Tamerlan Tsarnaev: the narcissism of the shahid
Reply #2 - April 27, 2013, 04:51 PM
Tamerlan Tsarnaev: the narcissism of the shahid
In a psychological perspective, acts of violence by would-be shahid achieve the following: an attempt to transform the self from unhappiness to bliss, an explosive act directed at a diffuse tormentor, the admiration of imagined onlookers, and the voidance of criticism. The Greek Narcissisus myth was used to Freud to describe the wish to be the centre of parental attention in infancy. While this is healthy, unmet needs for admiration in adult life are accompanied by rage and usually futile attempts to gain admiration.
There are strong hints that Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell into the seduction of the shahid myth. The fundamental duty of witness (shahid) in Islam may include acts of self-sacrifice. Those who are judged to have expressed their witness by sacrificing their lives are granted special privileges in Islam. All their sins and guilt are absolved, they are exempt from interrogation by the angels, and go straight to Paradise. In the most beautiful part of Paradise the shahid will be accompanied by seventy virgins. His wounds will glow with divine ruby light and smell of musk. Whereas other mortals may never return from Paradise, the shahid may return a further ten times to repeat his sacrifice. His mortal remains do not need washing, as the act of witness has purified them.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s interest in Salafi Islam seems to have occurred in early 2012, where he was reportedly a frequent visitor at a mosque on Kotrova Street in Makhachkala, the capital of Muslim Dagestan. On his return to Boston he started attending services at the mosque in Cambridge Massachusetts. His anger was directed at Sufis, whom he considered deviants from Salafi Islam. He stood up one day and called the imam a "munafiq", or hypocrite. On a YouTube channel (in Russian), he shared videos of lectures from a radical Islamic cleric; in one, voices can be heard singing in Arabic as bombs explode. He insisted in trying to read the Koran in Arabic and studied alone at his computer. There are hints of self-destructive urges: last March he used the hashtag #chechnyanpower and then wrote: "a decade in America already, I want out".
Can we predict who will fall into the narcissistic shahid trap? An interest in return to supposedly uncorrupted Salafi/Wahhabi Islam is one sign. Narcissistic vulnerability is the other: the person feels a sense of humiliation and is socially isolated. The pattern is well enough established that Muslims should properly disown this section of the Qur’an so that narcissistically vulnerable people will not be seduced into wanting to be shahid.
Topic: Psychology of Religion