The second necessary condition for religiously motivated terrorism is a group that can recruit and train any potential terrorists. There are occasional lone wolves. And as more sophisticated tactical and technical information becomes available on the Internet, there may well be an increase in lone wolves, since they can find the information needed to carry out an action without having to affiliate with any group. That would be a law enforcement nightmare.

            But must terrorist actions, even individual acts like suicide bombing or killing a physician or a political leader, require group organization, planning, and support. And certainly actions done in the name of an international movement like jihad, or Aryan nationalism, or re-establishing biblical Israel are actions carried out by groups that recruit actors and supporters, obtain weapons, and coordinate complex maneuvers. Without such networks, alienated or humiliated individuals would remain frustrated and caught up in fantasies and day-dreams of heroic acts with no real means of carrying them out.       

There appear at present two major routes to membership in such groups. One route is when an already formed social network turns more fanatical. Members of an extended family, a neighborhood sports team, a study group at a mosque, church, or synagogue or other such naturally occurring social networks are examples of the kinds of networks that have turned militant. In the case of the jihad this is often referred to as the “third-wave” of the international jihad. The “first wave” was the group around Bin Laden who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan; the “second wave” were those who actively joined al-Qaeda and were directly trained by members of the “first wave” in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like the 9/11 hijackers; the “third wave” are recruited primarily from the Muslim diaspora in Europe and tend to be less well-educated than the previous two groups. They tend to convert to the jihad in groups as members of already established social networks. [I am indebted to Dr. Marc Sageman for this schema of “three waves” of the jihad.]

            Another route is thru individuals who self-radicalize. In many ways joining a contemporary religiously motivated terrorist group parallels the more general process of religious conversion. In this context conversion can mean either converting to a new religion or converting to a more militant and violent form of the religion one was raised in (moderate Moslems in Europe becoming takfuri or ex-Methodists joining a “Christian Identity Group” in the USA). Conversion has been a central topic of research in the psychology of religion for a century. Such research can also cast some light on the process of terrorist conversion.

            Religious conversion involves a transformation of the self and it joins the individual to something greater than their own ego, giving them a sense of meaning and purpose and a source of values to live by. Conversion is a comprehensive personal change of worldview and identity and so is different from simple religious recruitment where a person joins a new religious group without a real rupture in relation to his previous life or significant change in world-view or behavior. Such “conversion narratives” figure prominently in the lives of several contemporary European and American jihadis, as well as members of the violent religious right in America.

            In the past, in discussing conversion, social scientists invoked categories like “brain-washing” and “thought reform” and claimed that unsuspecting young adults are coerced into signing up with unscrupulous “cults.” Such claims regarding people who most generally joined groups voluntarily have been severely criticized recently and few current researchers accept them regarding religious conversion but such language is still heard in certain counter-terrorism circles. I am skeptical of its usefulness.   

            Such models theorize the individual as passive and as simply moved around by social forces. In fact, most religious conversions are self-initiated and the end result of a spiritual search or struggle that the individual voluntarily undertakes on their own. This also appears true of those Muslims living in the diaspora who find their own way to radical mosques or to jihadist websites on the Internet. Conversion as currently understood is a process in which the convert is actively seeking the conversion experience to resolve life difficulties. For example, a recent study of contemporary French converts to Islam found the most predominate motif was a striving to improve the self and gain self-knowledge.

            Group process models of conversion apply best to tight-knit religious cults and terrorist groups (the Unification Church, the IRA, the Red Brigades, etc) where there is a structured process of recruitment, initiation, training, and eventual deployment. But contemporary terrorism is more likely the result of rapidly evolving “leaderless groups” or “self-starters” in which there is little overt recruitment and much of the training is done over the internet or in small cliques.  Al-Qaeda boasts it has more volunteers than it can use and the Aryan Nation, rather than sending out recruiters, on its website calls for local, self-organized groups. In such loose confederations of the like-minded, often self-forming over the Internet, classical models of social influence may lose some of their explanatory power.   

Conversion experiences resulting in group membership serve as the solution to an identity crisis. That is one of the reasons they most commonly occur during adolescence and early adulthood when issues of identity are predominate. In the anomie of our post-modern, global society with its smorgasbord of options and life-styles, a religious conversion provides clear norms, a prefabricated answer to the post-modern dilemma of “who am I,” and a sense of rootedness in a timeless tradition that transcends and feels more substantial than the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of contemporary communities of reference.  Thus it has particular appeal to the young Muslim men in the immigrant communities of Europe and to alienated youth in the United States as well.

Whether periods of crisis or a personal struggle precedes conversion experiences remains unresolved. A major problem with studies that emphasize a preceding personal crisis is that few contain a control group so it is not clear if such turmoil is a characteristic of a certain age cohort whether they convert or not. Relatively few people who report significant stress in their life end up experiencing a conversion. However, most converts tell of a major life stress before their conversion. But some studies have found little or no evidence of a crises or conflict prior to conversion and stress instead that people just “drift” into new religious groups. So there are clearly many paths to a new religious identity.

Research is also clear that the vast majority of those who are in distress, even those who are “spiritual seekers,” attending meetings and reading literature, do not end up joining a new religious movement. Before 9/11, not every alienated Muslim in Germany joined a fanatical Mosque. And not everyone who joined a fanatical Mosque journeyed to a training camp in Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. And not everyone who went to these camps pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. And not everyone who joined al-Qaeda actually volunteered for a martyrdom mission on 9/11 or afterward. So individual factors also play a role and cannot be ruled out in understanding terrorist conversions. Rather, I think, we must think in terms of an individual-group interaction in our understanding of such conversions.

Current research insists that for those who do join a new group, such a conversion is a process. Even conversions that on the surface appear most spontaneous, when they are unpacked in a careful interview, always have some antecedent event or process leading up to them.  Many converts to the jihad in Europe spent time reading jihadi literature, visiting jihadi websites, and attending discussion groups in the mosque. For example this was true of Fritz Gelowicz in Germany and the two men who turned out to be leaders of the Madrid cell.

While conversion often begins as a self-directed search, an encounter with another person or persons is almost always a significant factor in the conversion process. Such interpersonal activity appears crucial to a religious conversion. An important contemporary question is, Is this possible over the internet?

            Given the importance of the Internet to contemporary terrorism, it is interesting that I could not find any studies of online conversions per se. But there is a large body of research that demonstrates that online interaction generates a full “social world” complete with passion, commitment, dependency, trust, a shared vision, and mutual responsibility. Which can result in the formation of a new identity. Research demonstrates that participation in Internet groups can powerfully influence one’s self and identity. And that when people disengage from online groups, they go through much the same processes as when disengaging from face to face communities. Like conversions in general, joining a new social world online is usually the result of individual curiosity, interest, and a self-directed search. People are not simply, passively drawn in or seduced (or “brainwashed”) by online groups. Seekers take the initiative, explore, and consider online communities just as much as face-to-face communities. Here too joining is a choice. So the process of identifying with an online social world is quite parallel to the process of conversion to a new religious world, especially given the contemporary understanding of conversion as a process.

            However there is an additional element as well. Research suggests that the anonymity of the internet impacts the dynamics of group formation there. Such anonymity may be disinhibiting and allow people to express more extreme and unpopular sentiments and experiment with more radical identities. The number of websites advocating violence and containing information on obtaining weapons and making bombs has grown and researchers report that in many of these sites there is active encouragement for members to act on their violent ideas So we must take seriously the reality that people convert to the jihad or militant Christian groups or to settler Judaism wholly online and receive encouragement and advice there to translate violent belief into violent action. Rather than denigrating converts as passive victims of “brain washing” and “manipulation,” it is more realistic to look out for a reciprocal, individual-group interaction effect between an open and receptive person and a group looking for converts.

            The salient themes in the stories of individual converts to militant, fundamentalist, and even terrorist religions groups include: 1. the search for a new identity often in adolescence, while some evidence suggests that conversions to Islam in the West happen somewhat later, in early adulthood rather than adolescence; 2. a subject who often begins the conversion process as a self-directed spiritual search;  3. the intervention of an “advocate” or a group (either in person or increasingly online) who points the potential convert in a certain direction; thus there is a reciprocal  individual-group interaction effect between an open and receptive person and a group looking for converts; 4. the central role of the internet in contemporary religiously motivated terrorism. 

            Some join terrorist groups as the direct result of humiliation and alienation; others join as members of a kinship or social network that is moving in that directions; others in an attempt to find a new identity; others in a search to transform themselves and find meaning and purpose for their lives; and others out of some combination of all these motivations. In any case it is usually group membership (in person or on line) that turns individual motivation and desire into deadly action.

[Note for references and more information, see the paper “Converting to Terrorism” available on this website]