Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists

Scott Atran

Dec 2023 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

"Atran explores the way terrorists think of themselves and teaches us, at last, intelligent ways to think about terrorists." —Christopher Dickey, Newsweek Middle East Editor and author of Securing the City
Talking to the Enemy is an eye-opening and important book that offers a startling look deep inside terror groups. Based on the author's unprecedented access to and in-depth interviews with terrorists and jihadis—including Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Taliban extremists and members of other radical organizations—Talking to the Enemy provides fresh insight and unexpected answers to why there are people in this world willing to kill and die for a cause. A riveting, compelling work in the tradition of The Looming Tower and Terror in the Name of God, Talking to the Enemy is required reading for anyone interested in making the world a safer, more secure place for everyone.
"Scott Atran is one of the very few persons who understand religion and have figured out that religion is not about belief and cannot be naively replaced without severe side effects." —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times-bestselling author of The Black Swan
"Historically keen and astutely humanistic . . . the author's deep penetration into anthropological explanations of evolution, teamwork, blood sport and war attempt to define what it means to be human." — Kirkus Reviews
Includes photographs

Ratings and reviews

I think the gist of the book was best summarized by Noam Chomsky: “This deeply researched, wide ranging, and very timely study provides a compelling and often surprising account of what lies behind the jihadi phenomenon and draws sensible and thoughtful conclusions about how to respond to it constructively. The investigation is set against the background of a penetrating inquiry into the role of religious belief in sustaining a meaningful existence in a supportive community. It should be read carefully, and pondered." I managed to get hold of a copy of the galleys after reading the author’s oped in the New York Times, “Why We Talk to Terrorists.” In answer to the recent US Supreme Court decision to criminalize non-violent engagement with groups officially classified as terrorist organizations, the author argues pretty convincingly that talking and listening to enemies may greatly reduce their threat by helping us to understand which of them must be fought to the end and which may even become friends in the end (think Nelson Mandela and the ANC, or Martin McGuinness and the Provisional IRA). On the surface this book appears to be about understanding what motivates modern terrorists, particularly jihadists. And there are fascinating studies and interviews with terrorist foot soldiers, wannabes, and leaders, including Abu Bakr Ba’asyir, the erstwhile Emir of Jemaah Islamiyah, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas. There are also the author’s intriguing encounters at the White House and Congress, where his research-based appeal to talk to terrorists was often treated as “coming from Planet Fruitcake” because of authorities’ apparent trust in “bullets, bombs, and widgets.” His analyses of failures in Afghanistan and the fiasco of the Christmas Day bomber are telling in this regard. The author’s intention is much grander than giving us yet another narrative about the roots of terror. The book is really about harnessing the modern and somewhat marginal phenomenon of terrorism into a tool - and having the personal courage to go to places like Gaza, Kashmir, and remote Indonesian Islands while fighting raged to do it - so as to explore the origins and persistence of war and religion in defining the nature of our “uniquely reflective and auto-predatory species.” The reader who remains narrowly targeted on terrorism might see this as evidence of lack of focus when, in fact, the book does what no other book ever has in making terrorism a window onto "what it means to be human." And it is in the surprising and politically significant research on the role of sacred and transcendent values in creating and possibly solving seeming intractable conflicts (Israel/Palestine, Pakistan/India, US/Iran) that book’s own greatest value may lie. Along the way, we also come to a better understanding of the role of religion in contemporary America politics (including the Sarah Palin phenomenon) and across the globe, and we learn just how much the new atheist crusade against religion (led by some famous scientists) seems so willfully ignorant about scientific research into facts that underlie religion and terrorism today.

THis book completely changed my understanding of terrorism and the role of religion. I bought it after having read this review in The New Scientist: How to catch the 'jihadi bug' 14:15 25 October 2010 Michael Bond The anthropology of terrorism makes for compelling fieldwork. In his quest to understand what makes people kill and die for a cause, Scott Atran - an astute analyst of social, psychological and cultural issues - has met with the Hamas high command in Damascus, Syria, interviewed the plotters behind the 2002 Bali bombing, unpacked the web of connections behind the 9/11 and 2004 Madrid train attacks and been forced to flee for his life from militants in Indonesia and Pakistan unsettled by his probings. His main finding is that terrorist organisations tend not to be the sophisticated, well-ordered hierarchies that we commonly suppose, but loose networks of friends and family who die not just for a cause but for each other. Who gets radicalised is often quite random: "Someone gets the jihadi bug, and friends follow, gathering force from sticking together." Understanding these social dynamics, Atran believes, is key to tackling terrorism. Talking to the Enemy is recommendable not just for its vivid insights into the motivation of terrorists, but also for its study of Islamic radicalisation and the anthropology of religion in general. It is worth reading for its demolishment of many of the simplistic ideas put forward by self-declared "scientific atheists" such as Sam Harris, Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins, who see religion as the root of intolerance and campaign with missionary zeal for its eradication. Dawkins has argued, for example, that suicide bombers are brainwashed in religious schools. Yet none of the 9/11 hijackers or the Madrid train-bombers attended a religious school, and the one London Underground bomber who did so attended only briefly. Indeed evidence shows that in Muslim communities the deeper a person's religious scholarship, the less likely he or she is to be involved in jihadist activities. The suggestion by Harris and others that the world would be less violent without religion - and especially without Islam - also looks hollow when you consider the crimes against humanity committed by atheists. Prior to 2001, for instance, one of the most prolific dispensers of suicide terrorism was the secular Tamil Tigers. In trying to understand, or predict, terrorist activity, it makes scientific sense to look beyond religion, such as to the social dynamics of particular friendship networks and the recruitment strategies of jihadist organisations whose agendas are usually avowedly political. The scientific atheists' disregard of evidence when making their case "makes me almost embarrassed to be an atheist", says Atran. He is on strong ground: gathering data first-hand is not something Atran seems shy of, even if it means risking his own life.

About the author

Scott Atran is a director of research in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France. He is also a research associate and visiting professor in psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan, a Presidential Scholar in sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and cofounder of ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling. His books include In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.