To kill and be killed

As if the UK wasn’t suffering from enough death and trauma after the two terrorist attacks on London this week, we now have to start suffering from the paranoia and “security mindedness” that leads to the removal of the very freedoms on which we base our way of life. First, we have the police shooting and killing an entirely innocent person whose only offences were to live in the same block of flats as a terrorism suspect and to wear a thick jacket in warm weather. Second, we have the press continuing to treat suicide bombing as though it was something unique to and endorsed by Islam.

The police shooting might not strike some foreigners as being as shocking as many people in the UK find it. Remember, the UK is a country in which most police officers cannot carry guns and even those who are allowed to do not do so routinely – rather, they are locked in safes in their cars. The UK is a country in which a policeman shooting someone dead (whether they were guilty or innocent of a crime) is likely to become national news because of its rarity. In the UK, the police are, in theory and (usually) practice, unbiased and neutral – racism is a persistent issue but is taken seriously and is a disciplinary offence.

And yet, we have had an incident in which a group of armed policemen chased a man down, captured and restrained him, and only then did they shoot him. This is totally unacceptable – guns are supposed to be used only as a last resort by the police, and only to save lives. A man who is restrained by a group of burly policemen is not an immediate threat; even if he was carrying a bomb, it would have taken only seconds to check his jacket to be sure. The officers involved should, at the very least, have their rights to carry guns revoked, and disciplinary proceeding should be unavoidable. The police and the government have both officially apologised to the man’s family, but this is not enough. The British police are a symbol worldwide of how policing ought to be carried out. The victim in this case was Brazilian – he was familiar with gun-toting police and expected Britain to be different, and for three years it was. But, now, the whole of Brazil sees our police as no different to the violent policing one finds elsewhere. It will be along time, if ever, before they again ask the British police force to train their own.

Second, though, and even worse, we are seeing more of the demonisation of Islam. No matter how much the mainstream say that Islam does not support violence, no matter how often they condemn the bombings, the press seem to grip ever tighter to their picture of suicide bombing and Islam as closely linked. The problem is that this is totally untrue. There was an excellent article on it this week in the New Scientist. The surprising thing is that the profile of a typical suicide bomber is not at all what we are led to expect. They are usually well educated and well off, and rarely suicidal in the pathological sense. Researchers have tracked the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983 and found that very few are mentally ill or dependent on drugs or alcohol. They don’t have to be Islamic extremists, or even Islamic at all.

The men thought to be the London bombers were all Muslims, it is true, as are the vast majority of the bombers in Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. However, many of the suicide bombers in the Lebanon in the 1980s were from secular Christian backgrounds, and the Tamil Tigers (an organisation that was among the first to use suicide bombings in the modern era) are secular Marxist-Leninists. The way that people are turned into suicide bombers has little to do with religion and everything to do with group psychology. The movement (whatever it is) finds people (usually young and male) who are sympathetic to their cause and organises them into small cells. Using their motivation to the cause, the movement uses religious or political indoctrination to fire their zeal, emphasising the heroism of their mission and the nobility of self-sacrifice. Finally, all the members of the cell make a pact together, declaring their commitment to whatever action they are taking. This step makes it extremely hard, psychologically, for any member to back out. This pattern seems to hold from kamikaze pilots to the 9/11 hijackers.

The issue with suicide bombing isn’t religion, it’s exploitation and fanaticism. A movement willing to recruit people with the intention of having them sacrifice themselves, a movement able to see anyone who isn’t a member as being less than human, a movement that can justify violence for political ends – these are the warning signs. And what is particularly worrying at the moment is that our own politicians and press seem more and more willing to follow these methods themselves – justifying violence for their own political ends (even if that is in the name of “security”), seeing others as less human than ourselves (based on the country they live in or the religion they follow).

Once more, I find that I have to pray, in the words of Bono, “that we don’t become a monster in order to defeat a monster”.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:56am on 25 July 2005
Category: Politics, Struggling, General

Nice post. It looks like England is experiencing some of the same fear-based regression that we have been dealing with over here since 9/11. It appears to be very easy for people to respond to these types of terror attacks by becoming very ethnocentric, by demonizing anyone who looks like or acts like the perceived enemy. I hope your country works through this period or horror better than mine did.

Bill () (URL)
1:14pm on 25 July 2005

I was immediately concerned when I heard about the shooting. It did not seem right, especially when I heard the testimony of the journalist who was there. It looked to me like someone on the scene lost the plot. Looks even more like it now.

Stephen () (URL)
1:54pm on 25 July 2005

Seems simple enough to me, man with automatic rifle pointed at you asks me to stop, i stop, i dont run.

Rob
09:57am on 26 July 2005