Florence Gaub. Survival. Volume 58, Issue 1. February 2016.
The Islamic State is a cult; it cannot be fought as a mere terrorist organisation or a proto-state with territorial ambitions.
It has become commonplace to describe the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as a cult. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have all used the term, in an apparent attempt to discredit the organisation and strip it of its claim to Islamic credentials. But beyond the label lies a strategic implication: if ISIS is indeed a cult, it cannot be fought as a mere terrorist organisation or a proto-state with territorial ambitions. Cults do not recruit and indoctrinate like other political entities; they do not perform like mere militias on the battlefield; and they follow their own warped logic. Cults are more flexible, more cohesive, more agile and ultimately more challenging than other enemies. Most worryingly, leaving a cult is a difficult endeavour, which means that ISIS returnees are very likely to remain attached to the organisation, regardless of their experience with it. Security services will have to bear ISIS’s cultish characteristics in mind as they work to reduce the threat from the Islamic State.
No Religion
Distinguishing a cult from a religion is not easy. Both share a similar language, and both are concerned with explaining the origin and nature of the universe. In name and rhetoric, ISIS claims not only to be Islamic, but indeed to represent the only true version of Islam. But cults often make use of established religious scripture and beliefs to gain credibility and legitimacy. All major religions have inspired cults in this sense, from the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda, to the American Peoples Temple, to Aum Shinrikyo in Japan.
Cults differ from religions not in age (new religious movements are not, by default, cults), nor indeed the size of their membership (comparatively small religious communities, such as the Yazidis or Druze, do not qualify). Instead, the defining feature of a cult is the way it relates to its members, and to society at large. Cults use religion not to improve the well-being of their members, but to establish an exclusive, authoritarian, self-interested organisation with total control over its adherents. Cults and religions therefore tend to differ on two crucial points: the degree to which the interpretation and implementation of the faith is an authoritarian or collective effort, and the way they treat members who disagree, or ultimately wish to leave.
While religions usually permit a degree of discussion and criticism, cults treat their (typically self-appointed) leader, belief system, ideology and practices as absolute truth, closed for debate. The Islamic State allows for little intellectual exchange over its interpretation of the faith. In the Islamic State, scholarly debate on the interpretation of the faith is concentrated solely at the highest level – and even then, neither the theological advisers nor the Shura Council have any executive power. This is in contrast to mainstream Islam, where interpretation is in principle open to all scholars, although they may carry different weight. Cult leadership is not accountable to any authority; in fact, achieving its exalted end justifies whatever means are deemed necessary – including acts which cult members would have considered unethical before joining.
Cults and religions behave differently towards those who wish to leave. Admittedly, few major religions are keen on apostasy. The Old Testament, for instance, declares conversion to be punishable by death, though neither Christianity nor Judaism have criminalised it since the Middle Ages. Even now, Judaism does not formally offer the option of leaving the Jewish faith, and Christianity punishes apostasy with excommunication. Islamic scripture makes apostasy a capital offence, but not all Muslim-majority states interpret this literally. Instead, in states such as Algeria or Egypt, it is punished with prison sentences; in others, such as Kuwait or Morocco, it is not criminalised, but might have implications in family courts (over child custody, for example). In Tunisia, punishments for apostasy are explicitly outlawed in article 6 of the 2014 constitution. In several states, such as Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen, a sentence can be overruled should a defendant over-turn his or her decision to convert. Perhaps more importantly, however, Muslim apostasy laws are often used to punish people for offences other than conversion, such as the recent sentencing for apostasy of a Palestinian poet in Saudi Arabia who had taken issue with the religious police’s lashing of a Saudi citizen. One study showed that, over the last two decades, only two Muslims were actually convicted for religious conversion, one in Iran in 1994 and the other in Sudan in 2014. It is fair to say that the Islamic State goes much further than a religion in how it treats apostasy. Like most cults, it tries to make leaving physically impossible, and harasses or even executes those who attempt to do so. Serious dissent, conversion and flight are treated in much the same way, usually punishable by death.
In more tactical terms, whereas religions usually spend their funds (at least ostensibly) for the benefit of the community, cults use their money to reward obedience or to enrich the leadership. Religions also form part of a wider cultural context and incorporate elements which are not strictly religious, including local or regional social customs, language and traditions. Muslims in Morocco, for example, practise their faith slightly differently than Muslims in Saudi Arabia. By contrast, cults permit no variation in the way worship is conducted; they establish totalitarian control over faith and seek to withdraw from society, in order to maintain internal cohesion.
How ISIS Recruits
The Islamic State is not only not a religion, it is a cult in several other worrying ways. The way it recruits, brainwashes and incorporates its members, especially from Western societies, is almost identical to cults elsewhere – techniques perfected in the cultist heyday of the 1960s and 1970s.
Cults generally recruit aggressively. They are concerned not merely with spreading a spiritual message but with the control of a group – without followers, cults have no raison d’être. In the early days of a cult, therefore, recruitment is a strategic priority. At a certain point, membership will start to grow exponentially – the more people who have joined, the more the group will attract. Individuals prefer to have their choice validated by a large number of people rather than by a small cohort. ISIS is no exception: growth in its recruitment, especially of foreign fighters, has been exponential since it took Mosul and announced the establishment of the caliphate in summer 2014. These successes gave it legitimacy, and were vital in attracting more recruits. (This logic applies particularly to foreign fighters; local recruits are more likely to have economic or political motivations for joining.) High-profile victories are therefore important to ISIS for strategic as well as tactical reasons, meaning that battlefield behaviour can be driven by the need to maintain the narrative that attracts recruits. The conquests of Ramadi and Palmyra in May 2015, for example, were driven by a need to keep up the momentum of victory.
In this sense, ISIS has been successful: it managed to more than double its foreign-fighter contingent from 12,000 to at least 27,000 in December 2015. The number of Western European fighters doubled and is now more than 5,000. Three-quarters of this contingent come from just four countries: France, Great Britain, Germany and Belgium, highlighting the pull of existing national clusters in the organisation. The more citizens from a country join ISIS, the more will follow. Presently, therefore, the Islamic State is roughly half local (that is, Iraqi and Syrian), and half international. Sixty percent of the international contingent are Arabs from North Africa and the Middle East; the number from Tunisia alone, at 6,000, surpasses the European contingent, and Saudi Arabia ranks second with 2,500. ISIS seems to be recruiting roughly on the scale of other cults: the Church of Scientology is said to have 50,000 members; the UFO cult Raëlism, 60,000; the Korean Unification Church, 200,000. Aum Shinrikyo, the group which attacked the Tokyo subway with sarin in 1995, had 40,000 members worldwide.
The Islamic State’s success in recruitment is not only a product of its victory narrative, however. It is particularly skilled, as many cults are, at identifying individuals receptive to its message. It is worth noting that these people usually do not have major psychological issues. At least two-thirds of cult members are psychologically healthy when they join, while the remaining third are typically experiencing a mild depressive phase. This is important because it disproves dismissive notions of ISIS recruits as ‘crazy’. What makes them receptive to the Islamic State’s message is not mental instability, but rather a diffuse state of deficiency, a sense of unease in their current lives. This sense of alienation can follow a divorce or relocation, or the loss of, or a change in, job or friendships, and can happen across age groups, gender, educational background and country of origin. It is this broad spectrum of personal issues which explains the biographical diversity of ISIS foreign fighters, and indeed cult members in general. It is into this void that cults appear, as they offer meaning, cohesion and collective belonging, making a confusing life predictable and structured through applying formulaic norms, discerning right from wrong and giving simple moral explanations for how the world works.
Cults Offer Meaning
Indeed, once individuals have joined a cult, they will usually experience an increase in psychological well-being – the more distressed they were before joining, the greater the increase.
ISIS is able to fill this void because, like other cults, it is highly socially cohesive. Cult members meet each other’s social needs, keeping everyone engaged in the group. In this regard, the Islamic State’s appeal is deeply psychological rather than political or indeed theological – in fact, ISIS seeks out individuals who tend to know less about Islam (such as the children of non-practising Muslims, or converts), as they are easier to indoctrinate. In that regard, they are no different from other cult recruiters, to whom the extent of belief of a candidate is irrelevant.
The Islamic State uses two paths to reach its target audience: social media, and friends and other social contacts. Facebook and Twitter are ideal tools since they put political opinion on display, and allow like-minded individuals to connect. ‘Liking’ a post about a Muslim cause will put that individual on an ISIS recruiter’s radar. Once contact is established, ISIS offers a narrative of change and hope – but mostly one of meaning and collective identity. This is reflected in its social-media propaganda, dominated by notions of utopia and belonging. Its recruitment videos, for example, show young, healthy and good-looking men (called ‘brothers of light’) not only fighting together but also sharing meals and moments of laughter.
The targeted individual is gently lured into an alternative, ‘better’ life under the control of the Islamic State. The process is largely the same when recruitment is done through friends, except that here the power of persuasion is greater. In terms of numbers, however, it is less effective. It also does not allow for as much diversity, since it reaches out mainly to males (most of the Islamic State’s 660 or so female foreigners have been recruited through the web, by either men or women), and tends to stay within a certain community. When one individual from an already disenfranchised community joins, the pull effect is likely to draw in more. Examples of such recruitment hotbeds include the Lisleby district of Fredrikstad, in Norway; Bizerte and Ben Gardane, in Tunisia; Derna, in Libya; the Pankisi Gorge, in Georgia; and the Molenbeek district of Brussels, from which the vast majority of Belgium’s fighters have emerged. The reason for this is not so much the character of the areas themselves, but the personal nature of the process. As with cult recruitment more generally, it is an exponential process which accelerates with time.
Because cult recruitment – and, indeed, radicalisation more broadly – is highly individual and psychological, it is not easily detected by security and law-enforcement agencies. In fact, the only people in a position to detect such developments are usually family members or friends – who, in turn, are usually at a loss about how to handle such situations. France, Germany and the Netherlands have each launched hotlines offering help to families of potential ISIS recruits, but their efficacy remains to be seen.
Mind Control
Recruitment is only the first step. Once individuals have joined a cult, the real transformative work begins. The next step is to establish psychological control – this should not be confused, however, with turning them into mindless robots. Brainwashing, thought reform and mind-control techniques do have profound psychological effects, but they are unable to override an individual’s personality. Transformation does not occur through alteration of a subject’s personality, aggressiveness or moral standards, but by moulding members into a single form, designed to assure the survival of the collective.
The first step in this procedure is the establishment of boundary control, protecting the cult against dangerous outsiders. For a new recruit, usually considered vulnerable, this means separating him or her from their known environment, both physically and psychologically. In the case of the Islamic State, this means persuading the candidate to relocate to the group’s territories in Syria and Iraq. This serves not only a tactical and political function, but also a psychological one, as it separates the individual from potentially disruptive contact with family and friends. ISIS goes a long way to facilitate the journey, either by directly funding it or giving tips on how to procure the necessary funds (such as by taking out student loans), and later by laying out how to travel under the radar of the authorities. Once in Islamic State territory, new recruits are discouraged from remaining in touch with their relatives, and their communications are monitored, at least to some extent, as is often the case in cults. The move to Syria or Iraq also has the purpose of creating psychological dependency, as it is not just an unknown environment (which usually destabilises people, at least initially) but also a war zone. The recruit has to rely on ISIS personnel to meet their psychological and physical needs.
In a second step, individuals are exposed to a new vision of the world, the core of the cult’s belief system, through which they begin to morally disengage from their previous social context. This happens through repetition, while associating the overall experience with positive emotions, such as friendship and a feeling of belonging. Male ISIS recruits (who make up 90% of the organisation) are sent, after an initial screening, to a training camp where they acquire not only basic military knowledge but also ideological instruction. While training itself can be punishing, the ultimate goal is not so much military know-how but the creation of cohesion among the recruits and dependency on the trainer who, while inflicting pain, also has the power to remove it.
The Islamic State’s brand of indoctrination is its own, but it shares many features with those of other cults, which all have the same goal: establishing control over the individual. This occurs mainly by positioning the cult as the only relevant social network for the recruit’s well-being, claiming superiority over kinship. For ISIS, this means disavowing family: women are encouraged to leave their husbands, and children are encouraged to report un-Islamic behaviour by their parents. The individual subordinates his or her identity to the group entirely. In one grim example, a Syrian mother was executed by her own son, on ISIS orders, after trying to persuade him to leave.
This is enhanced by the fact that ISIS is a doomsday cult – creating not only a sense of urgency, but also an elitist, us-versus-them mentality. ISIS members are on the right side of history, a chosen people. Only the cult knows about the imminent end of days, and only its members will be prepared. In that sense, the group, and particularly its leadership, assumes nearly divine powers. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi not only chose a nom de guerre referencing the Prophet Muhammad’s father-in-law and first caliph, he proclaimed himself caliph, too (but assumed then his given name, Ibrahim), in a move highly contested by Islamic scholars. To prove his prophetic status, supporters traced the genealogy of his tribe back to Muhammad’s descendants – largely because the end-of-days prophecy states that a man descended from the Prophet will rule shortly before the apocalypse.
The Islamic State interprets the current state of world affairs according to somewhat cryptic Koranic verses, as well as sayings by Muhammad about the nearing end of days; it even named its main propaganda magazine, Dabiq, after a Syrian town where one hadith places the end-times battle. But this serves less as a prediction of the future than as a rallying cry. The end-times paradigm supports the Islamic State’s narrative of global exclusion, alone against the non-believers, and its siege mentality: its members are pitted against outsiders. It is precisely for this internally cohesive effect that many cults (such as the Branch Davidians, and most UFO cults) make use of the idea of the apocalypse; it also may explain why terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda, which were not apocalyptic, attracted a smaller membership. The Islamic State’s belief in the end times also helps to explain why it is not inclined to strike peace deals.
In order to accelerate this process of indoctrination, cults usually use techniques to tire its new members out and persuade them to adhere to the group’s procedures. In the case of the Islamic State, this involves punitive repetitive work and physical harm, as well as regulated access to sex, which creates emotional dependency. The individual is further broken by the imposition of often random rules to which the members must adhere at all cost. In the Islamic State, rules on appearance (women have to be dressed in black garments that cover the whole body except the eyes, while men must have a certain length of beard), prayer times and social norms (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, ‘scandalous’ music, musical instruments and displaying photographs are all banned) are enforced by physical punishment ranging from execution to lashes or beating with a stick. An analysis of Dabiq‘s articles shows that, where advice is given, it is usually accompanied by a threat of punishment.
Cults monitor adherence to their rules. In the case of ISIS, this function is carried out by moral police forces such as the all-female Khansaa brigade, which patrols Raqqa. Cults must be able to suppress deviance if they want to maintain total control. It is therefore the cult alone which decides whether an individual is in compliance. ISIS resorts to the Islamic practice of takfir to formally expel (or indeed execute) a member of the group. Takfir is, theologically speaking, the excommunication of a Muslim by another. While indeed part of Islam, it is a practice only exceptionally implemented in Muslim-majority countries, where most citizens decide on the degree of their religious worship, at least to some extent, without being declared a non-believer. Not only is an ill-founded accusation of takfir itself considered a grave sin, but Islamic jurisprudence also disagrees on the extent to which a display of sinful behaviour amounts to apostasy. Consequently, one of the derogatory terms used for the Islamic State by other Muslims (such as Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah) is takfiri.
Logic of Violence
The Islamic State’s use of violence has been described on various occasions as mediaeval or bestial – but it serves cultist purposes beyond deterring physical resistance. The first is to create a unique, shared group experience. The second is to separate the individual further from his or her social context of origin, making any return to a society which rejects such acts nearly impossible. Both aspects strengthen the group as an exclusive and reclusive entity.
There are several ways in which cults can induce members to commit acts they would previously have considered unthinkable. The most important comes during indoctrination and leads to selective moral disengagement. Essentially, this consists of cognitive redefinition of the morality of killing. Violence is more easily committed in the name of morality or ideology. This can be encouraged through dehumanising the victim, using euphemistic language and relativising crimes by comparing them with the crimes of others. This is why victims are called ‘infidels’, ‘pigs’ or ‘dogs’; the murder of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by fire and stoning supposedly recreated the pain he had inflicted on civilians in bombing campaigns, and was therefore morally justified; and ISIS used French participation in the aerial campaign in its public defence of the Paris attacks.
Another way to disengage morally is to shift the responsibility for such actions elsewhere, usually to the leadership or a deity which gave the orders. The Islamic State’s reaction to the Paris attacks, for example, quoted a Koranic verse to assign responsibility to God, and minimise the agency of the individuals responsible:
Allah’s [Torment] reached them from a place whereof they expected it not, and He cast terror into their hearts so that they destroyed their own dwellings with their own hands and the hands of the believers.
For these reasons, individuality is explicitly discouraged; critical thinking and personal glory undermine the authoritarian collective. As a result, only a few ISIS fighters gain personal notoriety, and those who do will often be punished by the cult. One such example is ‘Jihadi John’, a British fighter who starred in several propaganda videos and is said to have fallen out with the leadership, probably as a result of his new-found fame.
It is worth noting that it is harder to carry out violent acts, even when following orders, if the perpetrator personally sees the suffering they cause. Bombs are therefore a preferred tool, as they depersonalise violence. Where direct violence is still ordered, cults (including the Islamic State) resort to drugs (usually amphetamines such as Captagon) to break through an individual’s self-restraint.
By the same logic, suicide serves a cultist purpose, too. Perhaps the ultimate form of violence, by definition carrying no direct benefit to the perpetrator, suicide is a common feature in the cult landscape, whether among the followers of Heaven’s Gate in California or the Order of the Solar Temple in Europe. It can reach staggering numbers: nearly 1,000 killed themselves in 1978 for the Peoples Temple, and 778 died in 2000 for the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. The death of 76 Branch Davidians in the 2003 stand-off with the FBI may not have been an active suicide, but experts concluded that the cult members had had time to escape the fire that killed them, but chose not to.
The main difference between ISIS and these cults is that it uses suicide for military ends; it only achieves this, however, because it resorts to cult techniques of mind control in the same way Japan did in preparing its pilots for kamikaze missions during the Second World War. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that ISIS suicide attacks are usually perpetrated by individuals removed from their social context: since its early days, between 76% and 85% of the Islamic State’s suicide bombers have come from places other than Iraq. Individuals are more vulnerable to manipulation and psychological pressure when they are removed from their immediate social networks. Similarly, it is no coincidence that the Paris attackers avoided their own communities: the presence of friends and families makes violence or suicide a psychologically much harder task. Nevertheless, self-sacrifice can generally be mobilised in cults (as it is in terrorist organisations) by giving meaning to the act. Where individuals felt a void of meaning and purpose in their lives before joining the group, the reward of meaning and belonging is in the end more important than physical survival.
No Exit
Although difficult to comprehend for outsiders, cult membership can ultimately be a profoundly rewarding experience, regardless of the physical and emotional hardships it inflicts. The totalitarian nature of cults implies, for their most ardent believers, that a life outside the cult is unimaginable. ISIS members are indoctrinated to the point where their original home life is synonymous with isolation and devoid of meaning; if they do return home, they will be further alienated and rejected because of the violent acts they have committed, or because they are imprisoned. Precisely because cults are built on group cohesion, they usually have a low desertion rate, and indeed work actively against anyone leaving the group.
There are essentially three ways to exit a cult: forcible extraction by an outsider, expulsion or voluntary escape. Extraction was an option occasionally practised in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was considered the only way to get people out. Several such cases were later ruled as abduction. Americans Kathy Crampton, a member of the Love Family group, and Roberta McElfish, who had joined a cult called the Wesley Thomas Family, were both abducted and unsuccessfully deprogrammed in the late 1970s by their families. Both cases led to a nationwide controversy regarding individual and religious freedoms; they also highlighted the limited efficacy of deprogramming against the will of the individual.
Extraction is not really an option for members of the Islamic State, as anyone entering the territory is either apprehended, killed or turned away (as were several family members of European fighters who had sought to convince their relatives to return home with them). It also proves to be of limited effectiveness, as deprogramming will be much more difficult when applied to a member who feels kidnapped rather than freed. There have also been several cases of individuals who were initially persuaded to give up on their attempts to join ISIS, only to do so anyway.
In the case of ISIS, expulsion and attempts to escape often end in the same result: in most cases, the Islamic State rewards both with death. Attempts to flee are met with execution for men, and with 60 lashes for women. There are regular reports on ISIS executions of foreign fighters wishing to leave; this option is presumably closed off to Syrian or Iraqi fighters, who have nowhere else to go, and who obviously joined under very different circumstances. An Austrian teenager who had joined ISIS in 2014 was reportedly beaten to death with a hammer after she had tried, several times, to escape Raqqa in November 2015. Even when ISIS members do regret joining the organisation, they are told that there is no way out, as reprisals can be carried out far beyond the territory of the Islamic State.
When ISIS fighters do leave, they are likely either to be returning home with a mission, or to be living in fear of reprisal. In either case, deprogramming is a difficult endeavour. The longer a member has been in a cult, the less likely he or she is to respond to deprogramming techniques – usually, one year of cult membership is the threshold beyond which conversion becomes less likely. But even when post-cult re- or deprogramming is successful, it is a long, arduous and essentially mental process – so much so that the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders declared cult membership to be an atypical dissociative disorder: a ‘prolonged dissociative state that may occur in persons who have been subjected to periods of prolonged and intense coercive persuasion (brainwashing, thought reform, and indoctrination)’. As one ex-cult member put it,
de-programming is like taking a car out of the garage that has not been driven for a year. The battery has gone down, and in order to start it up, you’ve got to put jumper cables on it. It will start up then but if you turn the key off right away, it will go dead again. So you keep the motor running until it builds up its own power. This is what rehabilitation is. Once we get the mind working, we keep it working long enough so that the person gets in the habit of thinking and making decisions again.
Consequently, even the best-case ISIS returnee who has disavowed the organisation will require mental assistance to fully reintegrate.
Thinking of the Islamic State as a cult highlights a number of mostly psychological measures necessary to reduce its impact. The first is to inhibit potential terrorists from joining the group in the first place: as radicalisation and indoctrination are exponential processes, they are easier to address in their early stages. Travel bans do serve a purpose, but they have a limited impact, because around half of ISIS’s European members are not known to law-enforcement agencies before they leave. Preventing every individual of the ISIS age cohort (15-35) from travelling would not be feasible. Nor is profiling of much use, given the diverse backgrounds of ISIS recruits. Another option is to involve families and friends in the process of detecting radicalisation. This requires sensitising family and friends, as most ISIS recruits are taught how to avoid behaving suspiciously. Three British girls who left for the Islamic State in early 2015 had been questioned by the police in the weeks preceding their departure, after one of their schoolmates joined ISIS in Syria, but were found not to be at risk of radicalisation.
Secondly, ISIS can be weakened by creating dissension in its ranks. Since the Islamic State’s raison d’être is to control its members, anything that undermines cohesion will weaken the organisation. Admittedly, this is a difficult task for outside actors to carry out. But ISIS is already somewhat challenged on this front. For one thing, the bigger any organisation gets, the more difficult it becomes to maintain cohesion. More specifically, it treats its fighters differently, giving foreign volunteers comparatively better treatment, which is already leading to dissent among locals. Popular exposure for individual fighters, such as Jihadi John’s presence in Western media, may also stir up jealousy.
Thirdly, escape from the Islamic State could be made easier, to encourage desertion by those members who have stayed out of fear. Given the situation in Syria and Iraq, this would require intelligence and special-forces commitments not currently justifiable by the likely return, but it might be an option at a later stage. It is, however, applicable to the cohort which has returned to Europe without disavowing the organisation. This could include measures such as amnesties in exchange for intelligence cooperation, witness-protection programmes and psychological support.
Cults such as ISIS, lastly, can be weakened by reducing support for their leader. Breaking the near-parental bond with a cult leader is perhaps the most difficult step to achieve, even after a follower has endured abuse and hardship. In the case of ISIS, it would only be possible if indisputable evidence of un-Islamic conduct by Baghdadi could be shown to his followers.