Terrorist Prisoners and Deradicalization

[marct]

Hi Goesh,

There is no empirical data to even suggest there is a lessening amongst our foes in their efforts to seek spiritual purity, the good death.

Actually, there is empirical that shows that people can, and do, move away from that particular path.

We come at this problem with our linear, 3 dimensional thinking, grabbing at telelogical snippets taken from Jung, Skinner and Freud, attempting to construct theoretical models of how men can be dissuaded from the path of spiritual purity. I think the complexity of conversions of this nature are beyond our Western capabililty of fully understanding. If it is working in Saudi Arabia, we can't fully understand it and we can only best honor the purists by shooting them in the head.

Speak for yourself good buddy !

I do agree, however, that people who use a bricolage model with no empathic understanding (verstehen) are doomed to failure. Theoretical models, as I constantly tell my students, are maps with varying degrees of reflecting the actuality of the terrain. Most of these models suffer from pretty serious flaws including, but not limited to, the basic beliefs of those who try to use them. If we want to understand and model "spiritual purity", then we really have to experience some form of it.

Years ago, back when I was working on my BA, I spent quite a bit of time reading the writings of mystics. One of the things that really stood out was that mystics frome every religious tradition had more in common with each other than with their supposed co-religionists. A second point, that became clearer with a lot of reading on ritual, was that all religious symbol systems are quite limited and fragile and what mystics do is to leverage the paradoxes in them to expand beyond their boundaries to achieve what you are calling "spiritual purity".

When we look at what AQ and others of their psychotic ilk are doing, however, we can see that they are restricting the symbol systems even more than normal. This is, actually, a rather unstable proposition (symbol systems have a certain "habit" of returning to core configurations), and that is where the leverage point is - the symbolic centre of gravity if you will. If you want an example inside Islam, look at the AQ habit of declaring people takfir at the drop of a hat - that is an extremely unstable symbolic configuration.