Gaslighting is a quaint word, not amenable to ready comprehension. The phrase comes from an old English psychological thriller Gaslight (1940) where a husband cunningly convinces his wife into believing that she is losing her mind by secretly manipulating the lighting in the house. A clever psychological trick if you will. It refers to manipulating facts and events to make people believe in a false narrative. It was recently used by Pakistani American activist Ayesha Malik in the aftermath of India’s Balakot air strikes. She tweeted of being ‘gaslit’ by Indian actress Priyanka Chopra, whom she had heckled for supporting the Indian Armed Forces. Priyanka’s cool and mature response during the UNICEF event allegedly made the activist look like a bad loser.
What’s that got to do with jihad? A lot actually. Consider the actions of these so-called jihadis. Contrary to perception, they are not mindless savages; there is a well-developed narrative from which their actions spring. They believe the world at large, especially the modern Western civilisation, is against Islam. They even consider most rulers of Muslim-majority states as stooges in this conspiracy aimed to oppress Muslims. Anyone not believing in their twisted version of Islam is the enemy. Selective quoting from scriptures is evoked to justify their acts of terror as the wrath of the righteous and wronged. It is this false narrative of victimhood that fosters radicalisation and is ultimately manifested in violence.
To understand radicalisation one needs to go deep into the psychological antecedents which lead to the framing of the “Others” as enemies. A few years ago, I’d explored a framework to explain the radicalisation process of groups like ISIS and Taliban (Educated terrorists and victimhood, TNIE, 22 July 2016). Research shows there are certain core beliefs that foster a world view conducive to violence (Eidelson, 2003).
These are: a sense of superiority, feeling of injustice, vulnerability about impending doom and distrust of others. This is a dangerous cocktail of beliefs that prepares the ground for radicalisation. Once this narrative seeps in, it’s very difficult to change. Terrorist violence, like the proverbial iceberg, is only the visible end product of this supply chain. Unless the process of radicalisation is understood and countered, we cannot hope to curb this menace. So we should target terrorism, not just terrorists.
Unfortunately, such a naive and self-serving world view is prevalent in large parts of the Islamic world depicting Muslims as victims. A classic example of this is Pakistani PM Imran Khan’s recent speech in the UN in which he tried to link Kashmir with another of his pet peeves— Islamophobia. Though the focus in India has largely been on his K-rant and nuclear brinkmanship, his pseudo thesis on Islamophobia is a textbook illustration of playing the victim card. He admonished the West for demonising Muslims, flatly denied any existence of radical Islamic extremism and explained their acts of violence as a reaction of poor victimised Muslims.
He claimed Islam is a different (superior?) religion and demanded modern western values like liberalism and freedom of expression should be curbed so as not to hurt sentiments of Muslims, lest they be radicalised. In short, the responsibility and blame for terror acts by Muslim extremists lies on ‘others’ (non-Muslims), conveniently forgetting that the majority of terror acts take place in Islamic nations and most victims are Muslims themselves. It was thinly veiled nuclear blackmail. It was a bizarre spectacle to see a head of state behaving like a suicide bomber threatening to blow himself and the world up.
The falsehood of this narrative can be easily established through a simple reading of history. In The Failure of Political Islam (1992), Olivier Roy, a French researcher, traces the origins of Islamic extremism to the preachings of Islamic scholars like Rashid Rida, Hassan Al-Banna, Abul Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb and Ruhollah Khomeini from the 1940s onward.
These led to rise of ‘Political Islam’ through the 1970s and 80s, reaching a crescendo with the Iranian revolution and Afghan jihad. After the USSR’s demise, the emboldened jihadis attempted to create ‘Islamic’ revolutions in their own nations. The respective countries quickly realised the existential threat such elements posed and suppressed them brutally. This led to disillusionment and disintegration among the ranks and far from being a coherent ideology, political Islam took an anarchic and even nihilistic turn.
This trajectory is further corroborated in The Politics of Self-Expression (2006) by German academic Markus Daechsel. He finds that after 9/11, terror groups lost interest in the theory of 20th century political Islam and were more interested in filling a personal emotional void, though they explained their violence as a global war against ‘infidels’. History does suggest that most such terror groups eventually get engulfed by their own fire and fury, and self-destruct. But we cannot wait to address the problem as before extremist ideas burn out, they leave behind a terrible trail of death and destruction.
But what can be done? Changing world views is a long haul and likely to bear fruit if it largely comes from within the affected community. Any attempt to force it from outside is likely to harden the attitudes further. Presently, it’s a confusing stage in which many sections of society and even the intelligentsia are willing to buy into the victimhood claims of extremist groups and even act as their apologists. Instead of bringing the radicals into the mainstream by renouncing violence, this gaslighting of jihad is instead a cynical and dangerous attempt at radicalisation of the mainstream itself. We might be in for a protracted battle of the narratives. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.