Victims of bigotry

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, faith is an encounter with God. This meeting is possible during the life of a person, it also awaits him after death. This is how traditional religion alleviates the fear of death by promising eternal life. According to religious canons, everyone has a predetermined life span, and no one has the right to bring death closer – either their own or another person’s. But we know that there have been and are many religious fanatics in the world. Does religious fanaticism even deserve to be called faith? According to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, faith belongs to the realm of the plausible, which is not always confirmed. Fanaticism, on the contrary, presupposes certainty in the possession of absolute truth. “This is a substitution, when a believer arbitrarily puts his human “I” in the place of God and deifies it,” believes Boris Falikov. “It seems to a person that God requires him to sacrifice another (or himself too) as a sacrifice, but in fact he hears his own inner voice, the voice of a person who is subject to all human weaknesses.” Whoever performs such a substitution is unconditionally confident in his rightness, in the possession of absolute truth. He rejects any “otherness” – an opinion and way of thinking that is different from his own. He is completely incapable of dialogue.

Justification of evil

For the believer, the main question is “What is the will of God for me?” The fanatic does not ask any questions: he knows that he is “chosen”. “In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), killing is allowed for the sake of self-defense or in the name of higher goals that exceed the value of human life,” says Boris Falikov. – But even in these cases it remains a sin that needs to be repented of. Hinduism and Buddhism also have restrictive principles – you can’t harm anything living.” Penetrating into the religious consciousness, the “virus” of fanaticism transforms it. “Of course, not every fanatic becomes an extremist, let alone a terrorist, but any terrorist is a fanatic,” says Boris Falikov. – Violence is easy to justify for a fanatic of any confession. Shahid Islamists rethink murder as a sacrifice by others (and oneself) in the name of God. For them, this is a martyrdom. For Hindu terrorists, death is justified by the possibility of being born in a better incarnation. Moreover, they give this chance not only to themselves, but also to their enemies, to those who are deprived of their current life. To us, this motivation seems absurd, but for someone who is infected with the virus of fanaticism, it works.”

Learn to think clearly

According to psychoanalysis, a person becomes a fanatic in order to overcome fear and a sense of his own powerlessness, which he refuses to recognize and accept. Dividing the world into truth and lies, friends and enemies, the fanatic, in his imagination, controls reality, feels his omnipotence. He believes that he has finally escaped the human lot, in which doubts, compromises and disappointed hopes are inevitable. Usually a fanatic has a paranoid personality, prone to megalomania and delusions of persecution. But mental predisposition alone is not enough. Religious extremists undergo special treatment, which includes isolation from the outside world, sleep deprivation, the demonization of the enemy, the cult of death for a good cause. After her, the fanatic is ready for death and murder in order to fulfill his mission.

How to recover from religious fanaticism? “It is very difficult to do this on your own,” says Boris Falikov. – Professional psychological help is needed to convince a person: doubts and the ability to think soberly do not in any way contradict faith. Moreover, they even help her.”

Boris Falikov, philosopher, religious scholar. Author of the book “Cults and Cultures” (RSUH Publishing House, 2007).