Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists by Scott Atran Page A
Authors: Scott Atran
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seized American Airlines Flight 11 and crashed the fully fueled Boeing 767 into the North Tower of New York City’s World Trade Center to reignite world history. Eighteen minutes later, Marwan al-Shehi, a friendly and perceptive young man, according to all who knew him, and another foursome of helpers banked American Airlines Flight 175 into the WTC’s South Tower, where Josh Rosenthal and thousands of others had just begun their workday. Josh’s mother, Marilyn, who has dedicated her life to improving health care in America and abroad, went to the United Arab Emirates to meet with Marwan’s family “to try to understand why two such promising young men had to die this way.” She told me that Marwan’s parents still refuse to believe it could have been him, or if it was, that he must have been tricked.
Around the time Josh was killed, five hijackers stormed the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington-Dulles to Los Angeles. One of them, Hani Hanjour, who had once lived in the United States, took the controls while passengers who were forced to the back of the plane called loved ones on their cell phones—until 9:37 Eastern time, the minute they all perished, when the aircraft slammed into the west face of the Pentagon.
Passengers aboard a fourth flight, United Airlines 93, now aware of events at the World Trade Center, didn’t die without a fight. At 9:47 Jeremy Glick phoned his wife, Lyz, to say that the passengers had voted to take over the plane. He told her that he loved her, to have “a good life” and to please take care of Emmy, their twelve-month-old daughter. Besides, joked the doomed husband and father, he still had his butter knife from breakfast, so all might not be lost. Jeremy and the other passengers overwhelmed the hijackers and tried to wrestle control of the plane from pilot Ziad Jarrah. The passengers probably saved the Capitol building, the symbolic heart of America’s government. An hour before the flight, Ziad had phoned his girlfriend in Germany, Aysel Senguen, to tell her three times he loved her. But Ziad’s love for a girl couldn’t compete with a deeper, darker love for cause and comrades. 1
The pilots had shorn their beards to be inconspicuous among infidels. They had perfumed their bodies for paradise, but too much has been made of that and their supposed sexual hang-ups and lust for heavenly virgins. True, Atta left behind a testament saying he wanted no earthly woman to touch and defile his remains. But he was peculiar that way. In Al Qaeda at the time, most were married men and many had several children, though all four 9/11 bomber pilots were bachelors. The personality of each jihadi is different. What gives them all fanatical focus is not some inherent personality defect but the person-changing dynamics of the group.
Three of the pilots—Atta, Shehi, and Jarrah—were close friends from student days in Hamburg, along with a fourth, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Ramzi, so very different from the often morose and uptight Atta, was the backslapping guiding spirit embracing the group. But he would be unable to get a visa into the United States. None of the four had a particularly religious upbringing; none had attended madrassahs. Ziad went to private Christian schools in Lebanon before going to study in Germany; Marwan entered Germany on an army scholarship from the United Arab Emirates; a friend who knew Ramzi back home in Yemen says “he was religious, but not too much”; Atta’s father, a Cairo attorney, said his son was anything but a religious fanatic and that Bin Laden’s video praising his son’s martyrdom had to be “fake” (though now the father extols jihad).
All four told other friends that the chief reason they wanted to fight for the jihad was America’s support of Israel and “the World Jewish Conspiracy,” centered in New York City. This was one thing that drew the amicable Ramzi toward the far less sociable Atta when they first met at Hamburg’s Al
Around the time Josh was killed, five hijackers stormed the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington-Dulles to Los Angeles. One of them, Hani Hanjour, who had once lived in the United States, took the controls while passengers who were forced to the back of the plane called loved ones on their cell phones—until 9:37 Eastern time, the minute they all perished, when the aircraft slammed into the west face of the Pentagon.
Passengers aboard a fourth flight, United Airlines 93, now aware of events at the World Trade Center, didn’t die without a fight. At 9:47 Jeremy Glick phoned his wife, Lyz, to say that the passengers had voted to take over the plane. He told her that he loved her, to have “a good life” and to please take care of Emmy, their twelve-month-old daughter. Besides, joked the doomed husband and father, he still had his butter knife from breakfast, so all might not be lost. Jeremy and the other passengers overwhelmed the hijackers and tried to wrestle control of the plane from pilot Ziad Jarrah. The passengers probably saved the Capitol building, the symbolic heart of America’s government. An hour before the flight, Ziad had phoned his girlfriend in Germany, Aysel Senguen, to tell her three times he loved her. But Ziad’s love for a girl couldn’t compete with a deeper, darker love for cause and comrades. 1
The pilots had shorn their beards to be inconspicuous among infidels. They had perfumed their bodies for paradise, but too much has been made of that and their supposed sexual hang-ups and lust for heavenly virgins. True, Atta left behind a testament saying he wanted no earthly woman to touch and defile his remains. But he was peculiar that way. In Al Qaeda at the time, most were married men and many had several children, though all four 9/11 bomber pilots were bachelors. The personality of each jihadi is different. What gives them all fanatical focus is not some inherent personality defect but the person-changing dynamics of the group.
Three of the pilots—Atta, Shehi, and Jarrah—were close friends from student days in Hamburg, along with a fourth, Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Ramzi, so very different from the often morose and uptight Atta, was the backslapping guiding spirit embracing the group. But he would be unable to get a visa into the United States. None of the four had a particularly religious upbringing; none had attended madrassahs. Ziad went to private Christian schools in Lebanon before going to study in Germany; Marwan entered Germany on an army scholarship from the United Arab Emirates; a friend who knew Ramzi back home in Yemen says “he was religious, but not too much”; Atta’s father, a Cairo attorney, said his son was anything but a religious fanatic and that Bin Laden’s video praising his son’s martyrdom had to be “fake” (though now the father extols jihad).
All four told other friends that the chief reason they wanted to fight for the jihad was America’s support of Israel and “the World Jewish Conspiracy,” centered in New York City. This was one thing that drew the amicable Ramzi toward the far less sociable Atta when they first met at Hamburg’s Al
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