1 Presented at "Genocide and Terrorism: Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator," Yale Center for Genocide Studies, New Haven, April 9, 2003. Al-Qaeda’s Doomsday Document and Psychological Manipulation Juan Cole In this paper I present a fresh reading and analysis of the first part of the so-called “Doomsday Document,” found in the luggage of September 11 hijacker Muhammad Atta. It follows on two other close readings, offered by Hassan Mneimeh and Kanaan Makiya, and by Bruce Lincoln. My question here is slightly different from the ones they asked of the document. I am asking here how the hijackers misused various techniques of Islamic spirituality to achieve a psychological state of mind in which it was possible for them to commit mass murder and their own suicides. On reflection, then, it seems to me that the text was probably authored by Muhammad Atta himself, the only Egyptian on the hijacking team. Another possibility is that the document was pulled together from instructions by more than one person, some of them not native Arabic speakers, and not carefully edited by an Arab with a good style. It is worth noting that I have been wrestling with this text since the FBI released it, but have found working with it to be extremely difficult on an emotional level. Like most Americans, I was traumatized by September 11 and by the enormity of the crime against humanity then perpetrated. As a friend of Muslims and an admirer of Islam as a religion, I also had great difficulty coming to terms with the was in which such an act could have come out of even a fringe cult within Islam. On a first reading, I had been struck by what seemed to me Sufi emphases, coming out of Islamic mysticism. I suspected a South Asian or Afghan influence on the Arab jihadis gathered in southern Afghanistan. But I have concluded that the text exhibits not so much Sufism as simple common Islamic spirituality, if put to monstrous uses. Even the Muslim Brotherhood strain of Islamic fundamentalism did not explicitly reject Sufi figures such as al-Ghazali, and there was a Sufi tinge to some Brotherhood texts and practices. This would have carried over to the radical splinter groups, al-Jihad al-Islami and al-Gama`a al-Islamiyyah, and Atta almost certainly was affiliated with one or the other of these. Only four of the five Arabic texts have been released by the FBI, with the first page unavailable. Page 2, the first of the released pages, contains 15 instructions aimed at preparing the hijackers psychologically for their action on the night before they were to carry it out. The second page begins with a hadith or saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, “One of the companions said, “The messenger of God commanded that it be read before a raid, so we have read it, and have gained booty, and remained safe and sound.” The prophetic saying or hadith refers to several elements important to this letter, including the idea that conducting raids against the enemy is Koranically sanctioned (even though the enemy that concerned the Koran was the pagan Meccans, not US Christians and Jews). It ties success and safety in this enterprise to reading or reciting holy verses. Recitation is thus essential to establishing the set of mind and the spiritual conditions conducive to success. Although the saying refers to gaining