Sinwar & Deif's "Brothering Butchery"
Mu’akhat Ar. brothering
The Malignant Twinship of “Brothering” in Jihad
Screenshot Wikicommons Image
Screenshote from IDF website there is no wikicommons image Deif
By Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.
War Blog #28
Remember - estimated: 94% of thinking is unconscious; 95% of communication is by way of body language
Intro
These two statistics are crucial to keep in mind while taking the “deep dive” into the psyche of jihadis like Sinwar and Deif in order to really understand their psychosis. It is not within the scope of this post to do a psychological profile of the two. However, much can be gained by looking at how they function together in their psychotic dance. They are “brothered” according to the history of jihad in Islam like nefarious Siamese twins.
Israel now hunts for Yahiya al-Sinwar and Muhammed Deif calling them dead men walking. Cf. their Wikipedia entries here:
Israel asserts that Sinwar, alongside the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, "coordinated" the brutal Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,400 Israelis, including 1,000 civilians. Hamas has taken about 200 people to Gaza as hostages.
The important word here is “coordinated” as in together for they are malignant psychotic twins who jointly decided to launch the devastating October 7th attack.
How might we understand this paranoid psychotic behavior? There is a special word in Arabic which comes to mind called “Mu’akhat”, it means brothered in Arabic. It is known as the concept of “brothering. Mu’akhat is a concept that is not very well known by the Western public as well as military and law enforcement. Here is the dictionary entry which appears in The Jihadi Dictionary.
To begin with we look at Webster’s definition of twinship and its etymology for the history of words always provides important insights:
Two babies that are born at the same time to the same mother; two similar things that form a pair.
[emphasis mine- note that in their psychotic world people are “objects” not people with real feelings and needs; hence they are “things”]
√ twin: from Old English twinn:consisting of two,twofold,double,two-by-two. -ship: word-forming element meaning quality, condition, act, power, skill, office, position, relation between; from Middle English -schipe: state, condition of being.
From this standard definition provided by Webster's Dictionary, flows the psychological or psychoanalytic self psychology definition created by Heinz Kohut, M.D.:
Ψ Kohut’s (1971) twinship transference is a concept from self psychology suggesting that some patients “need to experience an essential likeness with their analysts in order to strengthen their selves. Such ‘transference’ is based upon the insufficiency of narcissistically stabilizing childhood experiences of similarity and affinity with parents. Faced with growing up in a world experienced as alien, the child sometimes manifests the intensity of this need in the creation of imaginary playmates (Wolf, 1994, p. 73).”
From the above we learn that there is great instability in the personality. Twinning takes on a special meaning in psychotic behavior to bolster a personality that is greatly impaired such as Sinwar’s and Deif’s. Indeed, twinning is key to comprehending the paranoid psychodynamics in the history of jihad which has received virtually no attention when discussing the massacre of October 7th but more importantly has been overlooked as to how Sinwar and Deif function together as one fused psychotic personality bent on destruction and annihilation from which emanates a rage that exceeds murder itself.
Here is the concept that lies at the heart of the aberrant behavior of Sinwar and Deif's Mu’akhat yielding “brother butchering.”
X (the crossed swords of jihad) The Islamic concept of Mu’akhat, or brothering reinforces the potential for misuse of the concept of brother in an antisocial way, as expressed by the malignant twinships that course through various terrorist attacks. The best-known example is the ‘brothering’ by Muḥammad of the Emigrants from Mecca with Muslims from Medina. This may have happened soon after he reached Medina, but is placed by Ibn Isḥāḳ just before the battle of Badr, accompanied by a list of thirteen such pairs (Ibn His̲ h̲ ām). It is clear, however, from Ibn Ḥabīb (Muḥabbar) that there had previously been some ‘brothering’ at Mecca, and he gives a list of nine pairs. This is confirmed partly by Ibn Isḥāḳ.
We see the “brothering butchery” quite clearly in the pairing or twinning of jihadis. A good example of this pairing of jihadi “brothers” is the murderous attack on British drummer Lee Rigby by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, two radicalized Nigerian converts to Islam, which gives us a violent snapshot of such a gruesome twosome. Both were converts, both shared the same first name, and even the first part of their surnames. They worked in tandem and supported each other in perpetrating and acting out their violent thoughts and fantasies under the guise of jihad, hacking to death the 25-year-old Rigby in London’s Woolwich district on May 28, 2013. These “pretend brothers,” too, were influenced by global jihad.
From a self psychology viewpoint, Kohut’s malignant twinship expands an already embattled alter ego that violently engages the external world in order to bolster a fragile sense of self, experiencing a lack of empathy because the shame– honor culture creates conditions for a flawed maternal bond. Twinship facilitates the volcanic iceberg mentality.
[There are icebergs that contain a boiling volcano-like core cf. entry "The Volcanic Iceberg Mentality" in The Jihadi Dictionary. This mentality duped the Israelis into believing that Hamas had modified its destructive behavior.}
The Malignant Twinship Transference of Terror is my elaboration on Kohut’s concept of twinship transference after I noted its potential for malignancy in the context of jihadi brothering or twinning. Heinz Kohut, the founder of the theory of self psychology, described the need for twinship as a normal developmental state, but also as a defense operative in narcissistic personality disorders to maintain parasitic bonding for a defective sense of self. The theme of malignant twinning occurs repeatedly in jihad and helps us understand the gruesome behavior of terrorists.
Islamic groups create brothers left and right as in the Muslim Brotherhood. Synchronized suicide bombings are a hallmark of Al Qaeda, with the proxy suicide bomber “brothers” demonstrating how concrete and regressed the jihadi group behavior is. This twinship is a way of psychologically strengthening a fused and regressed group that works to perpetrate violence ― a kind of repetition compulsion from a failed attempt to work through trauma precisely because the traumatic experience has never been put into words.
Kohut also formulated the malignant twinship but did not relate it to political terrorism. There is no development or progression in a nefarious twinship because the internal psychological infrastructure of the jihadis is nonfunctional. Instead they become more flagrantly grandiose and omnipotent in their destruction. An added irony is that in this malignant twinship jihadi brothers use each other as mirroring and idealizing objects, which allows them to engage in murder‒suicide terrorist attacks. Since they have no empathy, the other has to be destroyed. That is why one person in the jihadi twinship often will be killed off by the other, as happened with the Al-Asiri brothers. Ibrahim Al-Asiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, used the as-yet undetectable liquid explosive he invented in a suppository bomb that he implanted in his own brother’s rectum. His brother Abdullah died, but the intended victim, Saudi Arabia’s chief of counterterrorism security, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, survived. Al-Asiri also created the underpants* bomb for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallib.
Obviously fixated on a perverse, sadomasochistic, erotic way to destroy the other’s body, Al-Asiri also created the love handles bomb. His sister noted that Al-Asiri became radicalized when listening to mujahedin tapes that came from Chechnya. The Tsarnaev brothers, who, too, were twinned and half Chechen, also listened to Chechen jihadi tapes and had “jihadi jackets” tailor made for themselves. The twin suicide bombings of the brothers Khalid and Brahim El Bakraoui in Brussels that occurred in March 2016 is yet another example. Not only can they not die alone in these instances, they even have to go to their deaths’ as if “holding their brother’s hand” like little toddlers.
The nefarious twinning of the jihadis serves several psychological defensive functions. It condones violence when acting in tandem. If someone else commits murder, then it is okay to murder also. This points out the cognitive deficit of imitative borderline behavior. In addition, twinship is a way of dealing with the jihadi’s infantile grandiosity and feelings of isolation and abandonment. It wards off loneliness and bolsters the desire to bond and feel needed. When going to their suicide bombing, the jihadi “twins” are not psychologically alone. Even before the rebirth fantasy of fusing with the mother in death, they have to be led down the path, psychologically holding the hand of either a brother or their handler. In fantasy they are never alone because they are terrified, a fact that we in our own profound terror don’t acknowledge or bother to analyze.
To conclude Mu’akhat, the malignant twinning amplifies why Sinwar and Deif are mentioned together. Their destructiveness has been predicated on this deep psychotic relationship. Only together could they have managed to commit mass murder, rape, hostage taking, mutilation of bodies of men, women, children and toddlers. In their distorted psychotic mind the “infidel” is to be annihilated which is a way to purge themselves of their toxic inferior feelings. By understanding this unique institutionalized concept in jihad, it helps to break the sadomasochistic bond which Sinwar and Deif have sought to create in order to hold the viewing public especially on social media captive as well through their perverse behavior.
The theme of underpants has resurfaced in the news today, i.e 11.12.23, with regard to the recent photos of Hamas surrendering and having to strip to their underwear. Its sadomasochism has aroused this debate though many are oblivious to this deeper level of communication. cf. https://www.timesofisrael.com/images-of-stripped-and-bound-gazans-prompt-concern-over-idfs-arrest-tactics/ Israel does not seek to humiliate. Yet the sadomasochism of jihad should not be underestimated. cf. my essay entitled Sadomasochism and the Jihadi Death Cult published at Tablet, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/sadomasochism-islamist-death-cult
