Disbelief About Belief - New English Review

Why Secular Academics Do Not Understand the Motivations of Religious Fundamentalists

by Maarten Boudry (May 2019)

Skeptics, József Szurcsik

As an academic myself, I usually shy away from using that sort of language, but I think Walters is not far off the mark. In fact, there is a profusion of (mostly contradictory) theories on this subject in academic circles, with little empirical support or theoretical validity. What these theories have in common is that they try very hard to ignore the elephant in the room, namely religious ideology. Every conceivable motive for, or potential root cause of, radicalization (itself a weasel word) has been examined over the years, except the one that the terrorists themselves say is at the root of their actions. Religion has hardly anything to do with it, according to these academics, except perhaps as a superficial pretext that is invoked by terrorists to disguise their “true motives”.

later work with James Feldman, Pape also suggested that Pakistan “occupies” the tribal areas within its own borders; how presumptuous of a sovereign state to take control of its own territory! There are other obvious objections to Pape’s theory, too. How can it account for the fact that many attacks carried out by Sunni radicals on Shiite mosques (and vice versa), or by both of those groups on churches and Hindu temples, or the brutal lynching of secular bloggers and other people deemed “blasphemers”? Are those acts of violence also a response to “occupation”? In fact, the majority of suicide attacks in Pakistan have been committed, not by Pakistanis, but by foreign fighters. The fact that these people are prepared to travel to a foreign country to blow themselves up and kill dozens of people strongly suggests that their motivation has little to do with ethnopolitical questions of “occupation”. Another explanation (i.e., religious fanaticism) is far more parsimonious, yet Pape studiously ignores it.

Now, I don’t want to claim that these theories are completely worthless. It is plausible that identity fusion can lead to a greater willingness to sacrifice oneself, and it is surely true that radicalization often feeds on feelings of discrimination and other grievances. But again, those factors start to make sense only when you seem them through the prism of the Manichean religious worldview, in which the world is separated into the “true believers” and an assortment of “enemies” (the kufar, the apostates, the traitors). What is the factor that connects young European-born terrorists to fellow fighters in other countries who speak different languages and come from a different cultural background? Why do many religious fundamentalist believe all sorts of conspiracy theories in which Islam is targeted, and become firmly convinced that the West is hell-bent on destroying their religion? And yet, many researchers try very hard to ignore or downplay the ideological dimension of these actions. The self-proclaimed caliph of IS has a PhD in Qur’anic studies, their theoreticians such as al-Maqdisi, al-Zawahiri, and al-Muhajir have written countless theological tracts on jihadism, and an atmosphere of religious fervor leaps out at you in every video message and from every page of the IS magazine Dabiq, but still, our Western scholars know better.

Radicalization: A Marginal Phenomenon or a Mirror to Society?, published by Leuven University Press, the authors criticize policymakers who have started to pay more attention to the ideological dimension of terrorism. Of course, this is understandable from the policymakers’ point of view, since the whole point of deradicalization programs is to dismantle the extremist ideology that has taken root in the minds of jihadists. Policymakers have a more pratical mindset than academics: they want to prevent terrorist attacks. But the authors of Radicalization condemn this approach as “reductionist,” “essentialist,” “one-dimensional”, and a few other cardinal academic sins. Indeed, they find the whole concept of radicalization “problematic” in itself. The reason for this is obvious: it’s hard to talk about radicalization without asking, what are these people being radicalized into? And that’s exactly the question that these authors want to avoid, because it “stigmatizes” all Muslims. Simply uttering the word “Islamic” in the same breath as “terrorism” is “offensive”, according to Rik Coolsaet, who wrote the preface to the book. Even when the religious fanaticism is staring them right in the face, as in the chapter in which the authors conduct a content analysis of Dabiq, they conclude that, all things considered, religion hardly plays a role here.

Why do some academics have so much trouble taking religious motivations seriously? Many people, Jason Walters included, would point to political correctness about Islam. Most academics, especially in the humanities, have a progressive, leftist orientation. For them, Islam is the religion of an oppressed non-white minority, and criticism of the latter is suspect. Blaming Islam for violence and hatred is something to be avoided at all costs. Many academics in the humanities regard it as their duty to counterbalance the shift to the right in politics and public opinion. If minorities are being stigmatized, academics must push back. If certain politicians start talking about “Islamic terrorism”, academics should act as a counterweight. Moreover, academic specialization has led to the formation of ideological enclaves, in which researchers have laid down their own rules and end up talking mostly to like-minded colleagues.

recent interview. For him, the thesis about extreme self-sacrifice is part and parcel of his broader take on religion. Religion is not about a “set of propositions” or a “rational understanding of nature” at all, but about “building cohesion” in a social group. For all these reasons, Whitehouse dislikes “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins who “offend people by attacking their identities.”

It is probably not a coincidence that Koopmans, as he himself points out, was raised in a fundamentalist Pentecostal community. Just like Jason Walters, who turned his back on the Hofstad Network, he knows from first-hand experience what it means to believe that the end of the world will soon be upon us, and that this earthly life is only a temporary abode, insignificant in the face of the eternal life that awaits us. Most academics, raised in families that were either godless or perhaps little more than nominally Christian, have no clue about this sort of thing. It is time for them to shake off their complacent disbelief about belief and start to take the worldview of religious fanatics seriously.

This piece was based on an op-ed the author published in the Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad. It was translated into English with the help of Nick Brown.

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Science Unlimited? On the Challenges of Scientism, co-edited with Massimo Pigliucci. His research interests include human irrationality, cultural evolution, pseudoscience, and supernatural belief. He published more than 35 papers in academic journals, and several popular books in Dutch on critical thinking and irrationality.

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