Islamist schizophrenic or a pretender?

Recently, a western psychiatrist made the claim that Religious Fundamentalism is a Mental Disorder. By this if someone become influenced by Islamic extremism then that is a mental disorder just like any other disorder.

I felt that the idea was interesting enough to be pursued and made a post on my blog. However, I was also doubtful if these sorts of statements (someone’s mental state) can even be evaluated or validated objectively especially when you don’t have access to that person as a patient or his/her medical record.

Islamic teaching (at least the ancient form of it) only recognizes schizophrenia, mainly because the signs from people afflicted by it were clear enough and recognizable. We have rules and regulations on how to deal with schizophrenics and societal expectation of them. Islamic literatures also contain stories about a number of pretenders who had to fake their mental state in order to avoid severe punishment for having opinions that were against the conventional wisdom of the time.

Information about the brain and how it’s wired was not available back then and still not available in many of the Muslim communities because a lot of people are still living a very basic and primitive life. Hence people are mostly not aware that mental disorder can span a whole big spectrum

Secondly, it’s not easy for lay person to deal with mental issues (if he is suffering from it or has family members affected by it) because it requires expertise not available to most of us hence this area should be deal professionally (or in a professional manner by well trained professionals).

So, far I’ve noticed that even in western countries people don’t really get the help they need when they need until it’s too late. In Muslim society, sometimes a lot of people who are suffering from mental disorders or depressions have been crudely ‘misdiagnosed’ as suffering from a possession (usually by Jinns).


I was reading this news: Australian jihadist who posted decapitated head image is 'paranoid schizophrenic'


I’m quoting the relevant parts (or what I find interesting) here:

An Australian Islamist who proudly published a photo of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head in Syria is – according to psychiatrists who treated him – a paranoid schizophrenic who has hallucinated for years.

Days after he was widely described in Australia as "a lunatic", convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf was confirmed as a paranoid, schizophrenic depressive who has suffered mental illness since the 1990s by Dr Olav Nielssen, a leading Australian psychiatrist.

Following Dr Nielssen's assessment, a court sentenced Sharrouf to four years in prison and concluded his condition "predicated him towards
extremism and radicalisation by others".

Sharrouf, 33, a high-school dropout and former drug user, posted a photograph on Twitter of his son in northern Syria which was described by United States secretary of state John Kerry this week as one of the worst, most stomach-turning photos the world had ever seen.

Justice Anthony Whealy, the former Supreme Court judge who sentenced Sharrouf, said this week that the former defendant was "very" mentally ill and was unable to understand the court proceedings.

"His symptoms were quite severe, he was quite delusional," he told ABC News.

"He was overheard talking to other people when no one was there. This was observed on quite a few occasions and it was a state of mind that persisted for some time. He was unfit to plead and that means in legal terms that he was simply incapable of understanding what the court case would be about."

I’d really like to read more on this topic in the future. Some of the questions I have so far are

• Does Islamic radicalism/extremism attract people who have mental disorders?
• Does any form of radicalism/extremism make you lose your sanity (because we know that not all radicals are Muslim)
• The allegation in the newspaper was that this man already had a prior mental health situation and incarceration only made it worse. Did his lower functioning mental state made him embrace ideas (pushed by Islamic radicals)?
• Can we say that folks like us who are not interested in silly radicals’ ideas are at least very stable mentally?
• The judge dismissed the claim that somehow this man got away from the law system by pretending to be a mentally insane individual. Is the judge mistaken and is now trying to save himself or is the law system designed to let the criminals and the criminally insane walk away freely?

Reference
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11036230/Australian-jihadist-who-posted-decapitated-head-image-is-paranoid-schizophrenic.html