Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

The real problem isn’t ideology, it’s human nature

Despite much success in the campaign against violent Islamist terrorism in Indonesia, the threat remains real. Since the first Bali bombings of October 2002, hundreds of Islamist terrorists have been captured and scores prosecuted. Yet the threat keeps evolving.

Despite much success in the campaign against violent Islamist terrorism in Indonesia, the threat remains real. Since the first Bali bombings of October 2002, hundreds of Islamist terrorists have been captured and scores prosecuted. Yet the threat keeps evolving.

The original Jemaah Islamiyah network implicated in the Bali attacks that expressly targeted Westerners was, by 2010, overshadowed by newer networks such as Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid and Al Qaeda in Aceh. The latter have themselves morphed further.

Hence, lately, the authorities have expressed concerns about the threat posed by the West Indonesian and East Indonesian Mujahidin against not Westerners but the police primarily.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, the respected Indonesian analyst Solahudin declared that “as long as there are people who dream of imposing syariah and people who can be easily recruited”, the threat of violent Islamist terrorism will remain resilient.

CONTENDING EXPLANATIONS

But why is this the case? In the decade since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, much ink has been spilled on what motivates today’s militants in Indonesia and elsewhere. Some analysts insist on the overriding importance of socio-economic factors, such as poverty and unemployment.

Others point the finger at ethno-nationalist motivations, particularly in historic conflict zones involving a dominant state and a minority community that has long felt marginalised.

Still other scholars point to religious extremism — or even religion itself — as ultimately culpable.

Many scholars now suggest that an ideological worldview, cloaked in religious garb perhaps, is the key driver behind much contemporary terrorist violence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron famously argued in February 2011 that extremist ideology is the root of terrorism today.

Solahudin himself asserted that terrorism is based on three elements: A disappointed people, an organisation and a justifying ideology.

THE REAL KEY: HUMAN GROUPISHNESS

From a deeper, scientific perspective, what underlies the various explanations is the human penchant for what science writer Matt Ridley calls groupishness. Certainly, evolutionary biologists argue that at an unconscious level, what ultimately drives human behaviour is the quest for continuous genetic propagation across generations.

Individuals — or more precisely their genes — are irrevocably selfish in the ultimate pursuit of survival and reproduction. Throughout human history, evolution has “selected for” those traits — physical strength, cunning, competitive ambition, industriousness — that ensure the high social status of the individual relative to his peers.

Such social status brings with it the evolutionarily critical benefit of the admiration of the opposite sex — and with it the considerable mating opportunities that would produce the offspring necessary to ensure the survival of the individual’s genetic material into the next generation.

However, single-minded selfishness alone proved problematic historically. About 200,000 years ago on the east African savannah — where the first groups of homo sapiens emerged — being singularly selfish almost certainly meant death at the hands of predators or bands of other humans. Hence, human beings evolved the psychological architecture for not just selfishness but co-operativeness or groupishness as well.

By forming small bands, humans could cooperate to find food, ward off predators and other bands seeking access to scarce resources — and thrive.

FROM KIN TO RELIGION

Evolutionary theorists often suggest two major explanations for groupishness in early small, face-to-face human groups: Kin altruism and reciprocal altruism.

An individual cooperated with and perhaps even sacrificed for his immediate relatives because unconsciously, he acknowledged that they carried the same “bloodline” — genetic material — as he did.

In reciprocal altruism, an individual foreswore immediate selfish gratification and shared the spoils of a successful hunt with his unrelated neighbour in the expectation that tomorrow he would be paid back in kind.

If such reciprocity was not forthcoming, everybody in the band would know and the errant individual would be socially ostracised — a situation not conducive, ultimately, to the survival and reproduction of his genes.

Kin and reciprocal altruism facilitated groupishness within small, face-to-face groups where individuals knew one another. They fared less well, however, when social collectivities scaled up to the size and complexity of towns, cities, nations and empires.

The growth in size and complexity of human societies meant the concomitant evolution of bigger brains, language and even gossip.

Language and writing fostered more efficient communication and social coordination of large groups of humans, while bigger brains enabled individuals to keep track of who was friend, who was foe and who had to be cultivated.

Gossip, far from being a social irritant, actually evolved to enable individuals to keep track of the reputations of unrelated and unknown persons from outside the immediate community, and whether it was worth co-operating with them.

Ultimately, about 10,000 years ago organised religion, comprising supernatural agents, rituals, moral codes, symbols and myths, evolved to act as the major “social coagulant” of very large and increasingly centralised human collectivities.

Over the millennia, religion spun off secularised ideological offshoots such as nationalism, communism and fascism — all of which retained religious-like myths and rituals aimed at fostering groupishness among large social collectivities.

IDEOLOGY IS ONLY

THE ENABLER

In sum, groupishness is a deeply rooted and ancient human trait. Science further tells us that all social groups are characterised by ethnocentrism, or the tendency to see one’s in-group as the centre of the universe and all out-groups as morally inferior and deserving of a lower status.

Given the combustible combination of factors like an inclement socio-economic and political milieu, a widely held cultural and historical perception among in-group members that one’s ethno-nationalist or religious identity is considered “second class”, the emergence of a virulent ideological frame that legitimises out-group violence, and the relative ease of access to weapons and dangerous materials — terrorist violence is all too possible.

Mr Cameron was hence incorrect. Ideology is merely the enabler; the real root of terrorism is human nature itself. This is why inter-group violence goes back well beyond 9/11 to ancient times.

Solahudin was thus fully justified in saying that terrorism in Indonesia “will always be there”, and the policy challenge can really only be “how to prevent it from getting big”.

Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.