I was discussing this very topic with my psychologist friend a few days ago. He said that psychologists never ask clients why they do things, because people don't know, and if they do give an answer it will be wrong. Instead psychologists try to figure it out themselves by asking questions like, "How did you feel when you were killing your wife?"

You said: "If fealty to the Koran and Hadiths is the justification given verbally by terrorists, one should be cautious in taking their contention at face value, especially given their variation over time (i.e., progressive reshaping of their tactics and values)."

I did not understand the last part of that sentence at all, because I don't know whose tactics and values you mean or the span of time you're describing. Would you explain a little more?

because I don't know whose tactics and values you mean or the span of time you're describing. Would you explain a little more?

1) suicide bombings are OK (suicide is banned by islamic law), because they aren't really suicides

2) suicide bombings that kill innocents is ok, kafirs aren't innocent

3) suicide bombings that kill muslims are ok, if they live in a kafir country, they are really giving aid & comfort to kafirs

4) suicide bombings that involve women are ok, because, x, y, z....

there isn't one terrorist movement, but the many tenticles are exploring idea space only loosely constrained by axioms.

So, where can I find an articulation of the Standard Social Sciences Model that is not put forward by someone who is arguing against (what they think is) the model?

Excellent, as usual. And yet Islam, at present, seems unique in its ability to produce large numbers of people who either commit these acts, aid and abet them, or applaud them. I appreciate that it is difficult for outsiders to judge what is "authentic" Islam and what is not. Yet I find it difficult to believe that the violence associated with Islam, both now and in the past, is solely a function of psychological processes wholly unrelated to the actual nature of Islam and its teachings themselves.

But of course, a 15th century Jew could plausibly come to similar conclusions about Christianity, given his suffering at the hands of the Christians of the day. Fortunately, that iteration is behind us. Hopefully, the present iteration of Islam will pass before it destroys the whole of civilization.

Keep up the good work!

I'm more worried about above-avg IQ folks drifting to the cluster of Lawyer or Politician or even CEO. Sure, there are some exemplars that are nice well-intentioned folks. But the prototype is surely shifted away from the benevolent, disinterested public servant (not sure how prevalent that ever was) and more toward the power-hungry careerist bent on domination and aggression. Given how bright these people are (compared to everyone else), and how powerful are the state and economy that they rule, they're a much larger threat to our well-being than a tiny handful of Muslim terrorists.

The number of Muslim terrorists could be sharply cut down by simply not pissing everyone else off and invading their space. Then only the real zealots would be left -- too few to do any damage on their own, and w/o any justifiably angry lay persons to serve as the foot soldiers, Muslim terrorism wouldn't be worth worrying about. You'd still have lower-level stuff like the occasional riots, but nothing like 9/11, say; and these would be mostly due to racial background perhaps interacting w/ governmental policies (as in France), not b/c of Islam in either its axiomatic or on-the-ground version.

Yet I find it difficult to believe that the violence associated with Islam, both now and in the past, is solely a function of psychological processes wholly unrelated to the actual nature of Islam and its teachings themselves

it might not be wholly unrelated to the character of islam, just mostly. i mean, there has been religious persecution in eastern (indian, east asian) high traditions, but not to the same character as in the abrahamic religions, so the character of the faiths must matter on some level. the key is whether there is a difference between christianity and islam, for example, because the latter is more rigid. it is perhaps more rigid, i would bet on it, but, i don't think we can neglect the possibility that the rigidity is a function of the dynamics of the culture rather than the religion, which has no independent existence....

Reading and rereading your post makes some things you've said before a bit clearer. But you know, you don't even need the modern cognitive science to see that religious beliefs are mutable, and have a way of adapting to fit worldly success and failure. See 1 Maccabees 2:37-41; the Hassidim (ancestors of the Pharisees, who took their Sabbath restrictions very seriously) started out by refusing to defend themselves on the Sabbath - their leaders changed that doctrine pretty quickly. No Catholic now would assert the doctrine of Unum Sanctam - http://www.papalencyclicals.net/...on08/ B8unam.htm (check out the last line. But you probably knew it). Modern reality won't support it. One friend of mine - a Catholic convert - tells me the loss of temporal power (even the Papal States) was a good and purifying development - an easy conclusion to reach once that power is lost. This same person, incidentally, went from the crudest type of creationism to believing that Genesis actually teaches evolution and even abiogenesis...since it states that the Earth "brought forth" living things. And I don't think this was simply because he studied the scriptures more intensely, but rather because he had a maturer self-image that wasn't compatible with his old views - he didn't want to be that kind of person anymore.

Since religious exemplars do form a distribution, as you say, the strategic answer seems to be clear - treat it as a problem in directed evolution. Kill, humiliate, isolate, defeat the terrorist tail of the distribution; and leave the remainder to sort out the doctrines for themselves, and form a new distribution. (And don't expect it to happen overnight, and don't expect to control just how it happens.)

With respect to Islam, we know the basic problem - the aggressive, bloody verses are in Sura 9, which by tradition is one of the last composed, and thus abrogates the more tolerant verses from earlier Suras. Some doctrinal solutions are already out there in the mouths of the apologists - "That didn't refer to all times; that was just for Mohammed fighting the people he was up against then." (Lawyers call that "limiting the case to its facts," i.e., admitting that the precedent is good law but neatly refusing to apply it to later cases).

In terms of practical reality I would be skeptical of the idea that religious professionals could convince terrorists via first principles from the Koran and Hadith that their actions were wrong, rather, I suspect that many who are "convinced" were not convinced terrorists in the first place, or, for whatever reason they left the terrorist life and found an appropriate reason for the set of new facts that defined their life.

There is a possible counterexample -- Yemeni clerics reasoning with fairly hard core Al Qaedistas -- I blogged about it in "Getting to "yes" -- with Joe Al Qaeda." The AQ folk involved were not Osama or Zawahiri level of course, but at least one was probably aware of the conspiracy to bomb the USS Cole. Re your caveat, I'd argue that most terrorists are not utterly convinced at some point in their "career," and can be reached. In fact, the act of trying -- whether theologically (the cleric) or via simpler human arguments (Patrick Fitzgerald, yep, same guy, same post) -- can be important in and of itself.