opinionWar

Using Social Psychology to Counter Terrorism

Given recent terrorist attacks in France, Canada, and Australia, a number of Western thinkers argue that in order to defeat Islamic extremism, we must not only confront their ideological foundations but also provide younger followers of Islam with alternative ways of being good Muslims without killing Westerners. With no attractive alternative, as social psychologists have found for other marginalized groups, our ad-hoc efforts at countering violent extremists will continue to fail.

The roots of the conflict between Islam and the West go back more than a millennium to the birth of Islam. Within the short span of a decade after the death of prophet Muhammad, all the major Christian centers of the Middle East – Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria, Carthage – had come under Muslim rule. There were repeated Muslim attacks against the headquarters of the Eastern Church, Constantinople, which finally succumbed to this onslaught in 1453. It was in the wake of the meteoric rise in Muslims fortunes that an Islamic myth of invincibility became widespread. “If you faithfully follow Allah and his path, Allah will make you victorious” became a cry firmly embedded in Muslim identity.

To counter this lightning-fast expansion, Pope Gregory declared a Crusade against Muslim heresy in 996. For the next 300 years, the two civilizations fought against each other in a broad front extending from Spain in the west to Syria in the east. The fatal blow against the Muslim expansion came from an unexpected quarter: The Mongol invasion of the 13th century. The Mongols were so ferocious that they broke through the Islamic narrative of invincibility and forced Muslims to ask themselves: “What went wrong?” The 13th century cleric Ibn-e-Tamiyya provided the narrative that became dominant. Allah had taken victory away from Muslims, he said, because they had stopped following Islam faithfully enough. The only way to restore the glory of the golden era of Islam was to go back to faithfully following Islamic tenets Jihad in particular.

This narrative follows the powerful arcing pattern identified by psychologists. It reminds group members of their glorious past and promises that if they make the changes suggested, they can restore their past glory. This narrative was so successful that when the biggest blow to Muslim prestige came with military defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the disbanding of the caliphate, and the colonial occupation of Muslim countries, socially creative Muslims leaders revived this narrative.

We need a counter-narrative effort that does not just defensively challenge small fringe elements of the dominant Islamic narrative but goes on the offensive by offering Muslims around the world an attractive alternative, a narrative that satisfies their social psychological needs for positive self-esteem.

A legacy of this long history of mutual adversity is that Western countries are seen negatively as a hostile out-group by most Muslims. When asked to provide the greatest danger to their nation, Indonesians, Pakistanis, and Malaysians – all Muslim-majority populations – chose United States as the biggest danger to their survival. A 2014 Pew Global Survey also found that while “a global median of 65% voice an affirmative opinion about America. This includes a median of 74% in Africa, 66% in Western Europe, 66% in Asia, 65% in Latin America, but just 30% in the Middle East.” The lowest favorability ratings for the U.S. were found in the Islamic world.

Out-Group Influences