Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to Be Human

Atran deploys his formidable knowledge of social anthropology to dissect the various dynamics that have helped form human individuals into groups, warbands, hunting parties or armies over the millennia. Although this historical background is mostly fascinating, even more impressive is Atran's field research, in places ranging from Palestine and Spain to Tétouan in northern Morocco and remote Indonesian islands. It is this research that underpins his vision of radical Islamic militancy as an adaptive social movement. The 2002 Bali bombs, he writes, "were largely planned and executed through local networks of friends, of kin, neighbours and schoolmates who radicalised one another until all were eager and able to kill perfect strangers for an abstract cause". Terrorist networks, he points out, are "generally no different than the ordinary kinds of social networks that guide people's career paths. It's the terrorist career itself that is the most remarkable, not the mostly normal individuals who become terrorists." Terrorists, he tells us, are social beings influenced by social connections and values familiar to all of us. They are members of school clubs, sports teams or community organisations; they are proud fathers and difficult teenagers. They do not, Atran maintains, die for a cause; they die for each other. He argues persuasively that we need to consider terrorists' close relationships, with family and friends, as much as the causes they espouse, and delivers a journey into the mindsets of radicalised people in the twenty-first century.