Demographic
studies from the 1960s and 1970s constructed a profile of the typical terrorist
as a well-educated single male in his mid-twenties from a middle-class
background but that has changed so much as the social classes have been
mingled, mixed, destroyed or otherwise hybrid into different social categories
that includes variances in race, religion, gender and ethnicity backgrounds.
It
should be mentioned that the relationship between political orientations and
socioeconomic factors reveal that during the 1960’s and 70’s, women are gaining
more of a significant role in such acts that demonstrates their propensity to
be more favored to perform terrorist acts for the left wing more so than the
right wing terrorists (46.2 vs. 11.2 percent) according to tabulations
performed by the FBI.
Additionally,
the FBI tabulations revealed that “college completion was much more common
among left- than right-wing terrorists (67.6 vs. 19.0 percent), blue-collar
occupation was more frequent among right- than left-wing terrorists (74.8 vs.
24.3 percent), and there was a trend for both left- and right-wing terrorists
to achieve low- to medium-income levels even if they had college education.”
The
terror-related inclination to be involved in terrorism swung away from Europe
in the 1980s along with a relative quiet or dormant existence of American
terrorists’ groups and the advent of a rising world profile of radical Islamic
terrorists.
This
resulted in the recognition characteristic of the Islamic or Palestinian
terrorist of that later period who was age seventeen to twenty-three, came from
a large family with an impoverished background, and had low educational
achievement. But the pendulum has swung again. Middle Eastern terrorists in the
late 1990s and early twenty-first century come from a wider demographic range,
including university students, professionals, married men in their late
forties, and young women.
The
most recent development, the recruitment of women as suicide bombers, arises at
least in part from the fact that permits females to participate in acts of
terror and actively engage in all methodologies listed as a means to fight the
cause or mission.
This
profile holds true today as women are listed as leaders, co-conspirators, assassins
or bombers in various terrorist scenarios in the Middle East and part of
Southeast Asia.
A
poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in 2001
among 1,357 adults in the West Bank and Gaza tested the hypothesis that poverty
or low levels of education influence attitudes regarding political violence and
found that support for terrorism against Israeli civilians was even more common
among professionals than among laborers (43.3 vs. 34.6 percent) and more common
among those with secondary education than among illiterate respondents (39.4
vs. 32.3 percent)
On
the basis of unstructured interviews, American psychiatrist David Hubbard
reported five traits of skyjackers:
(1)
violent, often alcoholic father
(2)
deeply religious mother
(3)
sexually shy, timid, and passive
(4)
younger sisters toward whom the terrorist acted protectively
(5)
poor social achievement.
On
the matter of second-hand information, analysts have claimed to have identified
nine typical characteristics of right-wing terrorists:
(1)
ambivalence toward authority
(2)
defective insight
(3)
adherence to convention,
(4)
emotional detachment from the consequences of their actions
(5)
sexual role uncertainties
6)
magical thinking
(7)
destructiveness
(8)
low education
(9)
adherence to violent subculture norms and weapons fetishes.
It
is interesting that these lists, compiled a decade apart, overlap in regard to
sexual role uncertainties and probably low education (if this is a proxy for
poor social achievement). Yet apart from this superficial overlap, the two
studies do not suggest common features of background or personality.
Neither
of these studies used controls or validated psychological instruments creating
somewhat subjective matter to deal with and taken with less credibility than
any other empirical evidence presented for such studies. Since the tragic
events of September 11, 2001, attention has shifted to the psychology of
Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. There is a dearth of published literature
describing psychological studies of Muslim extremists.
An
analysis of this subgroup of Muslim extremist suicide bombers among the
Palestinians revealed a profile of individuals described as:
·
ages
seventeen to twenty-two
·
uneducated,
·
unemployed
·
unmarried
Most
came from respected families that supported their activism, with 30 percent of
the families of religious terrorists and 15 percent of the families of secular terrorists
reporting their own radical involvement. Peer influence was cited as the major
reason for joining a terrorist group, and joining increased social standing. Membership
was described as being associated with a fusion of the young adult’s individual
identity with the group’s collective identity and goals.
Prison
experience was claimed to strengthen group commitment for most terrorists of
both types. Anger and hatred without remorse were often expressed, but there
was little interest in obtaining weapons of mass destruction localizing both
attacks and methods used weaponry chosen to be small arms or homemade
explosives.
Other
data compiled of individuals identified as Muslims engaged in terrorism for the
new Islamic world order revealed some fragmented childhood trauma and only a
few suffered from a personality disorders or paranoia but did have histories of
petty crimes committed and most were loners. One appeared to be an al Qaeda
leader.
Potentially
high-value data were gathered outside the academic research apparatus by United
Nations (UN) relief worker Nasra Hassan, based non-scientific or control based
interviews with “nearly 250” members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad conducted in
Gaza between 1996 and 1999. She reports that the suicide bombers ranged in age
from eighteen to thirty-eight, more than half were refugees, “many” were middle
class, 2 were sons of millionaires, and none were depressed, although “many”
reported that they had been beaten or tortured by Israeli forces.
Unfortunately,
Hassan’s lucid and widely cited report does not specify the actual number of
terrorist subjects, as well as what proportion of this total subject population
were intended suicide bombers, failed suicide bombers, or trainers, and offers
no specific demographic, socioeconomic, or psychological data.
Other
attempts to account for the behavior of terrorists fall into two general
categories: top-down approaches that seek the seeds of terrorism in political,
social, economic and evolutionary circumstances bottom-up approaches that
explore the characteristics of individuals and groups that turn to terrorism.
These
approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, approaches such as rational choice
theory and relative deprivation/oppression theory combine these points of view,
considering interactions between circumstances and actors. While acknowledging the
importance of top-down analyses and ultimate causes, this article focuses
primarily on bottom-up approaches and proximal causes in sub-state terrorism.
The principal approaches are organized into groups for the sake of clarity.
However,
it will become apparent that conceptual overlap exists between theories within
and between groups. It will also become apparent that a particular fundamental
conceptual framework— such as psychoanalysis—may inform diverse theories and
that the same theory may be championed from different conceptual frameworks.
