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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May-June 2008, page 72 Waging Peace GWU Professor Analyzes Terrorists
GEORGE WASHINGTON University Professor Jerold M. Post, lectured and signed his book, The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to Al-Qaeda, on March 6 at GWU’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Post, a professor of political psychology and international affairs, has interviewed some alleged terrorists and carried out psychosocial investigations of others to study how they formed a “terrorist mindset.” Based on their personal statements, Post analyzed their beliefs and motives and eventually determined that psychologically normal people can become agents of extraordinary violence if they are stripped of their land, identity and/or independence. “Crazed fanatics they are not,” he said. Just as the CIA does, extremist organizations in Northern Ireland and the Middle East screen out people who are security risks. They look for frustrated, alienated, hopeless youth who are either rebelling against their family or the regime that is oppressing them. Post explored three types of terrorism: national-separatist, social-revolutionary and religious-extremist. He noted that religious fundamentalists belonging to all three Abrahamic faiths distort their religion and use terrorism. While the professor touched upon Yigal Amir, who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, and right-to-life Christian radicals who bomb health care clinics and kill doctors, he focused primarily on Islamic terrorists. In his Power Point presentation he showed horrifying photos of young Arabs wearing suicide bombing vests—but not a glimpse of Jewish fanatics trying to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem or Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American-born terrorist who gunned down worshippers in a Hebron mosque. —Delinda C. Hanley |
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