My Brother the Bomber

[Presley Cannady]

This is an extraordinary case study. In fact, it's so interesting I fear it will join a number of others in founding a pop-psychiatry around radicalism. I say psychiatry because we're attempting to diagnose and in some places completely divine a plate of mental disorders with the expectation that treatment exists. Reviewing the literature I've come to three conclusions:

1. No evidence exists that linking any set of identified radicals by psychiatric disorder. The OP article explicitly states this.
2. Psychology has yet to present a single conclusive, non-normative profile of radicalism. The article's author strongly hints at this, to the point of digging up an almost tautological point raised by the earliest empirical sociologist he could find.

I suspect radicalization, extremism or whatever you want to call it--if it has any meaning at all--is an extremely conditional phenomenon, I do so with my only evidence being the extraordinary diversity of forms in which it takes (not all considered ill in civil society) and the methods its adherents employs (most if not all more frequently and ably used by people we decidedly deem non-radical). And this is just within the cohort we more clearly understand by the name "Islamic terrorist."

[bourbon]

Al Qaeda recruits back in Europe, but why?, by Sebastian Rotella. Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2009.

Four men say their training experience in Pakistan wasn't what they hoped for. Anti-terrorism officials wonder if they're just biding their time, ready to strike in Europe

"What you see in videos on the Net, we realized that was a lie," Othmani told police. "[Our chief] told us the videos . . . served to impress the enemy and incite people to come fight, and he knew this was a scam and propaganda."

Disenchantment aside, the accounts of four of the returning militants arrested in Europe combine with intercepts to paint a detailed picture of Al Qaeda's secret compounds. They also reinforce intelligence that a campaign of U.S. Predator drone airstrikes has sown suspicion and disarray and stoked tension with tribes in northwestern Pakistan, anti-terrorism officials say.

At the same time, the case shows that wily militant leaders still wage war in South Asia and train a flow of foreign recruits. The few trainees from the West remain an urgent concern. Anti-terrorism forces have detected at least one American, a convert to Islam, who trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan during the last year, Western officials say.

[davidbfpo]

This thread has been re-opened as the BBC have interviewed the 7/7 attack leader's brother-in-law, in his first public interview:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37324130