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Root of Terrorism Not Easy to Uncover

Rivandra Royono recently argued in these pages that poverty and lack of education are not the cause of terrorism (“The Root Cause of Terrorism?” Sept. 25). He referred to studies of Al Qaeda and Palestinian suicide bombers showing that a majority of them came from affluent families and went to universities, and he pointed out that some high-profile terrorists, such as Mohammed Atta and Azahari Husin, had graduate degrees.

Instead, Rivandra put forward three causes of terrorism. First is that terrorism is caused by state restriction of civil liberties; not allowing some groups to legally voice their dissent makes terrorism more viable. Second is psychological authority and peer pressure, because terrorists need a figure to respect and peers to reinforce one another. Third is a lack of education in the humanities, since most Al Qaeda members with degrees were educated in science and engineering.

On a first pass, Rivandra’s ideas make good sense. But careful examinations show that his arguments are unsubstantiated, and his suggestions misleading.

Consider his take that poverty and lack of education are not correlated with terrorism. While this is true for groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas, it is not true for Jemaah Islamiyah, the group most relevant to terrorism in Indonesia. Analysis of JI attacks from 1999 to 2005 by terrorism expert Scott Atran and colleagues show that about 78 percent of the 180 people implicated in the attacks worked as unskilled laborers, and 77 percent had at most a high school education.

In contrast to Rivandra’s suggestion, eradicating poverty and raising education may play a role in fighting terrorism in Indonesia.

What about the restriction of civil liberties? There is indeed a significant correlation between countries that ban legal dissent and countries that produce Islamic terrorist groups.

But Rivandra’s interpretation of this data is problematic because the same correlation is also present for many dissenting groups that have nothing to do with terrorism.

Countries that restrict civil liberties produce all sorts of nonconformist groups: some that are terrorist, others that are not. Thus restriction of civil liberties neither explains nor predicts terrorism.

The same problem occurs for Rivandra’s second idea that terrorists succumb to authority and peer pressure. It is well known in social psychology that adherence to authority and peer conformity are standard hallmarks of any group behavior, regardless of the resulting acts. Some groups give charitably, while others commit atrocities. In this light, one cannot argue for authority and peer pressure as a cause of terrorism.

Finally, observing that most Al Qaeda members have science and engineering degrees, Rivandra argued that lack of education in the humanities is causing the spread of radical ideas and terrorism.

But this argument suffers from the classic self-selection problem: Those who chose to study science and engineering in the first place might be different from those who chose to study humanities. Without further evidence, no inference could be made as to whether the lack of education in the humanities is responsible for terrorism.

At the end of his article, Rivandra correctly said that addressing the causes of terrorism was not easy. But neither is identifying the causes.

We need to let the evidence guide our logic and to proceed with care when offering opinions on an issue as important as terrorism.

Tirta Susilo
PhD candidate, Psychology Department,
Australian National University, Canberra


FPI ‘Marketing’ Works for Miyabi

Given the spectacle of the protests, media watchers have to ask whether the FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) has a vested interest in porn star Miyabi’s career (“Miyabi Indonesia Visit Nixed,” Oct. 14).

Hits on Miyabi’s Facebook fan page have multiplied exponentially since the furor erupted. Downloads of extracts of her videos and sales of her disks have enriched her and her production company and are well on the way to making her a household name. If this film were to be made here in Indonesia, it may well be the best thing to happen to our beleaguered film industry in some time.

The government has just finished enshrining in law what is almost certain to be the kiss of death to any viable cinema industry in the country, requiring official script approval and licences and governmental sanction of directors. A minor controversy and some public objection erupted when the law was passed, but, as usual, the squabble disappeared as other news broke.

Both the producers and any believers in freedom of expression ought to thank those sex-obsessed hard-liners of the FPI for their efforts to save Indonesia’s film industry from the government and other hard-liners. The film will be still be made, but it will be made elsewhere and will have more advance publicity than any low- to medium-budget production could dream of purchasing. The FPI is guaranteeing that “Menculik Miyabi” will not only be made, but will have a leg up at the box office when it opens.

And the best part? All the guardians of our morality, including the FPI, will have an opportunity to scrutinize the final product in an effort to judge its acceptability. Just as they have done to her previous body of work to decide that Miyabi herself is insufficiently moral enough to set foot in our country.

Patrick Guntensperger
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