Book Brief: Do Religious Organizations Enable Terrorists?
by Aziz Huq
author of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror
Huq reflects on the theories Eli Berman offers in his new book, Radical, Religious, and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (MIT Press).
What is the connection between religious faith and terrorism? Talk about terrorism in the U.S. is full of impassioned debates about the morality or legality of interrogation tactics and detention measures. It is shot through with divisive position-taking on troop deployments in Iraq and target-killings in Somalia and Yemen. But, except on the fringes, public debate tiptoes around what, by some accounts, is the central plank of al Qaeda’s articulated appeal for support: a call for religious solidarity.
Thirty years ago, silence about religion and violence would have been more easily comprehensive. In the 1960s and 1970s, none of the then-active significant international terrorism groups reflected a predominantly religious character or influence. Not until 1980, RAND scholar Bruce Hoffman has observed, did the example of the Iranian revolution sink in around the world and contemporary religious terrorism appeared. Recondite academic talk of the first century Zealot movement or the Thugees aside, religion-inflicted terrorism is a distinctly contemporary phenomenon and needs to be understood as much.
So while there are voices, largely on the nativist political right, that bemoan the “invasion” of Muslims into Europe and America, or that seek to portray Muslims generally as fifth-column threats to a presumptively civilized Western order, a thoughtful, informed debate on the role of religion in terrorism is a rara avis.
And yet assumptions about religion and its connection to terrorist violence play a large and unarticulated formative role in shaping the policies and the vocabulary of public debate on terrorism. Consider the application of terrorist financing laws in the United States to freeze and shut down major Muslim charities, in effect stifling a significant core expression of religious belief. Even if animated by other concerns, federal policy in this domain is molding American Muslims’ religious practice. It is changing the repertoire of available expressions of spirituality in ways that cut to the heart of religious commitments. And while there is a federal law that supposedly curtails policies with a disparate impact on religious minorities, it is telling that no legal challenge on such grounds stands even a hope of prevailing.
On a more retail basis, assumptions about belief and religiosity play a role in day-to-day law enforcement at airports and border crossings. While I generally find the post-structuralist dictums of scholars such as Judith Butler unhelpful, I have found the experience of passing through U.S. airports as one in which I felt an “identity” as a “Muslim” articulated and imposed through the scrutiny and specific questions asked. I doubt I am alone in this.
In the media too, the role of religion in respect of terrorism is assumed and not understood. The term “jihadists,” for example, is common today in public debate. Yet it embodies an awfully big assumption. There is, as a matter of internal Islamic doctrine and scholarship through history, a debate about what the term “jihad” means between a spiritual and a physical manifestation. Al Qaeda, evidently, favors the latter. So it is passing ironic that Fox News commentators and their ilk have taken it upon themselves to settle an intramural doctrinal dispute within Islam, and to do so in a way that expands the appeal of groups that advocate violence as a tool of social change.
Against this backdrop of misarticulated assumptions and dubious intentions, Professor Eli Berman deserves large credit for essaying a dispassionate analysis of the connection between religion and terrorism. Using the tools of his trade (microeconomics), he develops a plausible model for understanding some of those connections. Although I think Berman’s model explains less than he claims—for reasons I will explore below—his book contains useful insights. It is also a model of clear and accessible writing, accessible to a non-specialist without sacrificing rigor.
The core of Berman’s claim is that religious organizations operate as “economic clubs” that collectively provide social services and support not just to an individual who may commit terrorist acts but to a larger family. To insulate the religious group from free-riders—who mooch off the services without contributing their share—religious clubs enforce costly prohibitions and other rules. Under these circumstances that religious groups generate the trust, commitment, and willingness to sacrifice that enable religious violence. Developing his thesis, Berman focuses on four groups—the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Muqtada al-Sadr’s network—that use violence in quite different ways and that have strikingly different attitudes toward non-violence modalities of political change, in particular elections.
As a threshold matter, it bears noting that Berman’s notion of clubs is similar to, but different in emphasis from James Buchanan’s classic 1965 discussion of “club goods.” Buchanan characterized “club goods” as a variant on public goods: they are excludable (in the sense that some people can be kept out) but non-rivalrous (in the sense that my consumption of the good does not diminish years). It is not clear the phenomena Berman analyzes meet both criteria, and the use of a familiar term in this novel way is a bit disconcerting.
More generally, I am persuaded that Berman has set forth an important contribution to the study of terrorist violence but not that he has generated a universal diagnosis. Berman’s thesis, I think, helps explain how religious structures enable violence. But this is very different from claiming that religious organizations conduce to violence. Indeed, even a casual glance around suggests there were plenty of tightly-knit religious organizations that do not produce terrorist violence. Relations between religious organization and violence seem more contingent and indirect. The relation of American evangelical movements to anti-abortion violence, is neither direct nor simple. Equally, even for the groups Berman studies, violence seems one option among many (including electoral competition), and it would be interesting to know more about how tightly-knit groups select between political strategies under changing circumstances.
Equally important, there is a growing body of evidence concerning al Qaeda recruits in the West that does not fit Berman’s model. Recent research in the United Kingdom suggests that those amenable to recruitment by terrorist groups do not come from thick religious communities, and indeed have relatively sparse and fragmented understanding of Islam. The research also suggests that more robust religious training may be an inoculating measure against terrorist recruitment.
That Berman’s model could be supplemented should not detract from its evident utility. Perhaps a paperback edition could explore further connections. Moreover, it could correct some other odd omissions. Although Berman discusses the Taliban at length, for example, he does not cite or apply the work of Antonio Giustozzi, who has been the most perceptive and careful scholar of what is called the “neo-Taliban.” Along with the odd omission of Buchanan (whose canonical article does not even merit a bibliographic reference), this leaves the reader wondering more generally about omissions.
Aziz Huq is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and is co-author, with Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror (New Press).
