Why Do “Educated” Youth Join Extremist Terrorist Movements?
Dr. Chandre Dharmawardana
It is often asked why educated youth “coming from good homes” join extremist organizations. Simple references to “brain washing”, or the stupidity of the young are no explanations. There is no scientifically recognized process called “brain washing”. It is also naive to assume that educated youth join the IS (Islamic state) to go to heaven and get their 21 virgins! Many youth radicalized in British Universities ended up fighting for the ISIS. At least one of the Sri Lankan Muslim Kamikazi had a British training, had four children, a flourishing business and lived in a million dollar home in Colombo. A British education in a narrow subject like “information technology” not touching any broad scientific or cultural subjects, given in a British “red Brick” university can have no effect on already acquired belief systems. Don’t our “most educated” ministers go to Tirupathi, India,at the drop of a pin?
These radicals are no different from the young intellectuals of an earlier generation who believed in a simplistic theory of capitalists versus the workers, and how the workers would unite to bring down the capitalists and create a classless society where even state power has disappeared! They believed that “THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS” – so we had Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, countless Left-Terrorist Maoist-Guevarist-Naxalite groups, and Wijeweera’s JVP in Sri Lanka killing innocents to achieve their “objective”. This objective is given a historical destiny by dialectical materialism formulated as “historical materialism”. Contrary to the predictions of historical materialism, these movements have only produced ghoulish Gulags.
Similarly, these “brain-washed” young Muslims are educated in the Islamic fundamentalist view of the world consisting of Muslims (good), and infidels (bad). Many educated Arabs do not believe that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was done by Arab Kamikazes. They think it was a put-up job by Jewish groups and the Bush government to give them an excuse to attack the Oil Rich Middle Eastern countries on the economic front, and to relaunch the Crusades against Islam. This is the rationale for the counter-attack on luxury hotels frequented by Westerners, and on Christian Churches.
Just as Dialectical materialism calls for a revolution leading to a necessary final state which is an article of faith of Marxists, Islam defines that history must necessarily lead to the Islamic state after a Jihadic step. The “holy war” replaces the revolution of the Red Comrade. The historical destiny taught to young Muslims by impassioned Arabic Teachers who have come from the Middle East is as simple and clear as the JVP five lessons. Their role is to establish the Islamic State, with everyone practicing the Sharia law which encompasses not only morality, but economic activity as well – a complete ideology is sold.
Just as many Sri Lankans, or even ministers are over-whelmed enough to readily accept ideas cooked up in the West, because they are from the West, these young people are also over-whelmed by “renowned” and fiery teachers from the Middle East who paint a glorious picture of the old Caliphate. The idealistic young Muslim has a clear jihadist mission, taught to him by these fundamentalist “international teachers”. Achieving this designated noble cause, the Islamic Caliphate in the name of Allah becomes their mission. Achieving this END is justified by ANY means whatever. It is a sacrifice that they make, in much the same way as “rathu sahodarayas” (red comrades) are ready to fight the capitalist army and die in the process of the revolutionary capture of the state by the “working class”.
The young university students who readily absorbed the “five lessons” of the JVP, although almost stupid in content, attempted to overthrow the legitimate government because the message fitted in with their pre-conceived notions. These notions were about the need to change the economic framework by “hook or crook”, hammered into the Sri Lankan youth by the LSSP and CP politicians who came prior to the JVP. The tremendous disparity between their power and state power seemed irrelevant to a just cause.
The early Marxists in Sri Lanka had fomented the trade unions to rise in militant “hartals”, hoping to capture power. They were sure of being the “Bolsheviks” who will replace the “Menshevick” government of Bandaranaike. So, the LSSP, a revolutionary party did not worry about popularity at the polls. Dr. Osmond Jayaratne, and Engineer C. B. Wijedoru, both central committee members of the LSSP assured me that Language Parity was a policy strategically crafted to the revolution using unions with more than 50% Tamils, and not designed for elections. When they abandoned the “revolution” and joined Mrs. Bandaranaike, they jettisoned parity and embraced the majority language, as one language is more efficient for the classless, divisionless, unethnic communist state.
In the case of the radicalized young Muslims, they too hope to change what they see is an utterly immoral world. The world must conform to the draconian morality taught to them by the fundamentalist Arab teachers. Martin Luther had found such a moralistic message xplosively successful in an earlier era. These young people find an outlet to their moral and idealistic energy, and an identity thorough these extremist organizations. Their parent’s society has failed to provide them with valid idealistic objectives suitable to the 21st century, and allowed extremist teachers to infect them with a new passion. This process is not “brain washing”, but more analogous to the spread of an infection of virulent memes.
