Terrorism studies explains violence through individual psychology rather than politics

Evidence

In terrorism studies, the focus is on the motivations and belief systems of individual terrorists. The psyche is thus the privileged site of investigation and terrorism is explained as a compulsion or psycho-pathology. That is to say, the terrorist is driven to commit acts of violence as a consequence of psychological forces. The terrorist psyche is born in abnormal family dynamics, with the West’s own heterosexual family as its point of contrast. Bin Laden, for example, is represented as someone abandoned by a polygamous father whose interests were with his other wives. He was drawn to find substitute father figures in fundamentalist men. Terrorists are depicted as failed heterosexuals who need the promise of virgins in heaven to commit to the cause. Such portraits not only draw on older discourses about the effeminate or sexually dysfunctional Muslim man and the Oriental despot, but they preclude any examination of the socio-political causes of terrorism. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 121

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the psychologization of political resistance; also resonates with critiques of racialized threat perception. — connects to: Terrorism emerges from the intersection of disposition and environment, not single personality types — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4086; Instant post-9-11 blame explanations bypassed perpetrator psychology — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 10; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ in how Western stereotypes of Muslim masculinity/sexuality recur across eras, and to ‘On Sacrifice’ in how exceptional violence gets justified against the uncivilized other.