Religiously motivated terrorism and psychological imbalance are not mutually exclusive. Viewing the tragedy in the Lindt Café as a 'one-off' by a 'maddy' is dangerous wishful thinking, writes Rachael Kohn.

The hostage taking in the Lindt Café in Martin Place, Sydney, which resulted in three dead - two innocent victims and the perpetrator - has prompted observations that the lone gunman should be viewed as mad rather than bad.

It is a situation that reminds me of an earlier one that I knew at close range.

When the world was reeling from the cult menace, roughly from the 1970s through to the 90s (including People's Temple, Solar Temple, and Aum Shinri Kyo), which resulted in the deaths of innocent people through neglect, murder and forced mass suicide on several occasions, as well as the suffering of thousands of followers through extortion, incarceration, sexual abuse of minors, and so forth, the commentators were divided.

Some were keen to find psychological explanations for both the leaders and their followers, as if it would somehow help to clarify a situation that was too hot to handle. That is, regardless of how calculated were the methods of punitive control and extortion exercised by the leaders and their cabals of loyal minions, being harshly critical of the groups in question could earn you the reputation as religiously intolerant or bigoted, strange as that may sound.

Yet to those who knew that inside various cult premises some very disturbing practices were the norm (some of which is coming out again in the current proceedings of the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry into Sexual Abuse in Institutions), the psychological explanations were secondary if not irrelevant to the main issue of crimes wilfully and repeatedly committed under the cover of religion.

Delusional megalomania or religiously justified predation, the results were the same, the harm of followers.

And so today we are finding the commentary on the self-styled 'Sheikh Haron' divided. Some are keen to avoid the label of a consciously Islamist terrorist and instead prefer an explanation couched in psychological interpretation, i.e. that he was an imbalanced 'lone wolf'.

There are two things wrong or inadequate about that explanation. One is the assumption that religiously motivated terrorism and psychological imbalance are mutually exclusive. They are not.

Any cursory review of the lives of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot reveals a strong brew of both psychological mania wedded to ideological motivation. Which comes first is irrelevant, because in most cases they feed off each other. Undoubtedly, it is the reason why some suicide bombers are given mind-altering drugs to carry out the dirty deed, which they might otherwise find too repugnant or too frightening.

Secondly, the idea that the 'lone wolf' is not associated with terrorism is a misunderstanding of how Islamist jihad has morphed today into a war on two fronts: overseas insurgencies that target everyone who is not a certain brand of Islam, and on the other hand, a sophisticated internet presence that incites anyone in the West (or dar al harb, the land of infidels) to carry out single acts of destruction.

The 'lone wolf' is no longer acting entirely on his own, but is linked voluntarily to a worldwide internet phenomenon, which today includes the demand for establishing a caliphate against the so-called 'demonic Zionist Crusader West'. These individuals, lone may they be, are nonetheless part of an imagined 'community of Allah or dar al Islam'.

The big worry today is how much the legitimate media unwittingly feeds the fire of terrorism. In the past, the power hungry cult leader was often described in the sociological literature as a charismatic figure, who had a rare gift of conjuring a mesmerizing allure due to his or her personal qualities and strategic ploys.

Now, however, both the professional media and social media have turned previous nobodies into rock stars overnight, and none more obviously than the ginger haired jihadi, the Australian teenager who joined ISIS and goes under the name Abu Khaled Australia. Seeing how readily clips from his self-made video were screened world-wide has made it an obvious route for disaffected youth yearning for instant stardom.

Sheikh Haron was from an older generation, but an attention seeker nonetheless. From the moment he chained himself to the New South Wales Parliament fence back in 2001, through to his YouTube video recruiting jihadis and infamous threatening letters to public figures from the Prime Minister to myself, he was typical of a man on a mission. It required a certain amount of mania to keep him on it for all those years, but he finally got round-the-clock coverage in his final 24 hours.

Perhaps if mad was also seen as bad, he would have been stopped in his tracks well before it all came to a hideous end. Viewing the tragedy in the Lindt Café as a 'one off' by a 'maddy' is not only wishful thinking, it is also ignorant of the many cases that the police and intelligence services have already foiled. It is a terrible pity that the 'fake Sheikh' was not on their watch list, perhaps too mad to be taken seriously.

Rachael Kohn is a senior ABC religion producer who has worked across programs including The Religion Report, Religion Today and The Spirit of Things. View her full profile here.