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Does Islam
Have a Role in Suicide Bombings?
by A.J. Caschetta
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2015 (view PDF)
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Following
the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini built a culture
of martyrdom and suicide attacks. On October 30, 1980, Mohammed Hossein
Fahmideh, a 13-year-old boy, allegedly crawled beneath an Iraqi tank and
exploded a grenade. Khomeini had a special monument dedicated to
Fahmideh, shown above, intended to appeal to children, and thousands of
children were conscripted as suicide bombers.
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When journalists, historians, psychologists, and experts in group dynamics,
organizational structures, and criminal justice write about the unique set
of circumstances that lead to suicide terrorism, they share the view that
Islam has little to do with it. Most analysts either downplay or ignore
altogether the role of Islam in suicide terrorism while some attempt to
refute the connection and condemn others for not doing so.
This reluctance to countenance the role of Islam and Islamism in suicide
terrorism has led to some fantastical and far-fetched theories that blur
the nature of the deed with euphemisms and neologisms ("tactical
martyrdom,"[1]
"sordid pleasure,"[2]
"altruistic murder") and blame the victims, especially Israelis,
for their unhappy fate. And far too often, the causes of suicide terrorism
are said to be the policies of the West.
The Islamic
Context
Suicide terrorism has become so commonplace that it is easy to overlook
how relatively new and suddenly popular the phenomenon is. Between the end
of World War II and the Iranian revolution, there were no suicide attacks
in the world. Yet only months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini solidified
power and formed the Pasdaran and Basij, suicide attacks began to appear in
conflicts involving Shiites (Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war) and then took root
among Palestinian Sunni groups.[3]
It eventually became the preferred tactic of Islamist terror organizations.
Khomeini selected specific passages from the Qur'an and hadith
(canonical collections of Muhammad's alleged sayings and actions) to craft
his suicidal version of radical Islam. His two-part rhetorical plan
necessitated convincing Muslims that suicide is not suicide and that death
is not death. Capitalizing on—or perhaps fabricating—the case of Hossein
Fahmideh, a 13-year-old boy who on October 30, 1980, allegedly crawled
beneath an Iraqi tank and exploded a grenade, Khomeini built a culture of
martyrdom. Thousands of children were conscripted for his new invention—the
"human wave attack"—and spread the tactic of suicide bombing.
Khomeini had a special monument dedicated to Famideh, intended to appeal to
children. He then used Famideh's image on book bags, murals, posters, and
stamps to inspire children to follow him and drink "the nectar of
martyrdom."[4]
The tactic spread quickly to Lebanon where the Iraqi embassy was struck on
December 15, 1981, in what is generally considered the first documented
suicide attack of the modern era. As terrorism expert Matthew Levitt points
out, Iran's influence was greatly increased in 1982 when "1,500 IRGC
[Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] advisers set up a base in the Bekaa
Valley as part of its goal to export the Islamic revolution to the Arab
world."[5] Then in
1983, U.S. interests were subjected to suicide terrorism for the first time
when the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed in April, killing sixty-three.
Later, on October 23, 1983, the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut were bombed
with a loss of 299 lives.
Khomeini and fellow radical Shiite cleric, Amal's Musa Sadr, framed the
Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) as a modern incarnation of the Battle of Karbala,
portraying the Iranian people as Muhammad's grandson and Shiite martyr
Hussein ibn Ali and Saddam Hussein as his nemesis Caliph Yazid. They
understood that Shiite veneration for the self-sacrifice of Hussein's
followers, who died willingly along with their leader, could be leveraged.
Khomeini also relied on passages from the Qur'an extolling the virtue of
"one who sells himself to seek the pleasure of Allah."[6] Yet most authors of books on
suicide terrorism ignore how Khomeini and Sadr carefully manipulated
Islamic tradition, preferring the simple and uncritical assertion that
Islam prohibits suicide.
Accepting the cliché that "Islam prohibits suicide" is much
easier than explaining exactly where or how Islamic tradition makes suicide
prohibited (haram). It is certainly the popular view, authorized by
the Islamic Supreme Council,[7]
the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR),[8] and Wikipedia.[9] On the rare occasions that
Islamic texts are examined, few authors delve into the hadiths, but some
cite the Qur'an. The cited passage is always sura 4:29, which they claim
means "do not kill yourself."
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Current
head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has become the leading theoretician
of suicide terrorism, blurring the line between suicide and martyrdom.
Zawahiri differentiates the two on the basis of intention: Ending one's
life "out of depression and despair" is suicide, but ending
one's life "to service Islam" is martyrdom.
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Yet the issue is far from settled. At best, one might argue that sura
4:29 appears to contain a prohibition against self-slaughter. This view
hinges on the word anfusakum, most often translated as
"oneself" or "yourself" while an equally convincing
argument can be made that it be translated as "others like one."
An examination of the three most common English translations of the Qur'an,
those of Ahmed Raza Khan, Marmaduke Pickthal, and Yusef Ali, alerts readers
to potential discrepancies.[10]
The phrase in question from 4:29 is the imperative wa-la taqtulu
anfusakum: Khan's translation reads, "do not kill one
another," Pickthal's reads, "kill not one another," and
Ali's reads, "Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves."[11]
As long ago as 1946, Arabic scholar Franz Rosenthal concluded that
"there is no absolutely certain evidence to indicate that Muhammad
ever discussed the problem of suicide by means of divine revelation."[12] He argued that the oft-cited
Qur'anic prohibition against suicide in 4:29 is in fact a mistranslation
resulting from a misapplication of the reflexive pronoun. His 1946-era list
of "available translations" of the Qur'an includes eight that treat
4:29 as a prohibition against suicide, five as a prohibition against
killing fellow Muslims, and seven that point out the ambiguity through
notes or double translations.
The claim that "Islam prohibits
suicide" appears in one form or another in the work of many
analysts.
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Nevertheless, the claim that "Islam prohibits suicide" appears
in one form or another in the work of analysts Christoph Reuter, Mia Bloom,
Barbara Victor, Robert Pape, Adam Lankford, Rosemarie Skaine, Diego
Gambetta, Stephen Holmes, Luca Ricolfi, Mohammed M. Hafez, Joyce M. Davis,
Ariel Merari, and more.[13]
To demonstrate how deeply-rooted the belief has become, three cases deserve
special attention. First, when Bruce Hoffman's venerable Inside
Terrorism was revised and expanded in 2006, a new chapter on suicide
terrorism was included. It begins with the recognition that in "no
area of contemporary terrorism has religion had a greater impact than in
propelling the vast increase of suicide attacks that have occurred since
9/11" but also includes the sentence: "The Qu'ran, however,
expressly forbids suicide."[14]
Second, Assaf Moghadam's The Globalization of Martyrdom is perhaps
the best book on the topic, its very title proclaiming the connection
between suicide bombing and religion. And yet among nearly 300 pages of
unflinching analysis of the Islamic components to suicide terrorism is the
assertion that "Islam prohibits the taking of one's own life."[15] And finally, even Daniel Pipes,
in a 1986 article that posited state support as the most immediate cause of
the then-new phenomenon, wrote that "suicide is strictly forbidden in
Islam"—though his claim is qualified by "A Qur'anic verse, 'Do
not kill yourselves' (4:29) is commonly understood to condemn
suicide."[16]
Not Hoffman, Moghadam, or Pipes sought to disconnect Islam from suicide
bombing, yet each repeated the claim.
More recently, the Egyptian born physician and current head of al-Qaeda,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, has become the leading theoretician of suicide terrorism
by rhetorically blurring the line between suicide and martyrdom. In essays
such as "Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents," among
others, Zawahiri differentiates the two on the basis of intention: Ending
one's life "out of depression and despair" is suicide, but ending
one's life "to service Islam" is martyrdom.[17] Ideologues from Hezbollah
(Fadhalla, Nasrallah) and Hamas (Yassin, Rantisi) have argued along similar
lines.[18]
For the second part of Khomeini's plan—convincing Muslims that death is
not death—the Qur'an proved very helpful. Along with the oft-cited verses
of the sword, there are a number of Qur'anic passages wielded as staples by
suicide-terror recruiters. Several excoriate those who believe Muslims
killed while fighting the enemy are actually dead: Both 2:154 and 3:169
claim "those who are slain in the way of Allah ... are alive" and
are provided "sustenance." Other passages elaborate on this
promise, such as 4:74 and 9:111 where, depending on the translator, the
reward is named "Paradise" or "the Garden." And various
hadiths elaborate even further. As Zawahiri puts it:
The Martyr is special to Allah. He is
forgiven from the first drop of blood [that he sheds]. He sees his throne
in Paradise where he will be adorned with the ornaments of faith. He will
wed the Aynhour [wide-eyed virgins] and will not know the torments
of the grave ... And he will couple with seventy-two Aynhour and be
able to offer intercessions for seventy of his relatives.[19]
The number of analysts who simply dismiss the Islamic concept of shahada
(martyrdom) is distressing. Some, like Joyce M. Davis, are so invested in
the notion that Islam prohibits suicide that they are led to
unsubstantiated and simplistic solutions, such as the conclusion that the
9/11 hijackers were "terrorists distorting their religion's true
teachings ... not martyrs."[20]
These "true teachings" are often proclaimed but seldom produced,
and each of the nineteen terrorists saw himself as a martyr.
Each of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists
saw himself as a martyr.
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On par with Davis's shallow handling of martyrdom is the evasive
treatment characteristic of recently-deceased Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad
El-Sarraj.[21] In
an interview about Umm Nidal, a woman who would ultimately see three of her
sons become suicide bombers,[22]
Sarraj explained that any grief she felt at the deaths of her sons was
short-lived and "supported by the cultural belief that whoever dies as
a martyr is not really dead."[23]
Sarraj is partially correct in identifying the cultural component of
Palestinian suicide terror, but he refuses to acknowledge the Qur'anic
origins of that culture.
Providing examples of suicide in
pre-Islamic cultures seems a publishing house prerequisite for books on
the topic.
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Analysts who disregard the ways that Islamic tradition is used to
recruit, promote, justify, extol, and mythologize self-immolation as martyrdom
must close their minds to mountains of evidence in order to conclude that
the 9/11 terrorists' "deviations from reason were not necessarily the
result of their religious beliefs"[24] and that "mainstream
interpretations of Islamic texts do not support"[25] their actions. When they mention
Islam, they do so in a guarded, often euphemized way: "the belief in
some kind of afterlife may attenuate the psychological costs of
commitment."[26]
Reasonable analyses of the reverence for martyrdom in Islam are tempered by
admonitions that "secular groups can resort to these attacks,
too."[27] With
blinders on, many assert that nearly anything can cause suicide
terrorism—except Islam. The will to equivocate is so strong that it
prompted Navid Kermani to advise those looking to understand the 9/11
attacks to ignore the Qur'an and blame Nietzsche[28] and Scott Atran to argue that
"Islam and religious ideology per se aren't the principal cause of
suicide bombing and terror in today's world—at least no more than are
soccer, friendship, or faith for a better future."[29]
Distorting the
Numbers
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Since
Yasser Arafat was imagined by most as the opposite of Hamas and
Hezbollah, and therefore secular, any group associated with him,
including al- Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, is generally treated as a secular
group. However, the brigade is hardly secular: The group's logo contains
a Qur'anic passage urging Muslims to fight against God's enemies as well
as a representation of al-Aqsa mosque.
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One popular method of demoting Islamism to a secondary or even
irrelevant factor in suicide terrorism is to point to non-Islamic suicide
killers as evidence to disconnect Islam from suicide terrorism. Providing
examples of suicide in pre-modern and pre-Islamic cultures (such as the
Jewish Zealots and Hindu Thugs) seems a publishing house prerequisite for
books on the topic. Even the thirteenth-century Muslim Assassins are
generally presented as an "offshoot" of Islam and, therefore, not
genuinely Islamic, certainly not as Shiites killing Sunnis in an
internecine sectarian battle.
The boldest of these numerical distorters is Robert A. Pape, who leads
the charge with his own personal brand of statistical pettifogging. Seeking
to portray a cultural and religious diversity where none currently exists,
Pape writes in Dying to Win that "the presumed connection
between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading"
because "the data show that there is little connection between suicide
terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism."[30]
In a study of suicide terrorism,
Kamikaze pilots are irrelevant: They targeted military vessels of a
declared enemy during wartime.
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Pape's numbers add up only through dubious choices that becloud any
claim to statistical relevance. For example, including nearly four thousand
Japanese Kamikaze pilots in the pool of data provides a strong numerical
push in favor of Pape's argument. But in a study of suicide terrorism,
Kamikaze pilots are irrelevant: They represented a nation state, flew
airplanes clearly marked with the Rising Sun, and targeted military vessels
of a declared enemy during wartime. Likewise, those who served in the
so-called "Sapper Units" of the Viet Minh and Viet Cong campaigns
against French and U.S. troops were high-risk insurgents who carried their
bombs in satchels and detonated them at close range while attempting,
sometimes unsuccessfully, to escape the blast. Since their deaths were not
requisite for success of the mission, they do not qualify as true suicide
terrorists.[31]
Another group that is included to dilute the numerical evidence of
Islam's dominance of suicide terrorism is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelan (LTTE). Its elite sub-group, the Black Tigers and Black Tigresses
(the female suicide squadron), engaged in suicide bombing in a decades-long
uprising against the state of Sri Lanka and its Sinhalese Buddhist
population. Because LTTE members are mostly Hindus, their hundreds of
suicide attacks are often cited to disconnect suicide terrorism from Islam.
Stephen Hopgood takes the largest leap, observing that since religion
cannot explain suicide terror among Tamils, it "means that no
religion, let alone a specific one like Islam, is a necessary part of
explanations for SMs [suicide missions]."[32] But a fuller picture is revealed
by the LTTE's contact with Islamist groups, including translation of their
manuals into Tamil,[33]
and by the fact that the LTTE did not engage in suicide terrorism prior to
its contact with Hezbollah.[34]
Secular-Religious-Cultic
Another way to divert attention from Islam is to label some groups that
participate in suicide terrorism as secular and to accept the view that
secular groups employ suicide terrorism. Mia Bloom declares, "It is a
mistake to assume that only religious groups use suicide terror. Many of
the groups engaged in equivalently lethal campaigns are decidedly
secular."[35]
Unfortunately, most authors present "religious" and
"secular" as binary opposites and as the only two options for
terrorist ideology. Yet the secular status is misleading. Since Yasser
Arafat is imagined by most as the opposite of Hamas and Hezbollah, and therefore
secular, any group associated with him (Fatah/Palestine Liberation
Organization [PLO], Tanzim, Force 17, even the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades)
is generally treated as a secular group. In fact, Arafat was a devout
Muslim, associated in his early days with the Muslim Brotherhood, as were
other founding fathers of Fatah, the PLO's foremost constituent
organization. And while the new generation of Fatah leaders in the
territories may be less religious, they, nevertheless, have a draft
constitution for a prospective Palestinian state stipulating that
"Islam is the official religion in Palestine" and Shari'a
(Islamic law) is "a main source for legislation."[36] Nor is there anything secular
about al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades; the group's logo even contains a Qur'anic
passage (9:14) urging Muslims to fight against God's enemies. Of the three
parts of the group's name, only "Brigade" is not a religious
term, and considering that the noun "brigade" is modified by
"al-Aqsa" and "martyrs" there is nothing secular
whatsoever about the name. Yet remarkably, it is the norm to read,
"The group's ideology is based in Palestinian nationalism, not in
political Islam."[37]
Likewise, Human Rights Watch considers the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP) a secular group because the organization "calls
for a Palestinian state encompassing Israel, though not an Islamist
one."[38] It
may be that when George Habash formed the group in 1968, spouting Marxist
rhetoric, it was genuinely a secular terrorist group. However, when the
PFLP decided to carry out suicide bombings, recruited and dispatched
killers for its newly renamed Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and then extolled
them as Islamic martyrs killing Jews in "occupied Jerusalem" in
the name of Islam, it forfeited any claim to secularism.[39]
PKK commanders claimed that those
who killed themselves in attacks were martyrs who would go to paradise.
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Like the Tigers of Tamil, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is also
frequently offered as evidence of non-Islamic, secular suicide terrorism.
The PKK committed a total of fourteen suicide attacks (a fraction of the
LTTE's hundreds[40])
and is not generally cited for its statistical value in offsetting Islamic
suicide bombers with non-Islamic ones. Rather its Marxist rhetoric is used
as evidence of its secularism even though the group's commanders lauded its
suicide terrorist squad as fedayeen and claimed that those who killed
themselves in attacks were martyrs who would go to paradise.[41]
But the LTTE and the PKK are still relevant to the discussion, and aside
from their direct contact with Islamic terrorist groups,[42] share interesting and overlooked
similarities to the Islamic terrorist organizations that dominate today's
suicide terrorism. Both groups functioned like cults, dependent on an
all-encompassing fanaticism and strident obedience to a central
all-important figure: Vellupillai Prabhakaran of the LTTE and Abdullah
Öcalan of the PKK. As Israeli scholar Ami Pedahzur pointed out in Suicide
Terrorism, both the LTTE and the PKK were "headed by charismatic
leaders who were responsible for the sect-like features of their
organizations," each of whom "served as the principal source of
inspiration for the suicides" and was personally "responsible for
adopting the idea of suicide attacks ... [and] devising strategic guidelines
for activating bombers."[43]
When Öcalan was captured and called for an end to PKK terrorism, it
stopped, though some despondent PKK members subsequently committed
conventional suicide, killing only themselves.[44] After 1981, Prabhakaran required
all LTTE members to carry cyanide capsules in order to commit suicide in
the event of their capture[45]
and was frequently photographed with his own capsule suspended around his
neck.[46] He
was killed in 2009, and the LTTE effectively ceased to exist. While many
use this evidence to refute connections between Islam and suicide
terrorism, the same evidence suggests that Islamists display cult-like
behavior. What Peter Olsson calls "malignant Pied Pipers"—those
whose "rigid fundamentalist mentality requires everyone to think and
believe exactly as they do, or die"[47]—fit the Islamist mindset. As
Daniel Pipes puts it, this mindset supports the view that "whatever
your question, private or public, Islam offers the answer."[48]
Millenarianism, utopian ideals, and
eschatological narratives are important aspects of both cults and
Islamism.
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Perhaps radical Islam is best conceived of as a cult. This would explain
the commonality among all suicide terrorists and most suicide cults:
coercion, cultural approval, and the belief that suicide is not the end but
the beginning. Millenarianism, utopian ideals, and eschatological
narratives are important aspects of both cults and Islamism. Only instead
of merely killing themselves (like those in the Jonestown, Heaven's Gate,
and Falun Gong cults), Islamists have found a way to weaponize their deaths
to serve the cause of their leaders: Khomeini, Öcalan, Yassin, bin Laden.
The Sanity
Question
Most psychological approaches to suicide terrorism focus on the suicidal
component and ignore the terrorism and Islamism. Even Adam Lankford, whose
revisionist book The Myth of Martyrdom sets out to demolish the view
that suicide bombers are essentially normal people, free of the
"personal pathologies and psycho-logical disorders"[49] that motivate most suicide
attempts, downplays the role of religion in suicide terrorism. Lankford, a
criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama, battles against
the myopia of many analysts (Scott Atran, Robert Pape, James Feldman, Riaz
Hassan, Robert Brym, Mohammed Hafez, Ellen Townsend, Larry Pastor, and
Jerrold Post), all of whom have argued that suicide terrorists "have
no appreciable psychopathology"[50] and are "much like ordinary
soldiers with a strong sense of duty and a willingness to sacrifice for the
common good."[51]
These terrorists are "psychologically normal,"[52] "psychologically
stable,"[53]
and "not significantly different from other rebels or soldiers ...
willing to engage in high-risk activism."[54] These analysts claim that
suicide terrorists are "not truly suicidal,"[55] "qualitatively similar to
countless people throughout history who have given their life for a higher
cause,"[56]
and "normal."[57]
Palestinian psychiatrist Sarraj takes it a step further and claims that
suicide terrorism is so far from a psychological aberration that "the
amazing thing is not the occurrence of the suicide bombings but rather the
rarity of them."[58]
Some analysts claim that suicide
terrorists are "similar to countless people throughout history who
have given their life for a higher cause."
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But in arguing that suicide terrorists are suicidal people exploited and
motivated by organizations that train and equip them, Lankford's own myopia
betrays him. In analyzing a Muslim suicide bomber or attempted bomber, he
asserts that "Islamic fundamentalism became the vehicle for his anger
and suicidal impulses"[59]
but that "even if he had never stumbled across that path, it was only
a matter of time before he killed himself or harmed others."[60] Lankford also seems to
misunderstand the role of suicide terrorism in the asymmetrical warfare
carried out by these organizations, at one point insisting that the suicide
bomber's death "does not increase the likelihood of success nor the
expected magnitude of destruction."[61] This is clearly wrong:
Individual bombers perform the role of precision guidance at a cost far
lower than other "smart" weapons. Lankford's argument rests with
the assertion that "the terrorists' broader cause is potentially harmed
by the death of these attackers because they cannot return to fight another
day."[62] This
misses the point. No organizational leaders, recruiters, or dispatchers see
suicide bombers as precious resources to be conserved. Rather they are
cheap weapons to be wielded brazenly, whose deaths confer a degree of
operational impunity to the organization.
The Socio-Technological
Approach
One sub-field of analysis considers the effects of technology on the
social groups from which suicide bombers emerge. This is often stretched to
the point where technology and social groups are said to cause suicide
terrorism rather than facilitate it. Mia Bloom's Dying to Kill
analyzes how terrorist organizations recruit, train, and dispatch suicide
killers. Bloom is the originator of the theory of "competitive
outbidding," which explains the sudden appearance and proliferation of
suicide terrorism by claiming that terrorist organizations emulate and
compete with each other and try to out-perform one another. In her view,
when "multiple insurgent groups are competing for public support,
bombings will intensify in both scope and number as they become both the
litmus test of militancy and the way to mobilize greater numbers of people
within their community."[63]
Bloom's theory is interesting but can only be true when the multiple
insurgent groups compete among a population already predisposed to the idea
of martyrdom. The first true suicide bombing on record occurred on March 1,
1881, when Ignaty Grinevitsky of the Narodnaya Volya attempted the
assassination of Czar Alexander II. Subsequently, the Narodnaya Volya had
only limited success with the new tactic, mainly because of its genuine
secularism. Worldly renown, the appreciation of one's peers, and the
satisfaction of completing a job are apparently not sufficient to compel
most people to kill themselves. Only the promise of eternal rewards in
paradise has successfully motivated people en masse to kill themselves in
order to kill others. Bloom's theory underestimates the significance of
this predisposition. Today's terror groups do not create the circumstances that
enable suicide terror but take advantage of circumstances created by
Islamism.
Only the promise of eternal rewards
in paradise has motivated people en masse to kill themselves in order to
kill others.
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Jeffrey William Lewis' The Business of Martyrdom also focuses on
social and technological aspects and approaches suicide terrorism as
"a dynamic process that takes on some of the characteristics of the
cultures employing it yet also has some common elements observable across
societies."[64]
But, like Bloom, Lewis often assigns primary motivational status to
secondary forces as when he claims the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine turned to suicide attacks in 2002, "likely motivated by a
desire to avenge the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa ... killed by Israeli
forces in 2001."[65]
Revenge is a common human tendency. Suicide terror is not. Lewis can barely
bring himself to acknowledge "posthumous rewards were undoubtedly an
important factor for religiously motivated recruits."[66] His conclusion that "the
global jihadi movement has remained marginal because it offers nothing of
substance to the majority of the world's Muslims"[67] is disproved every day by
residents of Raqqa and Mosul as they join the movement in order to navigate
ISIS repression, preferring to become aggressors rather than victims. The
same pattern occurred with the citizens of the Sunni Triangle when ISIS's
predecessor and quasi-founder Abu Musab Zarqawi was their tormentor a
decade ago and to the citizens of Khandahar and Kabul in the mid-1990s
under the Taliban.
"The
Occupation Made Me Do It"
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Many
claim that foreign occupation causes suicide bombing worldwide. But no
French or Dutch suicide bombers targeted Nazi occupiers in the early
1940s. The Irish Republican Army's Bobby Sands (above) starved to death
during a hunger strike, but the group never adopted suicide bombing as a
tactic against British occupiers. No Palestinian suicide bombers targeted
Egyptian and Trans-Jordanian occupiers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank
from 1948 until 1967.
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Attempting to disconnect modern-day suicide terrorism from its Islamic
context, many authors shift the focus from Islamist perpetrators of suicide
terrorism to their victims. In most cases, this means Israel. Given the fact
that Israelis have been targeted by suicide bombing more than any other
Western people and considering the popularity of anti-Zionism (often just a
"safe" form of anti-Semitism), it should come as no surprise that
the mere existence of the State of Israel is often portrayed as the chief
root cause of suicide terrorism.
The usual narrative begins with the Oslo accords, when, as Jeffrey Lewis
puts it, Arafat "recognized Israel and renounced terrorism"[68] while the "majority of
Palestinians at the time were supportive of the peace process."[69] Then Jerusalem stalled and
slowed the turnover of land, angering the Palestinians who turned to
suicide terror as revenge for unfulfilled promises. As terrorism against
Israelis increased
dramatically from pre-Oslo sniper fire and knife attacks to post-Oslo
suicide bombings, the Israeli government fought back and eventually
restricted movement from newly autonomous Palestinian Authority-governed
areas into Israel. The argument that Israeli checkpoints humiliate
Palestinians to such an extent that they become suicide bombers in
retaliation is common. Shalfic Masalqa, a psychologist and a Hebrew
University professor, boldly states that when "an adolescent boy is
humiliated at an Israeli checkpoint, from that moment on, a suicide bomber
is created."[70]
Robert Pape claims that foreign occupation causes suicide bombing
worldwide, and "what mainly motivates individuals to become suicide terrorists
is not the existence of a terrorist sanctuary for indoctrination and
training, but deep anger at the presence of foreign combat forces on
territory they prize."[71]
No Palestinian suicide bombers
targeted Israelis from 1967 until the Oslo accords ended most Israeli
control.
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History does not concur. No French or Dutch suicide bombers targeted
Nazi occupiers in the early 1940s. The Irish Republican Army's Bobby Sands
and nine others starved to death during a hunger strike in the Maze prison
in Northern Ireland, but the group never adopted suicide bombing as a
tactic against British occupiers. No Palestinian suicide bombers targeted
Egyptian and Trans-Jordanian occupiers in the Gaza strip and West Bank from
1948 until 1967. And no Palestinian suicide bombers targeted Israelis from
1967 until the Oslo accords ended most Israeli control. Pape's thesis
cannot solve this dilemma, and his reductionist assertion that
"occupation causes suicide bombing" conflates opportunity with
cause.
Among the various victim-blaming explanations for suicide terrorism, one
idea stands apart, the so-called retaliatory explanation, which Bloom
describes as a "school of thought [which] traces Palestinian suicide
bombings to Israeli provocations beginning with the Hebron massacre by
Baruch Goldstein in 1994."[72]
The most prominent devotee of this canard is perhaps Islamist apologist
John Esposito of Georgetown University, who describes the facts of the
massacre and then writes: "In response, Hamas [Islamic Resistance
Movement] introduced a new type of warfare in the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, suicide bombing."[73]
Esposito's fable runs into problems with the eight Palestinian suicide attacks
against Israelis in 1993 before Goldstein's assault. The first was a Hamas
attack on April 16, 1993. It was followed by three attacks in September
1993: one by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and two by Hamas. Both PIJ and
Hamas carried out suicide attacks on October 4 and November 2.[74] There was no cause and effect,
but sadly the lie is found in many places, including important textbooks on
the subject.[75]
The Term
"Occupied Territories"
After the 1948 Israeli war of independence, the lands that were called
Palestine were indeed occupied, but by Egypt in Gaza and the Hashemite
Kingdom of Trans-Jordan in the West Bank. Analysts who refer to these lands
as "occupied" today have a responsibility to stipulate that the
occupiers were not Israelis until after the Six-Day War in 1967. Until the
first intifada in 1987, it was a notably calm period in the lives of both
Palestinians and Israelis.
As Mohammed Hafez admits, after the Oslo accords, "the majority of
Palestinians in the territories were living under full PA
administration."[76]
Therefore, the term "occupied territory" no longer applies. Even
the Hamas members meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 acknowledged that Oslo
put an end to their jihad against Israel and thus threatened the continued
existence of Hamas. The FBI's tapes of that meeting reveal one Hamas member
bemoaning, "There is no occupation now ... this will be classified as
terrorism in America."[77]
Yet analysts (Hafez included) and journalists especially continue to misuse
and overuse the term. In an echo of a frequent bin Laden trope, Pape goes
so far as to invent something called "indirect occupation" to
claim, as he does repeatedly, that the fifteen Saudi 9/11 terrorists
"attacked America in response to U.S. military presence on the Arabian
Peninsula."[78]
The most absurd use of the term, showing how meaningless it has become
through thoughtless repetition and semantic contortion, comes in journalist
Barbara Victor's Army of Roses. Victor writes of the "ray of
hope" she felt in Hanan Ashrawi's 2002 call for an end to suicide
bombings, only to concede that it was "distressing" because
Ashrawi did not object to the ethics of suicide terror but rather feared
that it "provided the Israelis an excuse to reoccupy the occupied
territories."[79]
The territories were either occupied or they were not occupied. Victor is
so accustomed to referring to Gaza and the West Bank as occupied
territories, she apparently cannot conceive of them in any other way.
The ultimate "blame the victim" calumny comes in the form of
Zeev Ma'oz's conspiracy theory accusing Jerusalem of behavior reminiscent
of that in the libels about Jews in medieval Europe. Bloom approvingly sums
up Ma'oz's theory and states that Jerusalem employs a "deliberate
baiting strategy to force a Palestinian reaction in response," which
gives it the excuse to employ "heavy handed tactics."[80] The Israelis, the theory
implies, do not truly want peace with the Palestinians. They only want to
destroy the Palestinians. But because of its treatment by the U.N. and EU
and the ever-present danger of boycotters, divesters, and sanctioners,
Jerusalem needs political cover to kill Palestinians, so it taunts and
slyly lays traps to conceal its murderous desires.
Israelis negotiate with people who
preach in now-sovereign territories that the people of Israel must be
pushed into the sea.
|
As Bloom puts it, "when Hamas has ostensibly shifted from targeting
civilians (albeit temporarily) or has made pronouncements of its intention
to do so (e.g., declaring a hudna or ceasefire), Israel's targeted
assassination of a Palestinian leader provided them the justification to
renew attacks against Israeli civilians," which is exactly what
Jerusalem wants. Bloom's qualifiers speak volumes ("ostensibly"
and "albeit temporary"). Her equation of hudna with
ceasefire ignores the Islamic context of hudna as a respite,
historically used to buy time until a ceasefire is no longer advantageous
at which time it is summarily and unceremoniously broken, as in Arafat's
numerous comparisons of the Oslo accords to the Treaty of the Hudaibiya.
Ma'oz's conspiracy slur ignores the giant leap of faith the Israeli
government took in the Oslo accords and continues to take by negotiating
with people who deny its right to exist and preach in now-sovereign
territories that the people of Israel must be pushed into the sea.
Female Suicide
Bombers
|
Samira
Jassam, al-Qaeda's preeminent recruiter of female Iraqi suicide bombers,
arranged for girls to be raped, then presented herself as their advisor
and confessor, leading them from the path of stained family honor. Jassam
worked with Sunni militants from the Ansar al-Sunna group and is alleged
to have recruited 80 women to act as bombers, 28 of whom went on to
launch attacks. She is also known as Um al-Mu'minin, "the mother of
the believers."
|
A lively debate rages over why women become suicide bombers. Some
authors acknowledge the motivational role of Islamism while simultaneously
denying it; admitting there are no rewards mentioned in the Qur'an for
female martyrs necessitates at least tacitly acknowledging those promised
to men. Barbara Victor[81]
and sociologist Rosemarie Skaine[82]
emphasize the importance of Palestinian nationalism and suggest that women
suicide bombers are an expression of Palestinian feminism. In Victor's
telling, suicide bombers are always "martyrs," and their
recruiters, dispatchers, and helpers are "activists." Her
portrayal of suicide terrorism posits that it is one of very few forms of
feminist expression allowed to women in Palestinian culture.
The title of Victor's book is taken from Arafat's January 27, 2002
speech in which he called for something unknown in the conflict at the
time, a shahida. This Arabic neologism is a feminization of the noun
shahid, literally "witness," but almost universally
translated as "martyr." Later that day, Wafa Idris became the
first (probably inadvertent) female suicide bomber. Most analysts now
believe that Idris was attempting to pass the bomb to her brother and that
it exploded prematurely. Victor writes as though the female Palestinian
suicide bombers (a half dozen successful and more failed) and their
families are heroic feminist figures, manipulated into waging war against a
patriarch that, after all, has it coming.
Terrorism expert Anat Berko punctures this myth, explaining,
"Superficially it might seem that female terrorists are feminists,
standard-bearers in the struggle," but "they will never achieve
equality."[83]
Yoram Schweitzer of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies goes
to considerable lengths to refute representations "of the female
Palestinian suicide terrorists as independent women with strong opinions
... who decided to take their fate into their hands with a feeling of
completeness and destiny."[84]
He shows how these women have been manipulated by their handlers, who make
opportunistic, post-hoc claims of their "special noble personal
qualities" and use newly-minted myths to motivate men into following
their steps. Mira Tzoreff of the Moshe Dayan Center also documents the
predatory methods used by Arafat's Tanzim whereby Palestinian girls and
young women are seduced, impregnated, threatened with exposure, and then
offered a means of escape through their own "martyrdom."[85] Former CIA officer Robert Baer
refers to this as an opportunity to "wash away dishonor"[86] brought on by perceived sins.
The most grisly version of this tactic is surely Samira Jassam, al-Qaeda's
preeminent recruiter of female Iraqi suicide bombers, who arranged for
girls to be raped, then presented herself as their advisor and confessor,[87] leading them from the path of
stained family honor to what Tzoreff calls "a cloak of authentic
Islamic feminism."[88]
Ignoring One's
Own Evidence
Another odd tendency among analysts of suicide terrorism is the
exploration of Islamist components of martyrdom that are subsequently
discounted in their conclusions. For instance, in the concluding chapter of
Manufacturing Human Bombs, Hafiz contradicts evidence he presents in
the previous five chapters with this profoundly disingenuous statement:
"There is nothing inherent in Islam—or any other religion, for that matter—that
inclines people toward death and murderous violence."[89]
There are no suicide bombing
campaigns in the name of any religion other than Islam.
|
The qualifying clause "or any other religion, for that matter"
is entirely irrelevant since there are no suicide bombing campaigns in the
name of any religion other than Islam. Hafiz's statement also ignores
evidence he himself presents, such as the accurate claim that Hamas and
Islamic Jihad "draw on the abundant Islamic texts concerning jihad and
martyrdom in the Qu'ran and prophetic traditions."[90] Moreover, his calls for all
parties involved to fulfill a moral "obligation to debunk the myth of
the heroic [suicide] bomber"[91]
are canceled by his admonition against tinkering with "religious
notions" that will be perceived as "an attack on their [Muslim]
creed" or an attempt "to 'rewrite the Koran' or 'subvert the will
of God.'"[92]
The most important thing that Western nations need to do, Hafiz argues, is
to stay out of the way and "allow this deadly phenomenon to run its
course and implode under its own contradictions."[93] No such implosion is in sight.
The only things that curbed the daily suicide attacks in Israel were a
sustained military effort and a wall built to keep bombers out.
Journalist Christoph Reuter's thorough documentation of the phenomenon
of suicide bombing in My Life Is a Weapon, A Modern History of Suicide
Bombing likewise focuses a great deal on Islam. He explores the
Shiite-Sunni split that solidified the concept of martyrdom; Iran's
ideological takeover of Lebanon in the 1980s when "more than 1,000
Iranian Revolutionary Guards ... arrived in Lebanon via Syria in order to
erect a beachhead for the Islamic Revolution;"[94] the Palestinians' embrace of the
tactic, and finally its global post-modernization by al-Qaeda.
But Reuter's text undercuts itself with non sequiturs and milky bromides
such as "Islam as such is not the cause of terrorism and suicide
attacks" and "[p]articular aspects of Islam do, however, lend
themselves to being interpreted to justify a declaration of outright war
against the West and against any opponents among their own peoples. They
can equally be used to construct a democratic society."[95] Of course, he neglects to
elucidate which aspects of Islam are democratic and completely ignores the
paucity of genuinely democratic Islamic states.
|
An
artist's rendition of the martyr's reward. According to al- Qaeda's Ayman
Zawahiri, the martyr in paradise will couple with seventy-two virgins.
Recently, the imam of al-Ahmady mosque in Jeddah, Columbia
University-educated Muhammad Ali Shanqiti, announced that the number of
virgins awaiting the martyr is actually far greater than the oft-cited
seventy-two. His formula puts the total as high as 19,604.
|
Some, like journalists Terry McDermott and Reuter, strive to contradict
the allure of sex—clearly an important recruiting tool—in Islamic portrayals
of paradise. Analyzing the motives of 9/11 terrorist Muhammad Atta,
McDermott portrays a man who "would stare stonily in the presence of
women." When Atta's master's thesis at Technical University of
Hamburg-Harburg was submitted and found to be poorly written, his advisor
assigned a female professor to help him rewrite it. After six weeks, Atta
protested that "he could no longer bear to be in such close
proximity" to her.[96]
Recruiters of suicide bombers rely
on the attraction of a highly sexualized paradise.
|
But then, alluding to the seventy-two dark-eyed virgins promised the
martyr in Islamic tradition, Reuter asks "what use would Muhammad Atta
have for them? This was a man so terrified of women that in his will, he
decreed that no woman be allowed to visit his grave, that his corpse was to
be prepared only by women wearing gloves, and that no one should touch his
genitals. A man with such a pathological fear of women aspiring to endless
sex in heaven? Unlikely."[97]
When it comes to Atta's sexuality, the jury is still out,[98] but focusing on one man's
motives does not negate the proven fact that recruiters rely on the
attraction of a highly sexualized paradise. Anat Berko documents the bait
used to lure female suicide bombers who are told that they will become one
of the harem of seventy-two virgins awaiting the male suicide bomber:
"After each sexual encounter with a shaheed, their hymens
miraculously grow back, and they are pure again."[99]
Recently, the imam of al-Ahmady mosque in Jeddah, Columbia University
educated Muhammad Ali Shanqiti, announced that the number of virgins
awaiting the martyr in paradise is actually far greater than the oft-cited
seventy-two. His formula puts the total as high as 19,604.[100] As the mother of Izzedrine
Masri, the Sbarro Pizzeria bomber, put it:
I don't believe that my son went as an
act of revenge because no one in our family was ever directly hurt through
the occupation. But I think that someone put into his head that this was a
way to go to paradise. He wanted to go to paradise.[101]
Conclusion
Before Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, he
ruminates on the possibility of suicide as a way out of his predicament. He
stops short, however, because "the Everlasting [has] ... fix'd His
canon 'gainst self-slaughter." For the world's Islamists, this is not
the case; in fact, from the Islamist perspective, the Everlasting actually
rewards self-slaughter under the right circumstances.
Far too many analysts and scholars ignore this truth, giving Islam a
free pass, perhaps because it is the path of least resistance; perhaps,
like John Esposito, because their research is paid for by Islamists;[102] or perhaps because they
actually believe, contrary to the evidence, that suicide bombing is
inimical to Islam. Today the world is full of disillusioned youths,
alienated from their societies and confused about their identities, and
there is no shortage of women who believe that their respective societies
have socially and economically marginalized them. According to popular
academic opinion, this enormous pool of human beings constitutes the
population from which suicide bombers will emerge. But popular academic
opinion is wrong, for only when Islamism is part of the equation does
disillusionment lead to murderous self-detonation. A foreign military
presence may offer a depressed, crazed, suicidal person the opportunity to
commit suicide while killing the enemy, but only the promise of a heavenly
reward can offer the opportunity for martyrdom. The "vast reward"[103] offered to the martyr is the
single most important incentive for suicide bombers.
Until academics and journalists can shed their mind-forged manacles and
acknowledge that the post-1979 bloom of suicide bombings is all but
unthinkable without Islamic tradition, confusion will reign. Until scholars
can at least stop ignoring what the terrorists themselves say and write
about their goals and motivations, policymakers who look to academics for
guidance will remain in the dark, blaming the scourge of suicide terrorism
on Nietzsche, the post-modernizing self, or soccer.
A.J. Caschetta is a senior lecturer
in English at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
[1] Jeffrey William Lewis, The Business of
Martyrdom (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012), p. 1.
[2] Ariel Glucklich, Dying for Heaven (New
York: Harper Collins, 2009), p. 64.
[3] Christoph Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon: A
Modern History of Suicide Bombing, trans. Helena Ragg-Kirkby
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), chap. 3, "Marketing
Martyrdom."
[4] "The martyrdom of Mohammed Hossein Fahmideh,
the 13-year old student," Islamic Republic Document Center, Tehran,
Oct. 30, 1980.
[5] Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah, The Global
Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 2013), p. 12.
[6] Qur. 2:207.
[7] Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, "Jihad,
Terrorism and Suicide Bombing: The Classical Islamic Perspective," The
Islamic Supreme Council of America, Fenton, Mich., accessed Jan. 30,
2015.
[8] "Myths,
Stereotypes of Islam Hide the Truth," Council on American Islamic
Relations, Washington, D.C., July 14, 2012; Hassan Ali el-Najjar,
"Suicide and Mass Shooting: An Islamic Perspective," al-Jazeera
(Riyadh), Jan.
27, 2013.
[9] "Religious
views on suicide," Wikipedia, Jan. 3, 2015.
[10] See,
for example, "The Qur'an,"
The Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, University of Southern California,
accessed Jan. 30, 2015; "Welcome to the Multimedia Qur'an," The
Multimedia Qur'an, accessed Jan. 30, 2015.
[11]
"Qur'an Chapter 2: Al-Baqara
(The Cow), Verse 207," The Multimedia Qur'an, accessed Jan. 30, 2015.
[12]
Franz Rosenthal, "On Suicide in Islam," Journal of the
American Oriental Society, July-Sept. 1946, pp. 239-59, p. 243.
[13]
Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, p. 42; Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The
Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp.
2-3; Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian
Women Suicide Bombers (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Books, 2003), p. 30; Robert
Pape, Dying to Win (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 91; Adam
Lankford, The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers,
Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers (New York and
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 52, 67; Rosemarie Skaine, Female
Suicide Bombers (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland and Company, 2006), p. 17;
Diego Gambetta, "Can We Make Sense of Suicide Missions?" in Making
Sense of Suicide Missions, ed. Diego Gambetta (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 295; Stephen Holmes, "Al Qaeda, September
11, 2001," in Making Sense of Suicide Missions, p. 137; Luca
Ricolfi, "Palestinian 1981–2003," in Making Sense of Suicide
Missions, p. 119; Mohammed Hafez, Manufacturing Human Bombs
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2006), p. 64; Mohammed Hafez, Suicide
Bombers in Iraq (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2007), p.
129; Joyce M. Davis, Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the
Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 112; Ariel Merari,
Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 129.
[14]
Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, rev. and exp. ed. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 159.
[15]
Assaf Moghadam, The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al-Qaeda, Salafi Jihad,
and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2008), p. 45.
[16]
Daniel Pipes, "The
Scourge of Suicide Terrorism," The National Interest,
Summer 1986.
[17]
Raymond Ibrahim, ed. and trans., The Al Qaeda Reader (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), p. 157.
[18]
Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, pp. 115-29.
[19]
Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, pp. 143-4.
[20]
Davis, Martyrs, p. 202.
[21] The
New York Times, Dec.
18, 2013.
[22]
Ibid., Mar.
20, 2013.
[23]
Victor, Army of Roses, p. 172.
[24]
Holmes, "Al Qaeda, September 11, 2001," p. 172.
[25]
Davis, Martyrs, p. 18.
[26] Jon
Elster, "Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions," in Making
Sense of Suicide Missions, ed. Diego Gambetta (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 243.
[27]
Gambetta, "Can We Make Sense of Suicide Missions?" p. 293.
[28]
Navid Kermani, "A Dynamite of
the Spirit," The Times Literary Supplement (London), Mar.
29, 2002.
[29]
Scott Attran, Talking to the Enemy: Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un)
Making of Terrorists (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2010), p. 425.
[30]
Pape, Dying to Win, pp. 3, 4.
[31]
Leonard Weinberg, "Suicide Terrorism for Secular Causes," in Root
Causes of Suicide Terrorism, ed. Ami Pedahzur (New York: Routledge,
2006), pp. 108-21; Robert J. Bunker Body Cavity Bombers
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 3-5.
[32]
Stephen Hopgood, "Tamil Tigers, 1987-2002," in Making Sense of
Suicide Missions, ed. Diego Gambetta (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006), pp. 43-76.
[33]
Rohan Gunaratna, "Questions
and Answers," Countering Suicide Terrorism (Herzliya:
Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 2000), p. 93.
[34] National
Public Radio, May
21, 2009.
[35]
Bloom, Dying to Kill, p. 79.
[36]
Efraim Karsh, "Palestinian
Leaders Don't Want an Independent State," Middle East Quarterly,
Summer 2014.
[37]
Rosemarie Skaine, Female Suicide Bombers (Jefferson, N.C. and
London: McFarland and Company, 2006), p. 123.
[38] Erased
in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks against Israeli Civilians (New
York: Human Rights Watch Report, 2002), sect. III.
[39]
Bloom, Dying to Kill, pp. 30-1; Hafez, Manufacturing Human Bombs,
pp. 20-3, 46-7; "Foreign Terrorist
Organizations," Country
Reports on Terrorism 2013 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
Counterterrorism, U.S. Dept. of State, 2014).
[40] See,
Paul Moorcraft, Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers (Yorkshire,
U.K.: Pen and Sword Books Limited, 2012), p. 101; Rohan Gunaratna, The
New York Times, Apr. 9, 2002.
[41] Dogu
Ergil, "Suicide Terrorism in Turkey: The Case of the Workers' Party of
Kurdistan," in Countering Suicide Terrorism (Herzliya:
Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 2000), pp. 73-88.
[42]
Ibid., p. 73.
[43] Ami
Pedahzur, Suicide Terrorism (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2005), pp.
70-1.
[44] Dogu
Ergil, "Questions and Answers," in Countering Suicide Terrorism
(Herzliya: Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 2000), pp. 96-7.
[45]
Rohan Gunaratna, "Suicide Terrorism in Sri Lanka," in Countering
Suicide Terrorism (Herzliya: Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 2000), p.
68.
[46] BBC
News, May 18, 2009.
[47]
Peter Alan Olsson, M.D., The Cult of Osama: Psychoanalyzing Bin Laden
and His Magnetism for Muslim Youths (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security
International, 2008), p. 3.
[48] Daniel
Pipes, interview: "Militant Islam," Conversations with
History, Institute of International Studies, University of California,
UC Berkeley, accessed Feb. 25, 2015.
[49]
Lankford, The Myth of Martyrdom, p. 4.
[50]
Scott Atran, "Genesis of Suicide Terrorism," Science, Mar.
2003, pp. 1534-9.
[51]
Pape, Dying to Win, p. 218.
[52] Riaz
Hassan, "What Motivates the Suicide Bombers," Yale Global
(New Haven), Sept. 3, 2009.
[53]
Robert Brym, "Six Lessons of Suicide Bombers," Contexts,
Fall 2007, pp. 40-5.
[54]
Hafez, Manufacturing Human Bombs, p. 6.
[55]
Ellen Townsend, "Suicide Terrorists: Are They Suicidal?" Suicide
and Life-Threatening Behavior, Feb. 2007, p. 47.
[56]
Larry H. Pastor, "Countering the Psychological Consequences of Suicide
Terrorism," Psychiatric Annals, 34 (2004): 704.
[57] Voice
of America News, Oct. 4, 2006.
[58] Eyad
el-Sarrah, "Why We Have Become Suicide Bombers?" quoted in Davis,
Martyrs, p. 105.
[59]
Lankford, The Myth of Martyrdom, p. 55.
[60]
Ibid., p. 55.
[61] Ibid.,
p. 45.
[62]
Ibid. Italics in original.
[63]
Bloom, Dying to Kill, p. 78.
[64]
Lewis, The Business of Martyrdom, p. 7.
[65] Ibid.,
p. 170.
[66]
Ibid., p. 181-2.
[67]
Ibid., p. 220-1.
[68]
Ibid., p. 144.
[69]
Ibid., p. 152.
[70]
Quoted in Victor, Army of Roses, p. 28.
[71]
Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of
Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 29.
[72]
Bloom, Dying to Kill, p. 20.
[73] John
Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), p. 124.
[74] Hafez,
Manufacturing Human Bombs, p. 79.
[75] See,
for example, Gus Martin, Essentials of Terrorism, Concepts and
Controversies, 3rd ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2014), p. 150.
[76] Hafez,
Manufacturing Human Bombs, p. 55.
[77]
Government Exhibit Philly Meeting — 11E, 3:04-CR-240-G, US v. HFL, Shukri
Abu Baker, et al., p. 2.
[78] Pape
and Feldman, Cutting the Fuse, pp. 21, 45.
[79]
Victor, Army of Roses, p. 201.
[80]
Bloom, Dying to Win, pp. 92-4.
[81]
Victor, Army of Roses, pp. 80-1, 103-6.
[82]
Skaine, Female Suicide Bombers, pp. 31-40.
[83] Anat
Berko, The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers
(Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2012), p. 10; idem, The Path
to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2009), pp. 96-124.
[84]
Yoram Schweitzer, "Palestinian Female Suicide Bombers: Reality vs.
Myth," in Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality? Yoram
Schweitzer, ed. (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 2006), pp.
25-41.
[85] Mira
Tzoreff, "The Palestinian Shahida: National Patriotism, Islamic
Feminism, or Social Crisis," in Schweitzer, ed., Female Suicide Bombers,
pp. 13-23.
[86] Cult
of the Suicide Bomber, film directed by Kevin Toolis (New York: The
Disinformation Company, 2008).
[87] The New
York Times, Feb. 3, 2009; BBC News, Feb. 4, 2009.
[88]
Tzoreff, "The Palestinian Shahida," pp. 13-23.
[89]
Hafez, Manufacturing Human Bombs, p. 73.
[90]
Ibid., p. 37.
[91]
Ibid., p. 73.
[92]
Ibid., p. 74.
[93]
Ibid., p. 75.
[94]
Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, p. 57.
[95]
Ibid., p. 32.
[96]
Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were,
Why They Did It, (New York: Harper, 2005), pp. 27, 60, 77.
[97]
Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, p. 8.
[98] See,
for example, Corey Robin, "The Way We Live Now: Closet-Case
Studies," The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2001.
[99]
Berko, The Path to Paradise, p. 166.
[100]
"Saudi
Based Cleric Muhammad Ali Shanqiti," Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI), Washington, D.C., Special Dispatch no. 5452, Sept. 20,
2013.
[101] Um
Iyad, quoted in Davis, Martyrs, p. 106.
[102]
Martin Kramer, "Dr. Esposito
and the seven-percent solution," Sandbox,
Apr. 9, 2008; Robert Spencer, "Saudi-funded
pseudo-academic John Esposito obscures the truth about jihad terror in Washington
Post," Jihad Watch, June 6, 2013; Stephen Schwartz, "John
L. Esposito: Apologist for Wahhabi Islam," The American Thinker,
Sept. 18, 2011.
[103]
Qur. 4:74.
Related
Topics: Islam, Suicide terrorism
| A.J. Caschetta
| Summer 2015 MEQ
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