International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 57

Know What You Are Fighting
that I went into hiding and through another that I repented,” a terrorist and former
member of the GIA told me.
By being manipulated, these made-to-order fatwas influence minds and lead to
high-risk situations. As the one pronouncing them has the symbolic power to influence
the masses and his mental hold works at a distance (in both space and time), these
fatwas influence the commerce of ideas. When pronounced by terrorists who are selfproclaimed
legal experts, such as Abou El Moundhir, the deputy of the former head
of the GIA, Antar Zouabri, these perverse fatwas have often been more effective than
the most polished political speeches or the most touching patriotic epics.
Mentally struck with delusions of grandeur, these pseudo-legal experts go
so far as to substitute themselves for the divinity, who is seen as mortgageable in
return for self-sacrifice. By identifying with the master of the universe, by deifying
the group, the delusional person reaches a state of extreme beatitude and thinks he is
enjoying supreme power. The force of a fatwa also comes from the fact that they are
reborn from their own ashes, that they regenerate, like an old scientific theory that
sees the universe as closed, with matter reproducing itself by itself.
In reality, the Muslim tradition does not include fatwa that can always and
everywhere justify crime. Thus predators believing they enjoy the symbolic power
to decree commandments have in their hands an almost absolute weapon: seductive
phraseology for the laypeople. The symbolic power of preachers and the mental
weakness of the masses that they captivate make these fatwas an irrevocable sentence.
The credulity of the masses and the symbolic power of fatwas offer fake men of
religion an undreamt-of opportunity to order crimes from a distance with impunity.
Benefitting from a patent theological void and the moral, social, economic,
and cultural crisis that has affected Algeria since the end of the 1980s and early 1990s,
the Islamists seduced the masses with their manipulated discourse. However, the
symbolism of the Arabic language does not contain any meaning that pushes, either
by metaphor or suggestion, to resuscitate the death instinct. According to universal
ethical rules, the notions of martyrdom and sacrifice come from a heroism dedicated
to peace and should not be subject to appropriation.
Using this new vocabulary, the unique lexicon of a literature improvised
for the occasion, a new generation of seasoned “Minbarist” 54 preachers rose from
nothing and called for a “privatized” religion. They specialize in the indoctrination of
anonymous masses, using everything that could feed their concern and their anxiety.
In a deep identity crisis, prey to social evils and the failure of the welfare state, these
abandoned youth take hold of the first model at hand to structure their existence and
take them out of the torment of wandering and anonymity.
There is no drama for societies worse than “moral anomie,” or “demoralization”
as sociologists 55 call it after adopting Durkheim’s concept. A theological, legal,
54
Minbar is the wooden tribunal present in each mosque from which the imam gives religious sermons.
55
Thomas and Znanieck in their studies of Polish immigrants to America.
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