|
|
Looking for a previous front page story? Fletcher's Marc Gopin Speaks on NPR about Terrorism and Religious Extremism 10/10/2001 NPR: Morning Edition Copyright 2001 National Public Radio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards. Through a spokesman yesterday, Osama bin Laden warned that there are thousands of young Muslims willing to carry out suicide missions against the United States in the name of Islam. A similar warning by bin Laden was televised on Sunday, the day US and British air strikes began in Afghanistan. Now, though, it appears that the taped message was recorded before the attacks began. President Bush has described bin Laden and his followers as extremists blaspheming one of the world's great religions. Religious extremism is hardly confined to Islam. Nearly every
DUNCAN MOON reporting: No single trait leads to religious extremism. It takes a combination of factors. First, almost all religious extremists are fundamentalists relying on literal interpretations of religious texts. Fundamentalism by itself is not extreme, but when it is accompanied by radical selectivity as to which passages are legitimate and which are not, the door to extremism begins to crack open. Dr. Bruce Lawrence is the chairman of the Department of Religion at Duke University. Dr. BRUCE LAWRENCE (Duke University): If one's talking in a Christian term, it's an apocalyptic view of the end of the world. It's only one part of the Bible, and usually it's the Book of Revelation. If it's the Jewish tradition which has produced this kind of violence, it's usually a certain narrow reading about return to the land that will bring in the messianic era. And in the case of Muslims, it's a notion that there are only certain key terms and certain principles and certain passages from the Koran that are deemed viable. MOON: Adding a siege or victim mentality opens the door to extremism even further. Dr. Marc Gopin of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the author of "Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking." He says that religious extremists view themselves and their beliefs as being under attack. Dr. MARC GOPIN (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy): They see this as a cosmic war between the forces of evil and the forces of good, the forces of persecutors and the people who are the victims. There's a very strong victimology, a victim mentality. On top of it here, you have a very extensive religious mythology that justifies and explains the whole universe in terms of their cosmic struggle. MOON: Dr. Gopin says this kind of bunker mentality leads to a warped sense of identity, that everything is seen in starkly black-and-white terms. He says that their self-segregation means extremists often lose what he calls their multiple identities. Dr. GOPIN: What I mean by multiple identities is a very healthy aspect of how the average person can see themselves as ethnically Irish but also a proud American but also a great piano player and also a fan of the Red Sox. And each one of those identities is integrated into their personality, and none of them would they just take to an extreme. But if you can imagine somebody with just one identity and not allowing themselves any of those other complexities, that allows people to make very extreme choices, not only about whether to kill or not but whether to consider other people human. MOON: But without leadership, extremist groups might never form. Dr. Lawrence of Duke University says religious extremist groups usually form around and follow the vision of a strong-willed charismatic individual. Dr. LAWRENCE: Either a dogmatic theologian or a scriptural interpreter, usually actually somebody who's not validated by the major institutions of a religion, but an offshoot, if you will, a splinter or sectarian group and its leader who says, `This is what it should be,' and then that leader and his interpretation--it's most often he, not she--that leader and his interpretation is taken to be valid, and there is not discussion, there is not dissent, and there is certainly no effort of collaboration with others who have different viewpoints. Dr. CARMEL CHISWICK (University of Illinois): Where it turns to violence is where there's something to be gained, usually in the form of wealth or power. So one can ask, for example, about Osama bin Laden, what would he gain if he were, in fact, to get rid of all Western influence from Saudi Arabia? And the answer is he would gain the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. He would gain control over Mecca and Medina, which is important to him. But it's the control, it's the power that is the motivation for the violence. MOON: Dr. Chiswick says the common elements of religious extremism are not confined to religion; that they are often just as relevant in analyzing secular extremism, such as the activities of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh's citing of the US Constitution as justifying the Oklahoma City bombing. But she says religion does bring a uniquely powerful component to the equation: the belief by the religious extremists that God has sanctioned the violence. Duncan Moon, NPR News, Washington. Marc Gopin is a visiting associate professor of international diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
|
|
|
