45death of suicide bombers. They prepare their ad-
herents to be killed for trying to overthrow a regime,
and they tell all the same stories about martyrdom
and eternal bliss in paradise that jihadists do.Harris The only conclusion I can draw from every-
thing you’ve just said is that the prob lem of ide-
ology is far worse than most people suppose.
Nawaz Absolutely. But to repeat, ideology is but one
of four factors, albeit the most often ignored.
Harris I would generally agree— although there cer-
tainly seem to be many cases in which people have
no intelligible grievance apart from a theological
one and become “radicalized” by the idea of sacri-
fi cing everything for their faith. I’m thinking of the
Westerners who have joined groups like al- Qaeda
and the Islamic State, for instance. Sometimes, re-
ligious ideology appears to be not merely neces-
sary but suffi cient to motivate a person to do this.
You might say that an identity crisis was also
involved— but everyone has an identity crisis at
some point. In fact, one could say that the whole of
life is one long identity crisis. The truth is that some
people appear to be almost entirely motivated by
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