This research examines the motivation of the group known as Al-Qaeda to attack the World Trade Center from the perspective of social psychology. The research will set forth theoretical aspects of the encounter between Western culture and religiously-based rejections of its values, with special emphasis on the role of psychosocial and moral certainty in acting on such rejections, and then discuss how these theories can be used to interpret the values and motives informing the events of September 11, with a view toward identifying the social psychology of responses to the sponsors of those events and forecasting likely consequences to Al-Qaeda on their account.
At the core of Weber's analysis of what he refers to as religious "rejections" of the world is the concept of rationality or rationalism, the name he gives to an attitude whereby a society moves away from impulses, superstition, and emotion and toward social organization. This does not mean that rationalism itself is perfect. First of all, many different "rational conclusions" (Weber, 1946, p. 324) have been drawn by many different societies in the world. Secondly, too much rationalism may foster a "bureaucratic" social structure, which is marked by impersonalism, the enemy of personal freedom and individual personality. Capitalism is a high but potentially pernicious (i.e., bureaucratic, impersonal, power-laden) expression of rational social structure because capitalism as an organizing principle has something of a life of its own.
The more the world of the modern capitalist economy follows its own immanent laws, the less accessible it is to any imaginable relationship with a religious ethic of brotherliness. The more rational, and thus impersonal, capitalism becomes, the more is this the case (Weber, 1946, p. 331).
Parsons and Shils view social systems in terms of how they function and how human action has the effect of structuring social organization. They assert a hum...