A Psychological Study of Roots of Religious Violence in the Middle East

Today, the Middle East is in the grip of religious violence, causing the death of thousands and displacement of millions of the people of this region. To find the roots of religious violence, which has practically paralyzed lives of millions, it is necessary to study it through an interdisciplinary approach. Religious violence involves many individual and collective aspects; psychology, personality, ideology and sociopolitical milieu in which an individual is raised. Attempts have been made in this paper to study the psychological roots of religious violence in the Middle East to shed light on some of its aspects. The main question of this research is: What are the psychological roots of violence in the Middle East? The hypothesis of this paper is that biologically influenced dispositions as well as environmental forces (family, schooling and sociopolitical conditions) molded the personality of Ibn Timiyya, which in turn shaped his ideology (Salafism with excommunication as its central signifier) that heavily influenced the violent movements in the Middle East. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse analysis was used to study the hypothesis. The findings show that Ibn Timiyya’s ideology, with takfir as its central signifier, the sociopolitical environment of the Middle East and personality of takfiris are the roots of religious violence in the Middle East.