Is Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda a Cult

By Arnold Markowitz, LCSW

In today’s quest to understand what is behind the terror attacks on the WTC and Pentagon by suspects we believe to be followers of Osama Bin Laden we tend to turn to familiar areas of understanding. Those of us familiar with destructive cult groups and brainwashing quickly assume we are dealing with a cult group. Others speak of terrorist groups, religious fanatics, psychotic behavior, and antisocial personality disorders of social malcontents. We also ask if these suspects were such religious men how could they go to a bar where nude woman perform and consume alcohol—both prohibited by Islam. And a third question asked me by some has been if we are dealing with a Manchurian Candidate situation where a normal person is programmed to kill in response to a post-hypnotic suggestion.

For me the last question is the easiest to dispatch. The answer is No, this is not a Manchurian Candidate scenario which is best left to Hollywood. I don’t think anyone in the mental health or related fields believes this is possible. In fact most would say other than the emotional scars, victims of brainwashing do not maintain the brainwashed beliefs over time once they are away from the system of indoctrination. Brainwashing is that non-professional term defined in the dictionary as "forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social or religious beliefs and to accept contrasting regimented ideas."

HOWEVER, the Manchurian Candidate serves as a metaphor for what we experienced on 9-11. That is to say men living among us, who seem to participate in our democratic lifestyle SUDDENLY revert back to some implanted idea and coldly murder thousands of innocent people in an unbelievable act of hatred. How is this possible and what does it have to do with cults? Again, here are the questions I will address:

• Is this a cult?
• How could devoted religious men do this?
• What does it have to do with destructive cults?

Is this a cult?

In my Merriam Webster online dictionary cult is defined as formal religious veneration, a system of religious beliefs and ritual, a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious, a great devotion to a person, idea, object or work such as a book or film, and lastly a small group of people characterized by such devotion. The Interfaith Coalition Of Concern About Cults coined the following characterization that we use at the JBFCS Cult Clinic:

Destructive cult groups have a self appointed charismatic leader who is venerated by the followers, a leader who exercises autocratic control over the members’ lives. The group uses deception and manipulation to recruit members and raise funds, and to control the lives of members and deny privacy. I would also add the use of sophisticated psychological techniques to coerce a rapid change in beliefs, values, and practices of recruits.

I have decided that Bin Laden or Al Qaeda is not a cult in the way we use the term and to characterize it as such will diminish our position in warning the world about destructive cult groups. While Bin Laden is a self appointed leader of some sort and may be venerated by his followers, he presents himself as holy man not G-d or a G-d like figure. He focuses his followers’ veneration on Allah, not himself. As best as I can tell, recruits are not inveigled into the group by deception or manipulation. The members know full well what they are joining and seem to be lining up to support the Taliban and Bin Laden. I am not aware of the use of psychological techniques or the use of brainwashing to recruit and keep members. We may not like his message or how it is taught but this does not make it a cult. It is far worse than that. In addition I think it takes us further away from understanding this movement and what we are up against if we glibly dismiss them as a cult group. They are terrorists and terrorists share some characteristics with cult members, particularly the self-negation of their own lives, a willingness to sacrifice themselves for the cause, and intense devotion to a person or a belief system. It is the misuse of these character traits that abhor use when they are used to kill innocent unarmed men, woman and children.

For years people in the cult awareness field have said we are not concerned with the extent or zealousness of beliefs, and that we are not anti-religious. Ben Laden and his crew are said to belong to the Wahabi sect of Islam. It is my information that in the moderate Muslim world calling someone a Wahabi is pejorative and a way to marginalize them. Hence, some mainstream Muslims are called Wahabi by those who want to discredit them. These are important religious and now political questions, but I believe we need to accept them as devotees of a religious Islamic sect albeit misguided in their calling. This brings me to my next question:

How could religious men do this?

This is a very complicated issue and I will deal with just one or two aspects of the question. According to Sister Karen Armstrong there are individuals who go beyond being religious and become so focused on saving the religion that not only are they able to kill in the name of religion they allow themselves to indulge in behaviors not permitted such as the use of alcohol. Therefore, the highjackers could go to that bar and still believe they are pious Muslims. In their distorted interpretation they could believe they are purifying the world by these killings. As Andrew Sullivan writing in the NY Times pointed out recently those who burned people at the stake did so to purify the souls that were believed to be possessed by the devil and not intended as a mean spirited execution.

In both cases they believed they are saving the world from evil. And further understanding of the hijackers can be found in fiction. Ken Follett’s book, The Man From St. Petersburg gives a clear description of an Anarchist who lives among the people he is to assassinate. Robert J Lifton ‘s work on doubling offers greater understanding through his description of Nazi doctors who experiment on humans and go home to perfectly normal happy lives. In clinical terms we see this as splitting where a person is able to see life and people in black and white, all good all bad terms.

And now we come to my third question:

What does this have to do with destructive cults?

From the very beginning many people instinctively recognized similarities to cult groups. Some of this is because of the religious context of the attacks of the conflict being laid at the door of an Islamic vs. western culture clash. To me the greatest significance lies in terrorist organizations. In the last 10 years or so we have seen cult leaders turn their Tokyo subway with Sarin gas, the Rajneesh cult that poisoned the Antelope Oregon water supply with salmonella, the People of The Solar Temple caused more than 70 members to commit suicide, Heaven’s Gate’s 37 suicides, hundreds of deaths of cult members in Uganda, and of the mass murder and suicides of over 900 men, woman and children in Jonestown in 1978.

Cults and terrorist groups seem to share what Conway and Siegelman call a death spiral. I believe there is a similar process going on with cults and terrorist groups with slightly different content of beliefs or rationale for this death spiral. If we look at destructive cult groups as the Canary in the mine greater understanding may help us understand this turn to an indifference to human life in to obtain religious or political goals. The highjackers were enraged teens from Gaza but young men from one of the richest countries in the world or in the case of Muhammed Atta from a middle class family. In their distorted beliefs they have to destroy us to save the world from evil and to attain martyrdom for themselves.

This presentation was given by Arnold Markowitz, LCSW in the fall of 2001 at the Jewish Community Relations Council conference held at New York University Hillel Bronfman Center.