or the president or anyone else talking about sleeper cells, does anybody have any idea how many sleepercells there's been in the united states. okay, there's been exactly one sleepercell in the history of united states. that was colonel rudolf abel who was sentby the russians in the 1950s in an exchange for francis gary powers who was shut downin the u-2 flight over the soviet union.
that's it, that's the onlysleeper cell that's ever existed. again, this is pretty much a fantasy. and this notion that there are cells, there'scommand and control, there's hierarchies, there's bureaus, there's offices,there's the chief of military planning, there's the chief of operations, this issimple bureaucratic mirroring by people who know nothing other than their ownbureaucratic lives, who don't see things other than through the lenses of their own lives. you know, i get it from everybody, thisis, you know, what the moroccan police give that i can give you, what the saudi's giveme, what the indonesians give me, what--
you know, basically, bureaucrats interpretthe world in terms of bureaucracies, okay? with structures and hierarchies andall this has nothing to do with it, which makes it a hard problem to deal with, that these are the guys youentrust to deal with a problem. same thing with al queda in the maghreb. basically this new range of attacks innorth africa is guys who apply to zawahiri and bin laden to become al queda, thatactually they have problems with al queda. al-queda and the group salafispull up shaykhul islam [phonetic] and the other north africangroups who are always in conflict.
but it's a big logo now. zarqawi himself, he was acompetitor of bin laden. there was no love lost between them,but it's such a big brand name now, everybody wants to belong, and so theyapplied, it took about 6 months for the word to actually get into the frontier regions. and then, you know, bin laden's aware,said, "okay, call yourselves al queda." and all of a sudden there's al queda,the maghreb, they do a suicide attack for the first time and the headlines acrossthe world is "al queda in north africa." but again, basically they've got the consent ofsomebody to use a brand name, same with europe.
let me just go through a couple of examples. one is the jemaah islamiyah. this is a very interesting organization. it's an outgrowth of a islamicrevolutionary nationalist movement that first emerged in the 1930s in indonesia. helped plead indonesia to independenceagainst the dutch, fought the japanese. the leader was executed by sukarno, and themilitant brand grew up during the 1970s founded by 2 clerics whose ancestors were fromthe hadrawmat, that's the same area where bin laden's father came from.
the hadrawmaties have been in thatpart of the world for 4 or 500 years. there's a huge network of kinship relationsand commercial relations among arab seafarers that have been to that part of theworld for hundreds of years and al queda and the al queda movement is parasiticon those pre-existing relationships. well, within this movement, there was asplit between the so called the sufi's, and this goes back to thehadrawmat back 4 or 500 years. and those who wanted a salafi version of thedarul islam, that is no music, no mysticism, no metaphorical interpretations of god, verysimilar to the splits between the iconic class and the catholics in the 9th and10th century in western europe.
and they originally modeled themselves on thegamaat islami, which was one this takfiri groups that emerged in egypt in the 1980s underthe spiritual guidance of the blind sheikh, omar abdal rahman who's now in prisonin the united states for helping to plan blowing up new york city landmark. well the egyptian islamic grouphasn't done anything in years because after the luxor massacres in late 1990s,their relatives and friends in the upper egypt, where they were from, basically said, "hold off,this is enough, we don't want anymore of this." since then there's not a peep out of these guys. but this had split off with the other groupheaded by zawahiri who was no longer embedded
in his society, who was now in afghanistanand who basically became more apocalyptic in his vision saying, "yeah, you know,let's carry out any attack possible and who cares about retaliation." so at this time the jemaah islamiyah, who hadbeen part of the jihad against the soviets, decided to ally itself with bin laden. this is about the time that the originalislamic group of which they had been mo-- on which they had been modeled, decidedto basically call everything off. and they solely developed an organization in1988, 1989 when they we're invited back, well, when they came back here after suharto'sfall that became increasingly takfiri.
after sunkarno's death, the founderof the jemaah islamiyah died in 1999, his sidekick, abu bakar bashir took over. and bashir was sort of an oracular leader. he wasn't an operational hands-on guy. and so he allowed in the sense thetakfiris within the group to emerge. now, almost all of descriptionsof the jemaah islamiyah are based on these sort hierarchicaldescriptions that you get officially, through the jemaah islamiyah movement or throughthe intelligence analyst or through the paper. now, we've worked a long time among ourconsultants, the head of australian intelligence
who tracked the jemaah islamiyah, workedclosely with a strike team leaders of the indonesian governmentwho've tracked these guys. and we have, sort of, i can't say andi-- university of michigan payroll, but as consultants, our guys who wereformer leaders of the jemaah islamiyah. and by, i spent some time interviewingthe amir in prison in jakarta in 19-- in 2005, and this is what we found. the organization predicts nothing. there are 4 things that predict, who willbelong to an attack group and the likelihood that they'll continue to belong to attack.
the first is what class during thesoviet-afghan war and then the original and the immediate aftermaththat they graduate from. they would go to the abu sayyaftraining camp near peshawar. beginning in 1986 with zukarnaen, who was asort of military leader of the jemaah islamiyah, and depending on the year and their cohort, theywould form groups that kept together ever since. the second greatest predictor ismarriages, and this refined again and again. there are 30 marriages, okay, distributedover 10 attacks, and think about it. you know, these films, like the godfather,we see all these plots being hatched in the marriage at the beginning of thefilm, that's exactly how it happens,
because marriage is a great places tohatch plots, much better than mosques because you got every body there, they're allrelaxed, they can talk about whatever they want, no one's really listening,great place to do jihad. the third greatest predictor is actual kinshiprelationships, brothers, sisters, cousins. these are the clusters, familyclusters of some of the principal actors in the attacks of the jemaah islamiyah. these are the family ties over differentattacks, ae is the australian embassy bombing, bali is the bali attack of 2002, the secondgreatest terrorist attack after 9/11. par is the bombing of the philippinesambassador's residence in 2000.
and you can see again there are some fixedfamily ties running through these things. this is just the family tiesin one particular attack. the bali bombing of 2002 wasperhaps the most interesting because it's the most lethaland the most famous attack. it's what made people awarethat jemaah islamiyah existed. i mean these guys had beenexistent for some time, and even the intelligence authoritiesdidn't even know they were around. again, because in a little bit like drugcartels or even gangs, it's family groups, groups of friends, people who'vegone to school to one another.
this is the, a diagram of the baliattack, the different operations groups, the suicide bombers and what not. the dark circles mean that everybody withinthat dark circle has known everyone else and it's thickly related to everyone else,otherwise you have, you know, many more ties. and what we find is the red guys, theyall taught or studied at the lukman school in malaysia, which was set up afterthey were kicked out of the indonesia. the grey group is the guys who had afghan tieswho weren't in any of the other madrassahhs. the al-mukmin ties, the yellow guys isanother madrassah founded by the father of 3 of the bali plotters, and the--sorry, the al-mukmin ties,
that's the original madrassahfounded by abu bakar bashir. 17 of the 27 bali bomb plotterswent to the same schools. now, you look at this and you say like oursecretary of state and our secretary of defense, former secretary of defense, thatmeans madrassahhs are dangerous. no, it does mean madrassahhs are dangerous. there are tens of thousands of madrassahhs. we're talking about 3 that are responsiblefor all of the attacks, it's a little but like saying, you havecolumbine, you have virginia tech, let's close down the americanhigh schools and universities.
now, it's a very small group that areresponsible for these kinds of actions. this is the study we did. so far, as i know, the only studyever done of mardassahs themselves, we did a comparative study of madrassahhs. and we found that the ones associated withjemaah islamiyah really aren't different, okay. so here's a typical example, i-- we try to use. when we do surveys, we do them as experimentaldesigns, we don't do attitude surveys. so we ask questions they'venever heard of before, and they have to form inferencesand responses on the spot.
so one of the questions we ask, forexample, "if a jewish, a child who is born of jewish-zionists, is raisedsince birth by jemaah islamiyah, will it grow up to be jemaahislamiyah or jewish-zionist?" now, when we asked this to people in achristian identity movement, for example, we get terribly racist, essentialist responses,a jew is a jew, a jewish-zionist is zionist, a zionist, that's the way god madethem, it doesn't matter who raises them. these guys are different, most muslimgroups, including for example of the hamas or the hezbollah or even most al queda willsay, "no, they'll grow up to be a muslim. in fact in al queda muslim, if he's raisedby al queda, which is the right way."
this is one of the few groupsthat doesn't believe that. so there are some starling differences. these are just [noise] of what theschool connections are between the guys in the classes when they went to high school. another set of connections, schoolconnections, between the major attack leaders. again, they crisscross theorganizational structure in every which way. again more school connections. and now i'd like to go overto the madrid attack. the madrid bombing, by a bunch of radicalstudents in hangers on, drug traffickers,
small-time dealers in stolen goodsand other sorts of petty criminals, improbably succeeded preciselybecause it was most improbable. there was no ingenius cell structure, nohierarchy, no recruitment, no brainwashing, no coherent organization, no links toal queda, yet this half-baked plot, concocted in a few months, with atarget suggested over the internet, was the proximate cause of regimechange in a democratic society. so that's an interesting problem. how could so few cause such havoc? not only so few, but basicallya few [inaudible].
these were mostly loserswho got incredibly lucky. most of these guys are caught. these guys made it, some of them werefairly smart, but the plot itself when we go through it is so improbable, so unlikely, where most of the people didn't haveany idea what the other guys were doing and it worked precisely because of that. the police were informed of what was going onwith every part of the plot since its inception and before it, yet they werenever able to put it together. so what we have back in the early 1990s.
we have up here a group of smalltime spanish criminal losers. they go to jail because they'reselling dynamite diffusion and to blow out fish, which is illegal. they're stealing dynamite from thedynamite mine where they work las conchitas. this woman carmen toro, she's the sister ofthis guy antonio toro who is the cellmate of this guy, trashorras, emilio trashorras. and she will eventually marry trashorras, theyalso happened to be cousins to begin with. you got a bunch of salafis who are actuallyfrustrated muslim brothers who fled syria after hafez al-asad, in the late 1980s, crackeddown on the muslim brotherhood in syria.
and they fled as refugees to spain. they were invited for involvement in the9/11 plot by baltazar garzon but they were, since their conviction was since overturned by the spanish supreme courtbasically had nothing to do with it. these guys, they're all became pettydrug dealers from the same neighborhood in a small tumble-down place called thejamaa mezuak in tetuan, north of morocco, which is right near the spanishenclave of nothing ceuta. nothing changes here. now, some moroccan students and one tunisian, aneconomic student who got a scholarship to study
for a phd, an honor student,hook up after mask with some of the salafis that had come from damascus. these guys are 3 brothersfrom tetuan, all drug addicts. this guy, he's a sort of little napoleon,more like james cagney in public enemy. i mean, a tough little guy who you don't messaround with, but he's also a drug addict. he meets a girl, rosa, a spanish girl in apark bench, who's a crack addict in 1992. she's 13 years old. he's very ugly, and she says basically, "i don'twant to talk to anyone as ugly as you are." but he sticks around anyway, andeventually she becomes his girl.
she becomes pregnant, and while she's 5months pregnant, he decides he's going to kick his crack-- his heroine habit. he does it by turning to religion. and if you follow people who'veactually kicked their heroine habits, the only ones who can do it really cold turkeyare usually those guys who find religion, otherwise they really need medical help. anyway, he's successful. he goes to his friends, fellowdrug pushers, the 3. 2 of the 3 decided to kick the habit with him
and they become his life longfriends and his bodyguards. this is his cousin who alsodoesn't kick the habit. okay, the original group of salafis fromsyria together with the students from morocco, and the 1 tunisian, started meetingat this river and having picnics on the nayalcarnero river in the late 1990s. they started singing jihadi songs. they start chanting, playing soccer together,deciding that they have to do something. they have no idea what to do, and sothey started forming new connections. oops, let me go back.
they started forming a thick set ofconnections of friends, of family, of guys they meet at the cultureassociation in the mosque, at the barbershop, at the butcher shop. it's really hard to get through the thickset of relationships that are involved, but they start forming a thick community. by the way, this guy cartagena, he's apolice informant who's part of the group, who's reporting as this is going on. the whole time they start callingthemselves al-harakat al-salafiyyah which means the salafi movement.
they also start calling themselves takfirwal-hijra after the old takfiri movement. but again mostly they just talk and screamand yell and run around and play soccer and have picnics together and they're going todo this until right before the plot is hatched because they really have no idea what to do. meanwhile, this guy who is a jewel thiefand a male strip dancer and a bouncer, he gets thrown into jail with these 2 guys who are the guys selling thedynamite to the fishermen. he gets strong in the same cell, he's got afriend, i believe, who's called the rabbit. the rabbit has to be, happens to be, one ofthe messengers for the drug guys who have
since moved to madrid from tetuan. the police released zuhier, who'splaying all sides of the gang. and his police handler, named victor,says, "look, you go back to asturias, that's the northern spanish town where youwere imprisoned with trashorras and toro, the 2 spanish losers who were selling dynamite,and you try to find out who's their new market." so zuhier goes back up in asturias. he's know one really who's a market,he starts talking to his friend, aglif. they use to go to this sort of thesewhore houses on the outskirts of madrid. and aglif says, well, my friend who justgot out of prison, he had, jamal ahmidan,
this little sort of public enemy james cagneytype, he had been put in prison for murder. he had a knife, some guy kill him but that hepaid off the family and was eventually released, besides he was so tough no onewanted to testify against him. he comes back in late july 2003 to spain. he starts smoodgeing around with aglif, whosays, "hey, by the way, there's a guy i know, zuhier who's trying to getrid with some dynamite." now, meanwhile ahmidan has becomethoroughly radicalized in prison. he wants to go to palestine to kill jews. then they try to get him to beinvolved in the sufi movement, yeah.
they tried to get him to beinvolved in the sufi movement. he's assigning violent enough for me. and he wants to become a salafi takfiri. he's mopped in around for a monthor 2 and eventually he meets up with the tunisian, serhane,where are you serhane? you're up here somewhere. there you are. who becomes a sort of substituteradical preacher in the mosque, he's left his economics' scholarship,he's becoming increasingly radicalized
with his friends especially insoccer, he's expelled from the mosque. he has nothing to do by the way. these groups of students havenothing to do with the drug pushers, this is where they push the drugs inthe same neighborhood of lavapies. but the interesting thing isit's all the same neighborhood. so this is where they push drugs. this is the restaurant all these guys wouldeat at called the alhambra restaurant, where they eat sandwiches, i like that. [laughter] they'd all play soccer in frontof the oulad akcha house in villaverde,
those where the 2 guys who kicked thehabit with the little napoleon guy. but here's the most amazing thing. five of the 7 guys, so they do this plot,the plot is hatched from october to december, they still don't know what they're doing, right? but jamal, this sort of hands-on guy, thisdrug dealer who's actually killed people and he actually goes up in the middleof the plot to blow away 2 guys in babel for not giving them the drug moneybecause he needed the drug money in order to buy the explosives for the jihad. five of those 7 guys, who blew themselves up,were the drug guys, who had found religion.
and who only gotten to the plot afew months before it was hatched. the plot itself, by the way, they concoctedit finally when they downloaded something on the internet from the zarqawi website,which said, "why don't you blow up something in spain before the elections," andfinally they felt something to do. the students who had been yelling for3 years, 4 years about something to do, finally found a little guy who's willing to getthe dynamites to them and actually do something. and the interesting thing is 5of the 7 guys who blew themselves up all came from one neighborhood. two were brothers all linked to that friendjamal ahmidan, that little napoleon guy.
a guy named kounjaa, who was known as thefirst afghan in the neighborhood because he put on this afghan smock, this hat and startpreaching takfiri, and a candy salesman, a gay candy salesman named rifaat. these were the guys who blew themselves up when the police capturedthem, cornered them in madrid. now, kounjaa's cousin was married to a guy namedhamza, and these guys, all on 2006 and 2007, went to iraq to blow themselves up. they all came from this neighborhood within400 square meters, grew up as kids together, went to this elementary school calledthe abdelkrim khattabi elementary school,
and were all in the sameclass since first grade. this is the kids coming out of the school. this is the kids going to the school. now, kounjaa preached in this mosque. but again it's not in the mosque,we though it was in the mosque. you know, there was an article in the washingtonpost when we first gave this information which said, you know, they'real queda recruiters. al-queda, i'm looking for the al quedarecruit, all i see is the donkey. [laughter] and we find out most of these stuffis going on at the chicago cafe, you know,
that's because that's where thingshappen, you know, people watch al jazeera and they get supper-- i don't knowif you ever watched al jazeera news, you get 15 minutes of iraq. it's not like watching cnn or fox, you seefathers running through the streets of baghdad with the brains of their children falling out. you get 5 minutes of palestine,pretty gruesome images as well and 1 minute for the rest to the world. it's a little bit like fox in reverse, right? this is the scene right below themosque where they play soccer in jihad.
they were all soccer buddies and theyall went as soccer buddies to iraq. when i went to ceuta, which is a nearby spanishenclave, and i was asking the kids, you know, trying to figure out, youknow, why do these guys do it? how do they get involved? so i say to them, you know, who are your heroes? so they say to me, okay, first hero is about 50, a sample of about 50, firsthero is ronaldinho, okay? he's the brazilian soccerstar from the barca team. everybody is either a barcasoccer fan or a madrid soccer fan.
in fact there are 2 cafes in this plaza,one right there which is the madrid cafe for the madrid guys and theother for the barca guys, but it's both showing al jazeera all the time. the terminator is number 2, butthey have no idea he' related to the present governor of california. and number 3 is osama bin laden. so why do they do it, people in our society now? well, muslims in our society bindinto the american dream, okay? muslim, the demographics on muslims
in the united states society exactly mirrorthe average of the united states society. muslims in europe, in spain for example are19 times more likely to be poor, marginal, and it goes more or less in the samefashion for the rest of western europe. we find, for example, there is no radicalizationdespite the hype you get in congress and i've testified in front of god knows howmany organizations or committees and what not, they've only been really 2 cases ofradicalization in the prison population of 2.3 million, i mean that's not a lot, okay? but 60 to70 percent of the muslims, ofeuropean prison populations are muslim. very much like african-americans in the unitedstates and for very much the same reasons.
so there are no reasons,in the sense social reasons for muslims become radicalizedin the united states. the problem of radicalization of prisons in theunited states is basically among afro-americans, not muslims who originated from foreign sources. and what makes someone become radicalizedto take the path of violence is first of all not humiliation again, okay? it's moral outrage. and that moral outrage is often livedvicariously looking at the internet or in television where people feel that theirpeople are being violated, murdered or whatever.
now, that is a virtual, imagined community. why should someone who lives in thejungles of sulawesi, this remote island where anthropologists like myself would dream about going a generation ago 'causethey were cannibals, 3 generations ago, and people in morocco or spaindream about the same thing when they've never been out of their villages. that's only possible again because of this sortof massive media driven transnational awaking. and it's creating a virtual community. that virtual community, that mediadriven virtual community is being created
to a large extent as well by theactions of the united states. i'm not going to go into that,everybody knows the story. all i can report to you is thatthe greatest heroic thing anybody, any of these young people can do is saygo to iraq and fight american soldiers. they dream of it. they've never been out of borneo or sumatra,they dream of fighting americans in iraq. i'm not going to go through to any of this. i will go towards the end, but what not to do? you know, i have many prescription aboutwhat not to do like spend millions of dollars
to study the koran or makepredictive models and widgets. i mean, look at these guys, you know, you're going to predict this male stripdancer is the key link between the losers and the spanish prison and these drug guys andthese students who couldn't get it together? come on. you'll never going toget that with skill free modeling or skill modeling or god knows what. but how do you deal with it? well, this moral outrage becomes effectiveonly if it personally resonates with you, okay? it doesn't personally resonatewith muslims in the united states.
there's just nothing to resonate with. it does resonate with people in europe andin north africa and in the middle east. if police, for example, are particularly hostilethen although you don't experience the violence of occupation or invasion or anythingelse, you start empathizing with it. and that's what we find again and again. we find the most successful people atstopping the jihad or people who treat it as a public health problem,it's not a criminal problem. the way the saudis, the way the turks, the way the indonesians have virtually stoppedsalafi attacks is basically go to the families,
the friends, the relatives, the neighborhood,say, look we don't want to a problem. what can we do so that peopledon't take the path of violence? they give gifts in ramadan, they find jobs, they talk to the families,now, oh, this is being filmed. one senior law enforcement agent, who is awitness to testimony by this various heads of intelligence said, "can yousee me with timothy mcveigh." i mean, one of these guys, the head of one of this intelligence was actually hugginga mass suicide bomber who had been released because he was much moreeffective in getting others to turn
than if he had stayed inprison and been hunger shot. so he's out hugging thissuicide bomber and this law, senior american law enforcement agentsays can you imagine me hanging-- hugging timothy mcveigh? i'd be hanging my balls fromthe dome of congress. so it is very hard for lawenforcement in the united states to go into this mindset because of our laws. but i want to tell you, it is very successful. there hasn't been a single salafiincident in turkey for example,
since the istanbul bombingsand in indonesia since 2005. so how did we deal with it? this is what [noise], well ofcourse we have to deal with problems of social alienation in these societies. but more important, think of things likethe boy scouts, high school football. you know, where did that come from? why did it work? it worked because we were an immigrantsociety and we had to integrate people in our social structure, in our social network.
and it was largely successful. you know i had, as i said with bobby [phonetic],you know, i had also been one of the first ones, you know, back in the 19, late 1960s, firstone to vote against rotc, fraternities, young college football, you know, kickingaround a pig skin and making a big deal of it. but now i really see what that does. it binds people in a sort ofcommunitas like no other thing. and that what's happens with these friendsand that's the only way to get them, i think a way from the kinds of, given that their structure isbasically one of family and friends.
70 percent of the peoplewho join the jihad do it through their friends, 20percent through their family. their friends become their families becausetheir sisters start cooking for them and they start marrying theirsisters one another. less than 10 percent come frommany schools and that's only in 2 countries, pakistan and in indonesia. provide for alternative dreams and heroesbecause that's what youth can connect into. look at the new comic book seriescalled the muslim 99 super heroes. this has going great guns in indonesia,qatar and kuwait even in iraq.
kids are buying this up, eating this up likekids in our society use to eat up marvel comics, superman and batman and truth and justice ofthe american way, and it's making headway. that's going to have a lot more effect thangiving the e-moms to preach moderation. dreams and heroes mobilized in the fight forfaith and friends, causes and camaraderie, perhaps more than industry and power,give impetus to lives and civilizations. faith and friendship, this is my punch line,faith and friendship provide humans with a sense of being that is larger, deeper, and moreenduring, than a walking shadow of poor player that struts and frets his hour uponthe stage and then is heard no more it, a tale told by an idiot, full ofsound and fury, signifying nothing.
and just another quote from shakespeare, whichreally captures the people who join jihad, never alone, always as friends, always for acause that gives their friendship solidarity, and eternity in the sense of beingand meaning, greater than themselves. this story shall the good man teach his son,from this day to the ending of the world. but we in it shall be remembered, wefew, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me,shall be my brother, but he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. and ask yourselves, and this is final slide,ask yourselves why all political systems, all imagined communities of none of kindescribe themselves in terms of fictive kinship
of brothers, and sisters, and homelands,and fatherlands, and motherlands. aristotle, i think got it right in theethics, where he said friendship, philia, is the basis of all political union. all political union that defines who humanbeings are, that as communities of none of kin. and as a final reflect for those interestin evolutionary theory, it's a fact worthy of deep meditations, of konradlorenz, that for all we know the bond of personal friendship was evolved by thenecessity for certain individuals to cease from fighting each other in order to more effectively combat otherfellow-members of our species.
since the pleistocene, humans havebeen their own worst predators. when humans first formed groups of none of kin, they were able to dominate all threatsthat came from the animal world. they soon became their own worst enemies andthey began forming larger and larger groups. and if we look at the way they form largergroups from the pleistocene until today through all of recorded history and throughevery society the anthropologist ever studied, it's always in terms of bonds offriendship and fictive kinship. and that's what you got to deal with really. that's what this movement is about.
it's not about generals,and command and control. thank you. [applause] >> and thank you. thank you very much. we've got time for questions. so, i'll let you identify them unless-- >> yeah, yeah. >> no questions?
yeah? >> i've got a question. so this is a very interesting and uniqueperspective on the terrorism problem and what motivates the terrorists, it'svery different form what we typically hear from the us policy and theway it's framed in media. and so if this is the, you know, the basis, it would suggest that the usgovernment's approach is very off-phase. and if that is the case, then what doyou think is motivating the us government to take this approach that's not, you know,as [noise] reminded about the actual problem?
>> okay, the question is, thisis a very different approach from the approach we usually hear frompolicy makers in the united states, and if this is truly the case, why is it that the united states governmentleaders pursue the policies they do, which don't seem to have much relevanceto this particular set of phenomena. that's complex, the answer is fairly complex. for one thing, a very superficial level,i've talked about bureaucratic mirroring. it's stunning that no one actually doesfieldwork with these guys, no one talks to them. if you look at the books written, you know,any of them, dying to win or the latest book
by alan krueger out of princeton universityon the economic causes of terrorism, they're very smart people, but none of them hadever met a terrorist, ever seen where they live, never talked to them, never eaten with them andthey really have no idea who these people are, and why-- and they're normal people whodo the things they do, that's one problem. the second problem is thisidea of bureaucratic mirroring. the guys who do the analysis ofintelligence or in the case officers, they're just out of school like you. there are reasons, structural reasons,why the field officers never do analysis, but they just mirror their bureaucracies andthey can't interpret the world in any other way,
they have no references to do it. but third, and most important,it is politically convenient to believe there's a boogeyman out there. i mean, nothing mobilizessociety and political passions like an enemy you can put your teeth into. and the al qaeda is about the best boogeyman youcan possibly come up with, fits it all together, and there's a sort of perfect storm ofpsychological biases that can be plugged into this, the need to tell astory, sort of fundamental actr-- all sorts of, which of cognitive biases.
and if you look at the actual response of our political leaders, youknow, it's sort of pathetic. basically you got, you know, i shouldn't saythis, but you know bunch of a little indians with no chief running around, andthese guys are determining the course of the debate on presidential politics. thankfully or unthankfullyis moving to economics because were driving into a recession right now. but it still dominates to a larger extentand literally at least in the beginning of the campaign, not only here, but in thecountries of western europe, is run on the basis
of how you're going to respondto this particular threat without any knowledge ofwhat the threat is or care. let me tell you, we've talked to some ofthe candidates and their staffs and things like that suggesting the things like,no, war and terror, this is ridiculous. i said, no, we can't, we can't put thatphrase aside, the public understands that. and there was a debate actually in theadministration, the first couple of days about whether this was supposed to be awar and terror or crime against humanity. think of how it would have played out ifit was declared a crime against humanity, and the support and the were-- whetherit could have actually been sustained.
politically in the unitedstates is another matter. but if it had been sustained as a crimeagainst humanity, the present status of the world would be muchdifferent than it is today. so it is a political issue, and the careersof our major politicians and political parties and affiliations depend upon how it'streated and how are you going to describe. you're going to describe this is abunch of guys running around the place, opening up with opportunities, you know, gettinginvolved here and there and maybe succeeding. no, you got to make it somethingprofound and strong and deep. and by so doing, by the way and this is apeculiarity of human categorization versus a,
you know, categorization of naturalkinds, when people categorize human kinds, whether they'd be people or politicalprocess, is there's a looping effect. no matter how arbitrary and false it is to beginwith, once you make that category, the frame, you force in the sense history andbehavior into that frame, okay? i'll give you just another example. african-american, okay? or that was once called negro thatthey were supposed to be some race. i remember a friend of mine who wassupposed to pick up some guy from new guinea because his skin was dark and he was dark, andthis was a french intellectual leader, south,
who said, "well, you're black and he's black." well, biologically that's crazy notion,but the fact that the world treated, the western world treated those people asthe same even though there were as distant as you could possible be in humanevolution since 50,000 years, made that category real however false it was. and that's a property of humankinds and we do it all the time, and i'm afraid al qaeda hasbecome one of those things. it has created and so in reality, and so inreactions in the world, is now become a logo that carries essential properties,it's being transformed all the time
because it never fits reality quitenicely, and we're witnessed to the spread of this viral ideology becauseof this category creation. yes? >> couple of years ago charlestilly was lecturing here in michigan >> yes. >> and he was asked, he wastalking about networks, and he was asked what doeshe think about terrorism? he said, you know what, terrorism is nota network, it's a strategy usually used by governments but some timesused by pride of people, too.
you seemed to suggest that sort offorming the networks, junior rate terror. isn't, sort of some independent networks thatform sort of your own radicalization to terror, or it is sort like in my term, i don't know,maybe muslim radicalism network that some times at some small chance cansort of manifest it this way? >> i'm not sure if i understand you correctly. so charles tilly came here andsaid terrorism is a strategy. >> terrorism is a sort-- >> sort of strategy, not networking. and are you asking me if i considerthese networks to generate terrorism?
>> yes, what do you think of [inaudible]. >> all right. >> is it a network or a strategy? >> is it like a network around thisstrategy or just like much larger network that sometimes involves this one-- >> all right, terrorism is even worsethan al qaeda or democracy as concepts. i mean, it's so fuzzy and vague. i use it because it's get me inthe front door of policy groups. terrorism of course is a method.
it's essentially being applied thesedays to the use by transnational actors for attacks against non-combatant civilians. that's the way most peoplesort of feel about it. it's actually a method like guns. i mean there's nothing to it, there'sno kind, that's called terrorism. anybody can be called a terroristor freedom fighter or whatever. i'm talking specifically about aspecific group, the takfiri groups. although there are various very, very greatsimilarities between how these groups form in human groups in general, be theyspontaneous groups of the internet or gangs
or drug cartels or our own political leadership. i mean, it's an all boysnetwork and things like that. what i'm saying is that terrorism,the phenomena of takfiri terrorism, the one that everybody is scared about butwon't call that, you know, muslim terrorism or whatever for whatever reasons,that phenomena is based on 2 things, the kinds of ordinary networksthat drive most of human behavior, and the most important predictive factorsare just knowing the ordinary networks, okay? secondly, the friendship [inaudible]. secondly is the cause, this sort of ideologicalfactor that gives coherence to fraternity
and camaraderie and friendship in asort of eternal way and cause people to actually commit their lives to one anotherand die for one another, and that's a result of historical process of fairlyreason origin that i've mentioned, the collapse of the soviet union being one. a very similar phenomena occurred between 1878and 1914, and that was the anarchist movement. people thought that the anarchist,there were some central movement. and these were terrorists in the same way. they would blow up people, they wouldblow up themselves to blow up people. a lot of them were students,very well educated, middle class.
they were quite successful on the havocthey wrote much more than al queda. i mean they manage to kill the president ofthe united states, the archduke of austria that started world war i,prime minister of france, was it the queen of italy or queen of italy. half, you know, about, a halfof dozen top russian ministers, caused havoc all over the world. scotland yard was set up, the russian okhrana,which became the pcias or the nkvd and the kgb. the secret service sort of splitand became the fbi at the same time, all those result the anarchist threat.
teddy roosevelt, when he took over frommckinley was assassinated by an anarchist, gave his first speech to congress andsaid, "look," this is very similar to george w. bush's speech on september 19th. there is evil in the world, okay? this is a battle against good andevil, you're for us or against us, and also gave himself the right for theunited states for the first time in history to interfere in other places in theworld in order to stop this evil act, which was the greatest threatagainst humanity at that time. it was only until the warren commission redida study in the assassination of presidents.
they cited, well, there really wasno anarchist central after all, okay? and it's very similar. why did the anarchist movement disappear? well, basically it disappeared because it was,because of the war and because it was, i mean, it had, you know, it kept going,they blew up things in new york, there was a spanish civil war, butbasically died out after world war i because the bolshevist co-optedtheir support and their audience. well, i don't think we should wait forsomeone like the bolshevists to co-opt this. you know, and marvel comics is even better.
but we should think about what kinds,and we can't predict this stuff, but we should start forming strategiesabout what can attract young people? besides rave, okay? what can really move young peopleto find meaning in their lives and devo's [phonetic] won't do it, right? globalization isn't going to do it, that'sfor a bunch of wealthy people who smoodge in airport lounges and wealthy hotelsand eating in 3-star restaurants and decides the world is going to be like them. for most of the world, globalization doesnot mean everybody is happier, healthier,
and hippier, it means they're unmooredfrom their societies and their traditions and they don't know where they are and they'relooking for where they are and what are, is our society going to do to get thispeople sympathetic to us rather to them? and i don't see anything. did you know the national security council,for example, which is the primary mechanism in the united states for forming foreignpolicy, congress has no effect, none, okay? the pundits have very little effect, it'sthe president, it's national security council which decide foreign policy in united states. there is not a single permanent representativefrom health or education or welfare or anything
to do with actual human beings in theirinteractions on the national security council with permanent representation, okay? it's mostly military, intelligenceand close association with economics. and so we're not getting thekinds of strategies we needed to actually deal with the world as it is now. this is not a soviet threat. this is not a battle againstpower blocks looking to position themselves forcontrol over the world. this is an ideological battle, but one which isthoroughly integrated into notions of community
and neighborhood and friendship of people tryingto find again the meaning in lives in a world where traditional relationships are beingunmoored in an incredibly rapid-base. >> i think one more question? >> yeah. >> is it possible that 9/11 and alqaeda itself is a part of that frame? >> what frame do you mean? >> you said that some people cravecategory if they [inaudible]. >> well, and the question is this9/11 and al qaeda a part of a frame. it's part of lots of competing frames.
i mean, we can describe all ofhuman discourse, political discourse in terms of frames, as bob would say. the particular frame of al qaeda, thehistorical frame of al qaeda is, you know, i've talked about anarchism as sort of the modelfor understanding the social dynamics of it. the nazi movement, i'm not saying thesepeople are nazis, i'm just talking about the-- the nazi movement is a good example of what of-- what al qaeda is like in the sense that it is athoroughly modern movement, thoroughly modern. but it has atavistic culturalelements of a very peculiar kind. it is almost tribal in the sense that itwants to create a sense of deep community
of communitas almost of collective [inaudible]. there's, there are many sort of symbol, if youlook at the poetry of it, of the ritual of it, you find that the idea of trying tocreate a virtual community of people who can personally relate to oneanother at a very emotional level, not in intellectual level at all. and in that sense, it's a derivative of thatmovement and let me, i don't know if i talked about it here, i don't think i did. so my last comment monotheismcreated the notion of humanity. humanity didn't exist before monotheism.
if you go to the jungle in new guinea oreven egypt which had the classification of different human kinds, there was nonotion of humanity between monotheism. the secular monotheism since theenlightenment are monotheisms nonetheless. all the -isms, the anarchisms,colonialism, fascism, communism, even democratic, and they try to save humanity. you see that's their object. you can even find in matthew,in the book of matthew, christ saying you're eitherfor us or against us. and so there was a division inhumanity between those who should
or could be saved and those who couldn't. and most of the clashes that haveled to the greatest mass murders in human history are result of that factthat ones group wants to save humanity, and there's another group whodoesn't really want to be saved. and so they can be dumped in thegarbage, and they fight back. and i think al qaeda fits verywell into this millennial tradition of monotheisms that are out to save humanity. and as such it's intrinsically violentmovement because all movements that try to save humanity will become violentbecause there a lots of people
who just don't want to besaved by that movement. >> okay, thank you very much. [ applause ] that was wonderful, and now we've got foodand drink out in the hallway, and, you know, we can continue the conversation out there.
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