How a normal person can behead another person

Hamas Training

A mask in front of a normal face

This article is about normal people, who are not able to hurt a fly, and 'suddenly' they will be able to perform the worst horrifying act. Just like the many foreigners who join the ISIS, the people who joining the terrorist organizations. 

In many Arab countries, up to 90% of the populations are not able to read and write. They never had a book or manual or newspaper or Koran in their hands. All of that they know is from others. History has learned that it is very easy to manipulate people who have no idea, and have no other sources of reference or knowledge and are easy brainwashed and manipulated by people with a certain (extremist) agenda.

Here follows the stories of four normal people, living their lives in Europe.

A normal boy, living in Liverpool, England, is normally raised like his brothers and sisters and all of his friends in England. There is nothing wrong with him. He goes to school, he got a great smartphone from his parents, just like his friends and is using Facebook and Twitter as most of those young people seem to do. Just like his friends after school, they come together and chat and hangout with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood and watch some porn, chat with everyone, get a girlfriend and have fun. A week later he disappears from home and ends up in Syria, where he beheads his first victim! And his parents are pure British!

A boy of 16 years old, living in Paris, France. He, and the rest of his family arrived in Paris 13 years ago and were refugees from Syria. His father got into trouble with Syrian authorities (he's a journalist) 13 years ago and escapes the country to settle in Paris. The boy was just accepted at a very well known school and the boy's future looked very bright! The boy, just like everyone else, used his smartphone and computer at home to chat with everyone he wanted. His hobby was online gaming and he was almost every available minute of his young life playing. One day in late June 2014, he disappeared. In early August his parents received emails from him with photos about series of kills. He killed 3 prisoners! A proud boy was standing between his new brothers of the ISIS. He is a serial killer A young man from Marceille, France, 35 years old, is working for a large accounting firm in the city. He is an accountant and thanks to his parents, who paid for his university education, he got an excellent job. But he never had the time to marry or have a girlfriend, he was focussing himself only to get this job and he succeeded. His mother was so much worried, because no wife, no grandchildren. In June 2014 he became quiet, standoffish and introvert. His friends started to worry about him, because they didn't understand why he did not join them anymore for the daily chat. Suddenly he appeared in public again after weeks of isolation, but he was a changed man. He was bitter and aggressive, making low remarks about his fellow Arabs, didn't agree with anything anymore. He lost his job, because he attacked his manager and a week later he ended up with ISIS in Iraq.

After these three scenarios, which really happened, you would ask the basic question, how a normal person is able to perform sadistical deeds to a fellow human?

I have another scenario, but this one closer at home and this is accepted as normal in the global populations in the west. Military Academy in Breda Patrick, a young man, 19 years old, lives in Amsterdam. He wanted to join the army so much and he did. His parents and friends are so proud of him before he disappears in the basic training. He is accepted at the Military Academy in Breda (Holland), where he will receive the training to become an officer and later a specialization in Special Forces. The total training and military education is 6 years total. After the basic training of 12 weeks, he comes home for a short leave and everyone looks wide-eyed at the young man, "... such gentleman". What nobody really realizes is that the young man is trained to kill.

If you put Patrick together with the boy from Liverpool, and you compare them, then you see the following:

  1. Both men are trained to kill

  2. Both men will kill the way how they are trained

  3. Both men will kill because they have received the order(s) to kill.

  4. Patrick, the special forces soldier will kill, because he believes that he fights for the global good, but so does the boy from Liverpool, he also believes that he kills for the good.

  5. Both men kill for the good of a group. Patrick for the military (which is his group) and the boy from Liverpool for ISIS (which is his group).

Mohammed, the 23 years old Dutch/Arab man living in Leiden, Holland, and he is a religious man. He is a good Muslim, he gives money for the needed (even when they are not Arab), he is friendly, prays multiple times a day, and is a very open, friendly young man. He observes that many Arabs in his neighborhood are living a life of shame, according the teachings of Islam. They marry non-believers, eat pork, don't read the Koran, they live a life like the western people, which is forbidden for any Arab! Mohammed meets new friends, who belong to the Wahhabi movement, which is very common in the Gulf states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia and he loves it! Wahhabi, as a movement, is religious and revivalistic, it says generally, that it must bring Muslims back to Islam. Of course Mohammed agrees, that is what he was thinking all the time! But it sees foreigners (his fellow Dutch citizens and all the Arabs in his neighborhood) are destructive and corrupt, and that Islam is the only and complete way of life. It has prescriptions for all aspects of life and Wahhabism is very strict in correcting, keeping, implementing and enforcing the rules. He performs his first murder within a week and his new friends are now his best friends! He is now fighting in Iraq and joined ISIS.

What's so special about Mohammed? He was already religious, but this time he adopted the Wahhabi teachings as his way of life, which commands him to kill unbelievers. He sees that he doesn't have any choice in that matter and he can kill the unbelievers in any way he sees fit, as long as it is within the complete way of life according the Koran. When he arrived in Iraq and talks with the people of ISIS, the only difference that he finds is that ISIS follows the example of the first three generations of after Muhammad the Prophet, which is in practice the same as the extreme learnings of Wahhabi.

Whatever the reasons are of people like that, they all end up to be able to behead a person (men and children), to bury a person alive, to be able to rape a woman and then kill her, to enslave people, to crucify a person, the shoot someone between the eyes, to cut a child in half, and all of those acts are done with a smile, jokingly cutting someone head off in front of the camera, which is later uploaded to Twitter in the form of a video.

Some people claim that those horrifying acts has nothing to do with Islam. Is that so? According Wahhabi, it is allowed, it is even required! Wahhabi is a movement within Islam. And they follow the Koran literally and read what Muhammad the Prophet has done and they copy him and his followers after him. Many Arabs refuse to admit that, but are they able to read?

  1. What makes a person, a normal person, raised by normal parents, religious or not, in normal society, to take a knife and to cut someones head off.

  2. What makes a soldier, a normal person, raised by normal parents, religious or not, in normal society, after received training to kill people by hand, knife or gun?

  3. What makes a serial killer killing his or her victims?

  4. And finally the question, do you think that you can hold a knife right now and kill the person right in front of you?

I don't want to go into the psychological and scientific reasons why a person can perform those acts, but I will describe how most of the people can become a person like that.

  1. Some persons were confronted with terrible things in their lives, or some persons are drinking excessive amount of alcohol or using excessive amount of drugs, or living for a long time under extreme stress,Excessive stress or brought by excessive physical stress past their breaking point. Those people are changed dramatically, all of them are not able to show any concern about the problems or suffering of other people, they are full of aggression and lack of capacity to share or recognize emotions experienced by another or even experience the feeling of love. Those are the common responses by people who experienced extreme deeds.

  2. With  people like that and when survival depends on the mutual security of a strong group with a dominant leader, things gets radical and extreme. This can be defined by religion, racial, political, tribal or clan or a gang-leader, it's all the same (like ISIS or a national army). War bonds people; terrific fear and distress the individual feels are resolved and replaced in a strong groups-bond. It offers self-esteem, individual identity merge with the groups identity and it gives them relieve.

Loathing and hate for your fellow

  1. Loathing for people not belonging to the group, the so called outsiders. When religion is involved, group tribalism is strengthened and loathing for the outsiders correspondingly increases.

  2. Revenge is a very strong factor, combined with all the other points, especially in the Arab culture.

  3. People will do anything for their leaders when they tell that it is acceptable to do so, especially when the leaders gave their everything to the group as well. With the Koran in the hand, they will do anything, whatever it is.

The above five points applies for an intense military training, as for people, who bring themselves to join ISIS and perform those barbaric acts. When people join the ISIS, they receive the intense training, just like Patrick, our soldier in this article. Normal people were not 'ready' for barbaric acts and killing, after that training they are.