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mission—that either involves the conversion of everyone else or, in some cases, the
destruction of everyone else. Sometimes a retreat to another country or geographic area is
only the end process of failed (albeit amateurish or sporadic) attempts to convert society to
the aspirations of the cult leader. In any event, legislative definitions of terrorism in the
wake of 9/11 refer to political, ideological, and religious motivations as underpinning the
objectives and acts of groups designated terrorist.
By locating Al Qaeda in a broader context of a world jihadist movement, I believe we are
painting the wrong picture and providing the wrong narrative, just as we are magnifying the
significance of motley jihadist groups by declaring a ―war‖ on terror. Too many politicians
want to run with the clash of civilizations and turn it into a war of civilizations, rather than
seeking to marginalise the fringe lunatics. Far better would it have been to characterise Bin
Laden as the self-indulgent leader of a personal cult with his own idiosyncratic take on
Islam—a heretic, in fact, not the warrior hero he has become in the eyes of too many, in
large part because Western propaganda has inadvertently characterised or anointed him as
a military leader with some substance, rather than as a religious cult leader who got lucky
in his own perverse way on 9/11. Even Francis Fukuyama has now admitted that ―before
the Iraq war we were probably at war with no more than a few thousand people around the
world who would consider martyring themselves and causing nihilistic damage to the United
States,‖iv which puts the problem into a more realistic perspective. We should also consider
the assertion that ―no more than five out of the 14,000 such schools [pesantren—religious
boarding schools] in Indonesia indoctrinate their students with a harsh and confrontational
form of Islam and provide them with the religious justification for violence in pursuit of
religious goals.‖v
Home-Grown Terrorists
Professor Robert Pape observes that
Sociologists tell us that the key feature of a cult is not the content of its
belief system or the presence of persuasive leaders, but the existence of a
hard boundary separating a self-contained group from the society at large. A
hard boundary is important because it enables highly intrusive control … in
the rigid manner necessary to maintain a system of shared beliefs that is
markedly at variance with the surrounding culture.vi
He observes that the key factor in the mass suicides at Waco, Jonestown, and other settings
was that ―members of the groups lived in physical isolation from the surrounding society.‖
Pape says that these cult mass suicides are examples of Durkheim‘s category of fatalistic
suicides, whereas terrorist suicides are examples of altruistic suicide committed by
members embedded in their communities, and where the act of suicide is in pursuit of
socially acceptable political objectives. However, this analysis does not explain the dynamics
of home-grown suicide bombers living in Western societies.
I am not a psychologist, and I strongly advocate the need for a multidisciplinary approach in
this area. However, it seems to me that members of high-demand groups can function
among other members of society, although the control found in groups living within hard
physical boundaries might be difficult to replicate and maintain. While physical isolation
(which can take various forms, from camps to prisons,vii to weekend seminars) can be an
important aid to indoctrination, it is the psychological barriers that cult members carry
around with them that create an invisible wall between the chosen elite and other members
of society. Of course, the effectiveness of this wall depends on the effectiveness of the
indoctrination, so that in some cases exposure to members of the wider society, and even
inadvertent access to contesting viewpoints might result in a weakening or even a
breakdown of the psychological conditioning received. Hence the observation that terrorist

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groups function most effectively when they operate in a wider society that shares a large
proportion of the group‘s worldview.
It is often observed by security officials that the hardest thing to come to grips with is
home-grown terrorist groups in Western societies (and let‘s face it: We are talking about
tiny groups that have adopted a perverted view of Islam abhorrent to the moderate view
adhered to by the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims). The head of the Australian
Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Paul O‘Sullivan, has noted that
the major challenge facing us is the terrorist that we don‘t know about … If
you look at the London Bombings of July 2005, you see examples of people
who are apparently out there in the community, members of British society
and then, in a short time, they engage in suicide bombings … the speed of
this radicalising process means that categorising people is futile.viii
However, it seems to me that by strengthening our information-gathering pathways, we
would be better placed to obtain timely information about these groups precisely because
they are operating in an environment hostile to their proposed methods. This hostile
environment includes members of their own families and the wider Muslim community, of
which the vast majority, certainly in Australia and the United States, have proven to be
cheerleaders for the style of life, community tolerance, and widespread sharing of material
prosperity generally found within Western democracies.ix
It was not surprising that the reaction of the families of the London bombers was one of
utter dismay and disbelief. Nor was it a surprise to cult watchers that a group of normal
young men could do such a thing, although the existence or otherwise of a senior
indoctrinator is still subject to speculation. The mother of one of the Kings Cross tube
bombers said ―something must have happened‖ to her son, who was devastated after 9/11
and cried for the victims. ―If my son did this, I want to know what happened to him because
something has to have happened. He was always laughing, always kind,‖ she lamented. His
wife thought he had ―been acting funny lately.‖x Other parents claimed, truthfully, I have
no doubt, that they were ―devastated that our son may have been brainwashed into
carrying out such an atrocity, since we know him as a kind and caring member of our
family.‖xi Therapists who have worked with the families of cult members have heard these
kinds of statements for decades.
If only there was an Islamic counter-cult group to which these family members might have
taken their concerns, or that might in some cases have prompted them to become
concerned. It seems to me that these bombers were of the ―altruistic‖ category explored by
Pape, yet they were operating in a physical environment not supportive of their actions—
exhibiting just the sort of naïve altruism found among young people recruited by
controversial cults, sects, and new religious movements operating in societies inhospitable
to their objectives.
Cult-Watch Groups
No one who has taken even a cursory interest in the study of cults would be surprised that
such a level of indoctrination could be so readily achieved. We have seen it all before:
college students from middle class families joining ―weird‖ groups and changing radically in
a few days parents confused and bewildered allegations of brainwashing deprogramming
controversies.xii Cult-watch groups represented at this conference form a large part of the
nonofficial response to the phenomenon. We can thank people such as Professor Eileen
Barker of INFORM and Mike Kropveld of Info-Cult, among others, who have contributed to
the debate about the classification of watch groups and provided us with a broad picture of
the cult-watch scene. Single-group-focused complaint groups rise spontaneously and
morph sometimes into collections of individuals who attempt to understand the broader