The 2015 Global Terrorism Index reported that the threat of terror-related deaths had increased nearly ten-fold since 2000. 3,329 deaths were caused by terrorist activities in 2000, and the number rose to 32,685 in 2014. The rise in terrorist-related deaths has sparked interest in terrorist psychology. Researchers and the society, in general, want to understand how groups and individuals can resort to extreme violence to solve issues that could be addressed by dialogues. Many studies have been conducted on terror groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, and researchers often forget to explore terrorism at an individual level. Lone-wolf terrorism has risen, and it is causing more harm than group/ organized terrorism. The purpose of this research paper is to describe the psychological and behavioral factors of individual terrorists. The paper will use the case study of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe) as described by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (2014) and other sources on lone-wolf terrorism to identify the psychological and behavioral factors that push individual to engage in violence.
Initial psychological theories on terrorism aimed to find elements of personality or pathologies, but they have been unsuccessful. Silke (2012) posits that there is no evidence that terrorists are mentally disturbed, or have some mental or personality disorder. Some theorists blame external factors such as poverty, ideology/ religion, education, but there is no substantial evidence to support the hypothesis. Most researchers agree that terrorism is a syndrome with origins in personal deviation and later as “external root causes.”
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The US Department of State report created in 2006 concluded that terrorists have many motivations depending on their interests or the group they associate with. There are common characteristics such as membership or affiliation to an extremist group, but specific motivations vary among individuals. Individual terrorist reacts differently under pressure, stress, and anxiety; hence, it is difficult to generalize. According to DeAngelis (2009), the psychology of terrorism is predominantly marked by theory and opinion. However, psychologists and researchers are beginning to engage in research with the aim of putting together reliable data. The findings have been useful in assessing the psychological and behavioral terrorists.
Psychologists have examined terrorists to identify individual characteristics that are common among them. The researchers find that terrorists are not pathological, but they are more susceptible to the lure of terrorism. According to Reicher & Haslam (2016), these individuals have common psychological and behavioral traits that separate them from others. They feel angry, alienated or disenfranchised. The individuals also identify with the perceived victims of the social injustice that they are fighting. For example, in the case of Islamic Jihadism, the individual terrorist will argue that Muslims have been subjected to years of suffering. Another characteristic is that they feel the need to take action instead of just talking about the problem and they feel that violence against the state or the individuals causing the social problem is not immoral. Lastly, terrorists believe that joining a movement has social and psychological rewards. Rewards such as adventure, a heightened sense of identity, a purpose among other rewards. DeAngelis (2009) asserts that it is easier to understand the psychological and behavioral characteristics of an individual terrorist by investigating how individual changes due to terrorist involvement rather than ask them why they joined a terror group.
Gartenstein-Ross (2014) gives a detailed history of the radicalization of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (born Carlos Bledsoe). Muhammad is a lone wolf Jihadist who carried out a fatal shooting at a joint Army-Navy recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas on June 1, 2009. Gartenstein-Ross explores Muhammad’s childhood, adolescence until he became a terrorist. Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe) was brought up in a loving family in Memphis, Tennessee. His family ran a tour company, Twin City Tours and Muhammad would assist with the family child when he was young. Muhammad’s father, Melvin, described his son as a fun kid. He got into the usual mischief every high school student does, but he was a good kid. He graduated high school in 2003 and went to the Tennessee State University to pursue a business course. His parents had hopes that their son would give them early retirement.
However, Muhammad’s recollections of his childhood are entirely different from how his parents described it. When speaking with the psychologist at the Arkansas Department of Human Services before his trial, Muhammad recalled that he was suspended from school several times for fighting (Gartenstein-Ross, 2014). He also said that he was a gang member while growing up. Muhammad appears to have exaggerated his past to appear as a build up for his terrorist activities. Muhammad got in trouble with the law a few times before and while in college. In the last incident, he was at risk of going to jail for 14 years, and this scared him. Muhammad turned to religion; he experimented with Christianity and Judaism before settling on Islam. To his friends and his family, it appeared that Muhammad was an ordinary young American experimenting with a new religion, they did not know the extent of his devotion until he went to Yemen.
Muhammad’s history is similar to the accounts of many individual terrorists. One wonders what pushes young people brought up well into terror activities. Gartenstein-Ross (2014) gives the four stages of radicalization as pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and Jihadization. The four steps are accompanied by psychological and behavioral changes in an individual.
During the pre-radicalization stage, the individual begins the journey to extremism. The individual has no idea that he/she is on the way to becoming a terrorist as the individual experiments with a new ideology. In the self-identification stage, the individual moves away from the former identity and identify with the new philosophy. In Muhammad’s case, he identified with Salafi philosophy. Gartenstein-Ross (2014) adds that a cognitive event such as the loss of a job, alienation or the death of a loved one produces an identity crisis shakes one’s beliefs such that one is willing to experiment with new ideas. Muhammad’s arrest and prosecution was a traumatic event in his life that forced him to change his perspective on life and adopt new beliefs. When he became a Muslim, he was welcomed by a brotherhood he was yearning for. The third stage is the indoctrination stage where the new beliefs intensify. In the third stage, a person wholly adopts jihadi-Salafi ideology without question. When Muhammad went to Yemen, he was further indoctrinated into Salafism such that no one needed to convince him to support the Salafist cause. Muhammad was willing to travel to Somalia to train as a terrorist, but he was caught and deported. The fourth stage is the Jihadization where an individual accepts the responsibility to participate in Jihadism and will plan or engage in operational planning with others for jihad or a terrorist attack (Gartenstein-Ross, 2014).
Silke (2012) agrees with Gartenstein-Ross (2014) that once an individual is indoctrinated, the individual is guided by the belief that he/she is fighting a greater evil. The notion of fighting a greater evil motivates individual terrorists such that they are willing to take part in suicide missions or engage in violence that will see them lose their freedom. Suicide bombers are not tricked into going on a suicide mission, they offer to do so because they believe they are serving a higher purpose.Reicher & Haslam (2016) notes that terror groups use propaganda to brainwash individuals that engaging in violence is the only way and that they are not committing evil by engaging in violence against the non-Muslims or the infidels.
In conclusion, terrorism is a complicated issue. Researchers have analyzed many subjects, but they are yet to come up with the specific psychological, behavioral traits and the stages of terrorism. Muhammad’s case study shows that individual terrorists are influenced by individual, social and societal issues that are interconnected. For Muhammad’s case, it is possible that he was more inclined to violence given his past trouble with the law. Muhammad claimed he got in trouble in high school, he was a part of a gang and was once arrested. Muhammad exaggerated the level of criminality in his childhood, and this could be a reason for being a terrorist. After converting to Islam, Muhammad found a purpose and a brotherhood. Muhammad was not radicalized by anyone, but he learned about Salafism on his own and went to Yemen to learn more before coming back home where he shot two people. Muhammad’s case study shows that everyone has the potential to be a lone-wolf terrorist. Muhammad was brought up in a loving family in Memphis, and he chose a different path and a struggle that he did not identify with. Lone-wolf terrorists are on the rise in the age of technology, making it even harder for anti-terrorism agencies to stop them.
References
DeAngelis, T. (2009). Understanding terrorism. Monitor on Psychology , 40 (10), 60.
Gartenstein-Ross, D. (2014). Lone Wolf Islamic Terrorism: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (Carlos Bledsoe) Case Study. Terrorism and Political Violence , 26 (1), 110-128.
Reicher, S., & Haslam, A. (2016). Fueling Terror: How Extremists Are Made. Scientific American. Retrieved from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fueling-terror- how-extremists-are-made/
Silke, A. (2012). Chapter 4-Understanding terrorist target selection: Chapter taken from Terrorism and the Olympics ISBN: 978-0-203-83522-7. Routledge Online Studies on the Olympic and Paralympic Games , 1 (41), 49-71.
Training, U. A., & Command, D. (2007). A military guide to terrorism in the twenty-first century. Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (DCSINT) Handbook , (1), 3-1.
