compared to harsh realities and denigrated selfhood, through its promises of
a better life to come.
How and why do people, especially male people, come to valorize death
over life in the pursuit of compensatory masculinity? Fromm (1973) argued
that the conditions of domination, powerlessness and isolation, led to impair-
ments of self-love and the thwarting of self-constitution and realization. This
in turn leads to the embrace of nihilism and “necrophilia” that he defines as
the love of death and destruction whether of self or Others.^51 Let us remem-
ber the famous words of Usama bin Laden, “You love life, we love death.”
Men, otherwise thwarted in self-realization, with attenuated attachments and
limited capacities to love others, find that the only basis of agency and mean-
ing is through the expression of violence.^52 Perhaps we might note Theweleit’s
(1989) study of the Freikorps, the veterans of WWI, petty bourgeois men with-
out jobs or job prospects who disdained women and erotic love. They sought
war, death and destruction as their purpose in life. To die in combat as a hero
was preferable to living in peace.
Thus, if fundamentalism is psychologically compensatory, it must be seen
as not only gratifying frustrated desires and longings, but also providing a
valorized identity in which dignity is based on a combination of piety and
assertive masculinity. Whether Christian or Jew, Hindu or Muslim, the
respected, indeed idealized, pious warrior has long been a exemplary role
model. Moreover, in premodern times, the warrior needed to have a long
period of training to develop the requisite physical strength and warrior skills
of horsemanship, handling weapons etc. Often such training began in child-
hood While modern soldiers require a great deal of technological skills to
handle the leading edge technologically sophisticated weapons of advanced
modern armies, it takes much less skill and training to handle easily available
AK 47s or RPGs.^53 Then, given some theological justifications of a small minor-
ity of clerics, jihadi operations become highly moral forms of masculine
From the Caliphate to the Shaheedim• 329(^51) I am not suggesting a psychological basis for terrorism; indeed, most studies sug-
gest a “banality” of terror, and most terrorists tend to be relatively normal people,
free of evident psychopathologies. 52
It is worth noting that most terrorists tend to be unattached males, typically
blocked or thwarted by limited alternatives, prejudices and/or injustices. 53
This is not to suggest that all such “soldiers” are unskilled, indeed the manu-
facture of bombs, rockets and even improvised explosives requires a good deal of
skill. Moreover, many jihadishave been highly trained in military strategy and tactics.