Terrorism

I chose to write about terrorism because it hits close to home for me. In the summer of 2016, the summer before I went off to college, a dark wave hit my city: Dhaka, Bangladesh. I remember being in the car with my sister and my father on our way for our weekly Thursday night dinner outing. While we were stuck in traffic, I was texting with a friend who lived near the restaurant we were going to and she said she heard gunshots from her balcony. She then said that her father spoke to the guard in their building and he thought there might be a terrorist attack at a restaurant called Holey Artisan, which was the next street over from her house. Holey Artisan was a high-end restaurant/cafe frequented by mostly expatriate residents who lived in the area. Local kids who attended international schools also used to hang out there a lot. This area of the city, Gulshan, is widely a residential area but has many restaurants and so it doesn’t have much security around. I relayed this information about the potential terrorist attack to my father and he suddenly became very quiet. He turned on the radio and looked up the news on his phone but at the time there were no reports about anything. We were almost approaching the restaurant when various traffic police started blocking the roads to Gulshan and turning cars away because there was an ongoing terrorist attack. We were anxiously waiting to get home while hearing the news about how 6 to 8 young men stormed the restaurant and held 33 people hostage, including chefs and working staff. Some of the hostages were people I knew personally, people my age whom I would even call my friends. The militants were part of ISIS and held these hostages for about 10 hours, through out the night. When the military finally stormed the restaurant strategically, 20 of these hostages had already been killed. From the reports that came out later, the hostages were made to recite verses from the Quran and were killed if they could not. Many women were killed because they were dressed in Western clothes like jeans and t-shirts instead of covering their head and wearing traditional clothing like “good Muslims do.” In the end, 6 of the terrorists were gunned down and the rest were arrested. My city was trembling, and still is.

When reading about terrorism in class, it particularly interested me how young and well-educated people from good family backgrounds get roped into extremist groups such as ISIS. Bartol & Bartol outlined culturally motivated terrorists as those who are driven by fear of irreparable damage to their way of life or culture by an organization or foreign country. Religion generates the most passion in these types of groups and these groups are largely defined by a system of faith that remains vigilant for forces that may suppress their religious way of life. This is absolutely what ISIS is like. In this particular attack, the terrorists targeted those who didn’t seem “Muslim enough” and saw them as threats who were brain washing others with Western ideals.

So why do they join? Bartol & Bartol explain that when one has next to nothing working out in life, they will still always have their religious, political, or philosophical faith. Young people who lack self esteem and a sense of self may be primary targets for joining terrorist groups. The text also talks about social learning theory and how those who are exposed to or live in places of political or religious strife, may directly witness terrorist behaviours and may learn from it. Bangladesh is a Muslim country and while we say we’re secular, many of the political and religious leaders preach otherwise. So, exposure to Islam, and more importantly extremist Islam, is common and thus maybe social learning applies here.

The process of radicalization is so bewildering to me. How can someone be brain washed to such an extent without even realizing? Turns out, it’s not that difficult. The boys who were recruited were socially isolated from friends and family for months. Many times it is our peers or even our family who can influence us into certain ways of thinking. In this case, I believe many of these boys were recruited by their peers in class and were gradually drawn into the group. As stated in Bartol & Bartol, individuals gradually adopt the beliefs of the extreme members in a psychological process called risky shift. Risky shift refers to the tendency of groups to develop beliefs and make decisions that are more extreme than they would have initially. The recruits become so deeply immersed in the ideology of the group that they don’t even realize it. These recruits go through a training process that gives them a sense of eliteness and provides social rewards and thus entices these people to go through with it.

In sum, while it’s been 4 years since this attack, I still think about it. It makes me uneasy to think that someone I go to school with could be so easily transformed into a terrorist. The research about why one joins these extremist groups fascinates me. It’s similar to joining a cult and even that fascinates me. How can one be brain washed so intensely in so far as they put the groups ideologies above their family or friends?

Bartol, C.R., & Bartol, A.M. (2016). Criminal Behavior: A Psychological Approach (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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