Title: Cognition in context : new approaches to new Islamist movements in the Middle East
Source document: Sacra. 2011, vol. 9, iss. 1, pp. 22-33
Extent
22-33
-
ISSN1214-5351 (print)2336-4483 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/118563
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In the past two decades cognitive anthropology has offered a radically new framework for the study of social movements and complex ideologies. Besides creating a scientific foundation for the study of religion and culture, its empirical basis offers a less biased approach to controversial subjects such as new religious movements and religious violence that traditional anthropological approaches have struggled to maintain. This paper argues that new religious movements can be analysed using the tools of cognitive science, specifically new Islamist movements in the Middle East affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Such an approach yields an objective lens to analyse the claims that their ideologies make them violent. By presenting a brief analysis of movements inspired from the Sunni tradition in the 20th century this paper intends to show that the causal factors of religious violence are largely the product of the dynamic mental mechanisms interacting with a physical and social environment.
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[2] Aronson, E. 2008. The Social Animal (10thEdition). New York: Worth Publishers.
[3] Atran, S. 2002. In gods we trust: the evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press.
[4] Atran, S. 2003. "Genesis of suicide terrorism". Science, 299 (1534). Available to online access at: http://www.sciencemag.org; [Accessed on April 23, 2011]. | DOI 10.1126/science.1078854
[5] Atran, S. 2004. "Suicide Terrorism Database, 2004." Available to online access at: http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/suicide_terrorism_database_2004.xls;[Accessed on April 23, 2011].
[6] Atran, S. 2006. "The moral logic and growth of suicide terrorism". The Washington Quarterly, 29(2), 127–147. | DOI 10.1162/wash.2006.29.2.127
[7] Atran, S. 2010. Talking to the enemy: faith, brotherhood, and the (un)making of terrorists. New York, NY: Ecco Press.
[8] Bainbridge, W. 2006. God from the machine: Artificial intelligence models of religious cognition. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
[9] Baker, P. – Cooper, H. – Mazzetti, M. 2011. "Obama Says Bin Laden Killed in Operation Inside Pakistan". New York Times, p. A1. Available to online access at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html?hp?src=ISMR_AP_LI_LST_FB#; [Accessed on May 1, 2011].
[10] Bergeson, A. J. 2008. "Sayyid Qutb in historical context". In Bergesen, A.J. (Ed.) The Sayyid Qutb Reader. New York: Routledge.
[11] Berejikian, J. 1992. "Revolutionary collective action and the agent-structure problem". American Political Science Review, 86, 647–657. | DOI 10.2307/1964128
[12] Bonney, R. 2004. Jihād: From Qur'ān to bin Lāden. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[13] Boyer, P. 2001. Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
[14] Boyer, P. (Unpublished Manuscript). "Ten problems in search of a research programme: Towards integrated naturalistic explanations of human culture". Draft version 3.
[15] Brafman, O. – Beckstrom, R. A. 2006. The starfish and the spider: The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. New York: Portfolio.
[16] Buss, D. – Haselton, M.G. – Shakelford, T. K. – Bleske, A.L. – Wakefield, J. C. 1998. "Adaptations, exaptations, and spandrels". American Psychologist, 53(5), 533–548. | DOI 10.1037/0003-066X.53.5.533
[17] Cosmides, L. – Tooby, J. 1992. "Cognitive adaptations for social exchange". In Barkow, J., Cosmides, L – Tooby, J. (Eds.). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
[18] Crenshaw, M. 2000. "The psychology of terrorism: An agenda for the 21st century". Political Psychology, 21(2), 405–420. | DOI 10.1111/0162-895X.00195
[19] Dennett, D. 2007. Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books.
[20] Durkheim, E. 1915. The elementary forms of the religious life. J.W. Swain (translator). New York and London: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
[21] Gilovich, T. – Griffin, D. – Kahneman, D. 2002. Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgement. Cambridge, U.K. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[22] Hamilton, W.D. 1964. "The genetical evolution of social behavior". Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7,1–52.
[23] Hellmich, C. 2005. "Al-Qaeda: Terrorists, hypocrites, fundamentalists? The view from within." Third World Quarterly, 26(1), 39–54. | DOI 10.1080/0143659042000322892
[24] Hobbs, J. J. 2005. "The Geographical Dimensions of Al-Qa'ida Rhetoric". Geographical Review, 95(3), 301–327. | DOI 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2005.tb00369.x
[25] Iannaccone, L. – Berman, E. 2006. "Religious extremism: The good, the bad, and the deadly." Public Choice, 128(1), 109–129. | DOI 10.1007/s11127-006-9047-7
[26] Iannaccone, L. – Makowsky, M. D. 2007. "Accidental Atheists? Agent-Based Explanations for the Persistence of Religious Regionalism." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(1), 1–16. | DOI 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00337.x
[27] James, W. 2008. The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. United States: Megalodon Entertainment.
[28] Juergensmeyer, M. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. London: University of California Press.
[29] Kahneman, D. – Slovic, P., – Tversky, A. 1982. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press.
[30] Kahneman, D. – Tversky, A. 2000. Choices, values, and frames. New York Cambridge, UK: Russell Sage Foundation Cambridge University Press.
[31] Lawson, E. T. 1993. Rethinking religion: Connecting cognition and culture. Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge University Press.
[32] Layish, A. 1987. "Saudi Arabian Legal Reform as a Mechanism to Moderate Wahhābī Doctrine." Journal of the American Oriental Society, 107(2), 279–292. | DOI 10.2307/602836
[33] Lewis-Williams, D. 2004. The mind in the cave: Consciousness and the origins of art. London: Thames – Hudson.
[34] Lincoln, B. 2006. Holy terrors: Thinking about religion after September 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[35] Martin, L. 2008. "Can religion really evolve? (And what is it anyway?)". In Bulbulia, J. – Sosis, R. (eds.), The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques. Collins Foundation Press: Santa Margarita, California. 375–381.
[36] Masters, D. 2004. "Support and Nonsupport for Nationalist Rebellion: A Prospect Theory Approach". Political Psychology, 25(5), 703–726. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00394.x
[37] Paden, W. E. 2009. "Connecting with evolutionary models: New patterns in comparative religion?". In Braun, W. – McCutcheon, R. (eds.) Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of J. Z. Smith. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd.
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[39] Post, J. M. 2005. "When Hatred Is Bred in the Bone: Psycho-Cultural Foundations of Contemporary Terrorism". Political Psychology, 26(4), 615–636. | DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00434.x
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[41] Rabasa, A. – Chalk, P.– Cragin, K. – Daly, S. A. – Gregg, H. S. – Karasik, T. W. – O'Brien, K. A. – Rosenau, W. 2006. Beyond Al-Qaeda Part 1 The Global Jihadist Movement. RAND Corporation document prepared for the United States Air Force. Available to online access at: http://www.rand.org; [Accessed on May 1, 2011].
[42] Shepard, W. E. 2003. "Sayyid Qutb's Doctrine of 'Jāhiliyya'". International Journal of Middle East Studies, 35(4), 521–545. | DOI 10.1017/S0020743803000229
[43] Sivan, E. 1989. "Sunni Radicalism in the Middle East and the Iranian Revolution". International Journal of Middle East Studies, 21(1), 1–30. | DOI 10.1017/S0020743800032086
[44] Smith, J. Z. 1988. Imagining religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
[45] Sommerville, Q. 2011. "Afghan pilot kills eight Nato soldiers at Kabul airport". In BBC News. Available to online access on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13206560; [Accessed on April 27, 2011].
[46] Sperber, D. – Hirschfeld, L. A. 2004. "The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity". TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 8(1), 40–47. | DOI 10.1016/j.tics.2003.11.002
[47] Stark, R. – Bainbridge, W. S. 1987. A theory of religion. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press (1996 edition).
[48] Stark, R. – Bainbridge, W. S. 1996. Religion, deviance, and social control. New York: Routledge.
[49] Stark, R. – Finke, R. 2000. Acts of faith: explaining the human side of religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[50] Tamimi, A. 2009. "The Islamic Debate over Self-inflicted Martyrdom". In Al-Rasheed, M. – Shterin, M. (eds.), Dying for Faith. London: I. B. Tauris.
[51] Todd, P.M. – Gigerenzer, G. 2007. "Mechanisms of ecological validity: Heuristics and environments that make us smart". In Dunbar, R.I.M. – Barrett, L. (eds.) The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 15 p. 197–210.
[52] Tooby, J. – Cosmides, L. 2005. "Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology". In Buss, D. M. (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. 5–67.
[53] Tremlin, T. 2010. Minds and gods: The cognitive foundations of religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[54] Weber, M. 1930. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Chicago, Ill. and London: Fitzroy Dearborn. 2001 edition translated and edited by Stephen Kalberg.
[55] Wilson, D. 2002. Darwin's cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[56] Wrangham, R. – D. Peterson. 1996. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
[57] Wolfram, S. 2002. A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media.
[58] Wrangham, R. – Peterson, D. 1996. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
[59] World Islamic Front. 1998. "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders." Statement, 23 February.