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My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing
Abstract
MY LIFE IS A WEAPON: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing Christoph Renter Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. viii, 200pp, 115524.95 cloth (ISBN 0-691-11759-4)What kind of person becomes a suicide bomber? Why are suicide bombings currently so pervasive? And what, if anything, can be done to fight this phenomenon? These are the central questions raised in Christoph Reuter's My Life is a Weapon. Writing for a generalist audience in an accessible and fluid style, Reuter, a correspondent for Germany's Stem newsmagazine, investigates suicide as a weapon of war in this relatively short work.Reuter argues there is no such thing as a typical suicide bomber. Excepting the members of the cult-like Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Reuter argues that most suicide bombers are not delusional, brainwashed, or profoundly religious. In perhaps the most compelling sections of his book, Reuter interviews the families of Hezbollah and Hamas suicide bombers to show just how "ordinary" the bomber's lives were. None of the individuals was particularly religious and they came from all walks of life-one the son of a wealthy manufacturer, one an engineering student, another the son of a bricklayer. It is, however, an open question as to how representative these findings are, as they are based on a non-random sample.As to why suicide bombings are so common today, Reuter suggests this tactic was the natural outgrowth of revolutionary Iran's human wave attacks during the early phases of the Iran-Iraq War. These attacks-involving literally thousands of semi-trained soldiers (some as young as 12)-revived a tradition of martyrdom in Shi'ite Iran that can be traced back to the seventh century battle of Karbala. Iran's Revolutionary Guards subsequently exported the concept of "martyr operations" to Shi'ite groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and, later, to non-Shi'ite groups in Israel and the occupied territories (Hamas).There are several problems with this part of Reuter's thesis. First, Reuter suggests Iran's human wave attacks were historically unprecedented, but this is factually incorrect; there were large-scale Soviet and Japanese human wave assaults during World War II. second, Shi'ite suicide bombers may be inspired by the "Karbala tradition," but such values are hardly unique to Shi'ite political culture and most such societies have no history of using suicide as a weapon. Third, Reuter fails to explain adequately why Shi'ite Iran's suicide attacks came to resonate so deeply amongst various non-Shi'ite groups, such as Hamas, the LTTE, and the PKK. …
... Second, the sudden impotence one feels in face of suicide attacks is directly linked to the fact that no real threat can be made against someone who does not want to survive (Reuter 2002). In fact, suicide attacks "annihilate the entire logic of power" and "render the powerful powerless" (Reuter 2002), as Cristoph Reuter writes in his book My Life Is a Weapon. ...
... Second, the sudden impotence one feels in face of suicide attacks is directly linked to the fact that no real threat can be made against someone who does not want to survive (Reuter 2002). In fact, suicide attacks "annihilate the entire logic of power" and "render the powerful powerless" (Reuter 2002), as Cristoph Reuter writes in his book My Life Is a Weapon. A Modern History of Suicide Bombing. ...
... Likewise, journalist Christoph Reuter (2002) highlights that the very decision to volunteer for a bombing mission hinges on what relatives, friends, and local religious leaders have said about the actions of earlier volunteers. Suicide attackers will only be properly understood, insofar as any comprehensive understanding can be possible, by scrutinizing their spiritual-intellectual surrounding world, the ideologies that have molded them, and the myths they grew up with. ...
The suicide attacks in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo in April 2019 with more than 250 dead and 500 wounded showed for the umpteenth time that suicide terrorism remains one of the most publicly present, yet still least understood, global phenomena of our time. Although partly removed from Western public debate after a period of relative quiet, the return of so-called Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in May 2019 to public visibility with the promise of revenge and further suicide attacks could bring the issue back to the fore. In order to be prepared, a better understanding of the underlying motives and backgrounds is needed. The author offers his provocative analysis.
... 20 Die Zusammenfassung bezieht sich insbesondere auf Analysen aus Sprinzak (2000), Laqueur (2003), Davis (2003), Stern (2003), Reuter (2004), Victor (2004) ...
... 25 Die Zusammenfassung bezieht sich insbesondere auf Analysen aus O'Neill (1981), Dale (1988), Kushner (1996), Israeli (1997), Sprinzak (2000), Reuter (2004) und Shay (2004). ...
Dieser Aufsatz fasst die Ergebnisse einer Forschungsarbeit zusammen, in der Texte, Bilder und Grafiken aus zentralen Werken der englischsprachigen Terrorismusforschung (ca. 1996-2007) einer wissenssoziologisch-diskursforschenden Analyse unterzogen wurden. Integriert in eine postkolonial-feministisch verortete Perspektive wird ein Zusammenhang zwischen politischer und epistemischer Gewalt innerhalb global asymmetrischer Machtverhältnisse argumentiert, in denen sich nicht nur die beforschten Attentate ereignen, sondern auch die Forschung selbst stattfindet. Im (sozial-)wissenschaftlichen Wissensobjekt Selbstmordattentat verdichten sich demnach Zuschreibungen von Eigen-heit und Andersheit, die nicht nur über Gegenstand und AkteurInnen Auskunft geben. Vielmehr werden an ihm auch die Konturen, Horizonte und Ambivalenzen von Terrorismusforschung sichtbar. Spezifisch ideologisiert und generalisiert steht dieses wissenschaftliche Wissensobjekt auch in Beziehung zu außerwissenschaftlichen Wissensbeständen und wird damit bisweilen zu einer Sinnformel in einem vermeintlichen »Kampf der Kulturen«. Zu dieser gegenwärtig allzu plausibel erscheinenden Kulturalisierung des Politischen trägt auch jene wissenschaftliche Expertise bei, die den Gegenstand der hier vorgestellten Arbeit bildet: Terrorismusforschung.
... Islamic scholars do not necessarily consider suicide attacks as martyrdom operations (Anees 2006), but it seems that the individuals who carry out such acts of suicide-homicide do view it as such (Khashan 2003;Kushner 1996). The decision to carry out a suicide attack may involve multiple factors in a particular context, and in many instances, psychological pathology has not been found to be a factor motivating suicide attacks as most are carried out on behalf of a group by an individual seeking to make a positive difference in the world (Reuter 2004). While suicide attacks are not unique to Islam or are an inevitable result of adherence to Islamic theology (Gambetta 2005;Pedahzur 2006), medical suicide related to mental illness or debilitating affective states are staunchly prohibited. ...
... In the Middle East, suicide is more prevalent among older adults (Pritchard and Amanullah 2007) while in Pakistan it seems to be more predominant among the young (Khan and Reza 2000). And, in instances of suicide attack, young Muslim men and women carry out most suicide attacks motivated by a vision of how they will be remembered by others (Reuter 2004). ...
“Suicide through a peacebuilding not only fills a significant gap in our wider understanding of conflict transformation around the challenges of suicide, Katerina offers us a significant step forward in how building peace requires a praxis of friendship. A book well worth the read that echo into many spheres of our peacebuilding development.”
—Professor John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame, USA.
“In this accomplished scholarship, Katerina Standish has written a must-read primer for anyone seeking to understand suicide (from any field) and the unique opportunity to peacebuild suicide via relationship.
—Professor Sean Byrne, Foundational Director and Director of the PACS Graduate Program at the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice Studies, University of Manitoba, Canada.
“Suicide through a Peacebuilding Lens is a ground-breaking study. Meticulously researched, this book throws new light on the nature & prevalence of suicide. It is a ‘must’ read for peace-building practitioners and a pioneering work of scholarship.”
—Professor Padraig O’Malley, the John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA.
This book, as the first exploration of suicide in Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS), illustrates the scarcity of suicide research in the discipline and argues that the leading cause of violent death worldwide is a multifaceted phenomenon that needs to be fully comprehended as a significant and often preventable form of world-wide violence. The author supplies a theoretical framework for assessing suicide as medical or instrumental, posits interdisciplinary complementarity and offers future lines of inquiry that challenge established notions of prevention. The book presents a PACS meta-theory termed ‘encounter theory’ and supplies a suicidal peacebuilding platform via relationship. This book questions why more PACS scholars aren’t turning their attention to suicide when more people die by suicide than ethnic, religious or ‘terroristic’ violence combined.
Katerina Standish is Deputy Director and Senior Lecturer at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, in New Zealand.
... Islamic scholars do not necessarily consider suicide attacks as martyrdom operations (Anees 2006), but it seems that the individuals who carry out such acts of suicide-homicide do view it as such (Khashan 2003;Kushner 1996). The decision to carry out a suicide attack may involve multiple factors in a particular context, and in many instances, psychological pathology has not been found to be a factor motivating suicide attacks as most are carried out on behalf of a group by an individual seeking to make a positive difference in the world (Reuter 2004). While suicide attacks are not unique to Islam or are an inevitable result of adherence to Islamic theology (Gambetta 2005;Pedahzur 2006), medical suicide related to mental illness or debilitating affective states are staunchly prohibited. ...
... In the Middle East, suicide is more prevalent among older adults (Pritchard and Amanullah 2007) while in Pakistan it seems to be more predominant among the young (Khan and Reza 2000). And, in instances of suicide attack, young Muslim men and women carry out most suicide attacks motivated by a vision of how they will be remembered by others (Reuter 2004). ...
This chapter will identify forms of suicide that are instrumental, i.e. life-ending acts connected to a particular aim that involve or include other people. This chapter diverges from the anthropological dimensions of monologic (inward) or dialogic (expressive) suicide to include the object (affected agent and/or accessories) in life-ending acts. Monologic and dialogic suicide refers to the intention of a life-ending act while medical suicide done by individuals (or on behalf of individuals) and instrumental suicides are acts that involve others. While suicide can be inward (monologic) or expressive (dialogic), these terms do not indicate the affected/impacted people from an act. In this chapter, homicide-suicide, martyrdom/altruistic suicide, daredevil suicide and protest suicide will be explored in a manner similar to the previous chapter, with definitions and patterns of the forms, and investigations of the dominant themes within the surrounding literature.
... Islamic scholars do not necessarily consider suicide attacks as martyrdom operations (Anees 2006), but it seems that the individuals who carry out such acts of suicide-homicide do view it as such (Khashan 2003;Kushner 1996). The decision to carry out a suicide attack may involve multiple factors in a particular context, and in many instances, psychological pathology has not been found to be a factor motivating suicide attacks as most are carried out on behalf of a group by an individual seeking to make a positive difference in the world (Reuter 2004). While suicide attacks are not unique to Islam or are an inevitable result of adherence to Islamic theology (Gambetta 2005;Pedahzur 2006), medical suicide related to mental illness or debilitating affective states are staunchly prohibited. ...
... In the Middle East, suicide is more prevalent among older adults (Pritchard and Amanullah 2007) while in Pakistan it seems to be more predominant among the young (Khan and Reza 2000). And, in instances of suicide attack, young Muslim men and women carry out most suicide attacks motivated by a vision of how they will be remembered by others (Reuter 2004). ...
This chapter describes intention, motivation and intervention in regard to suicide and separates these processes into medical suicide and instrumental suicide. The purpose of this chapter is to connect facets of understanding regarding suicide to the act of violence transformation. Learning from other fields, suicide, as a topical focus of attention, presents PACS pracademics with opportunities to develop strategies that decrease violence associated with life-ending acts. PACS is a field that seeks not only to recognize violence but to transform violence into nonviolence or ways of engaging with one another that are life-affirming and non-harmful. This chapter looks at how the processes of intention, motivation and intervention can inform transformative considerations and practices in PACS.
... Whereas numerous scholars trace the origins of this culture back to Sunni thinkers such as Taqi Al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, and Sayyid Qutb, more recent accounts identify other sources in certain Shiite interpreters, especially since the 1960s, such as Ruhollah Khomeini, Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr and Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (Freamon, 2003). These Shiite sources were crucial in justifying not only the wave of young Iranian 'martyrs' during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s (Reuter, 2004), but also the suicide attacks by Hezbollah in the 1980s and 1990s (Kramer, 1998). These developments also had a decisive impact on Sunni extremists, such as Hamas and al-Qaeda (Cook, 2005(Cook, , 2007Cook & Allison, 2007). ...
... Such appeals are frequently associated with claims of commitment to religious and moral values, which in turn resort to symbols of moral integrity. As with the signaling mechanisms examined for the media of power and influence, the most crucial emblem of this integrity is the martyrdom of suicide attackers because of the extreme commitment in giving one's life (Cook, 2007;Freamon, 2003;Khosrokhavar, 2009;Kramer, 1998;Reuter, 2004). ...
This paper examines how suicide bombers are framed in terrorist communication, focusing on the empirical case of al-Qaeda’s suicide campaigns. Relying on the concept of media of communication in social systems theory, three main communicative levels of terrorist propaganda underlying the representation of suicide bombers are identified. First, on the level of power, armed organizations aim to coerce and deter their enemy by staging a complex set of communicative forms that signal their militants’ determination and resolve. Second, on the level of influence, armed groups exploit the symbolic qualities of suicide missions to gain support from a presumed constituency by referring to suicide attackers’ reputation and their ultimate sacrifice. Finally, by combining references to values and influence, bombers’ behavior and last wills are used as recruitment tools to attract new fighters by appealing to principles rooted in the prestige of martyrs. All of these communicative forms support the hypothesis that the representation of heroism and martyrdom is a crucial component of suicide terrorism. The synergy between the psychological impact of costly actions like suicide missions and framing processes exalting the military, moral and religious qualities of attackers constitutes a sophisticated weapon of a more recent asymmetric warfare involving radical Islamist organizations.
... In her study on Palestinian women suicide bombers, Barbara Victor contends that the main motive for this "fatal cocktail" is that a "culture of death" entered into the psyche of the Palestinian people as a result of hopelessness, social stress, and depression, which these relatively destitute women suffered from [23]. A survey conducted by Reuter Christoph [24] on the Palestinian reaction towards suicide operations conveyed that 75 percent of the Palestinians supported the October 4, 2003 suicide operation, the sixth operation conducted by a Palestinian woman since the beginning of the second Intifadah (Uprising). The operation was carried out by attorney Hanadi Jaradat who blew herself up killing twenty Israeli civilians in the wake of the celebration of Yum Kippur (Day of Forgiveness) in Haifa, a city that is supposed to portray Israeli-Palestinian peaceful coexistence [25]. ...
... I subscribe to the view that stresses the individually driven nature of suicide bombers arguing that they "can be educated and uneducated; religious and secular; comfortably off and destitute; their link is the decision they make to transform their powerlessness into extraordinary power" [24]. In highlighting the long lineage between Islamic and ethno-national resistance, I have argued that martyrdom operations -whether carried out by Islamist or resistance movements-are altruistic, selfsacrificial operations conveyed in the form of symbolic capital (honor and dignity). ...
... Yet, in most of the cases they identified, terrorism was absent. Rather, the literature depicted different types of self-sacrificial operations in the contexts of asymmetrical conflicts (Bloom, 2005;Pape, 2003;Reuter, 2004). For instance, the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII and Irans use of martyrs in its war with Iraq represent situations in which the weaker party in a conventional war chose to sacrifice warriors as a tactic of last resort. ...
... For instance, the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII and Irans use of martyrs in its war with Iraq represent situations in which the weaker party in a conventional war chose to sacrifice warriors as a tactic of last resort. In the former case, the Japanese military seems to have known that the sacrifices would not change the outcome of the war (Reuter, 2004). In other instances, militias and rebels who operated under extremely disadvantageous conditions used self-sacrifice as a force multiplier. ...
Scholarly interest in the study of suicide attacks and terrorism has grown markedly in the post-9/11 era. In this chapter, we draw attention to the main conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues and debates within the research on the subject. In the process, we highlight gaps in the literature and questions that have yet to be answered. Keywords: terrorism, suicide terrorism, suicide attacks, suicide operations, political violence Word Count (excluding abstract, keywords): 6985
... 20 Die Zusammenfassung bezieht sich insbesondere auf Analysen aus Sprinzak (2000), Laqueur (2003), Davis (2003), Stern (2003), Reuter (2004), Victor (2004) ...
... 25 Die Zusammenfassung bezieht sich insbesondere auf Analysen aus O'Neill (1981), Dale (1988), Kushner (1996), Israeli (1997), Sprinzak (2000), Reuter (2004) und Shay (2004). ...
Dieser Aufsatz fasst die Ergebnisse einer Forschungsarbeit zusammen, in der Texte,
Bilder und Grafiken aus zentralen Werken der englischsprachigen Terrorismusforschung
(ca. 1996-2007) einer wissenssoziologisch-diskursforschenden Analyse
unterzogen wurden. Integriert in eine postkolonial-feministisch verortete Perspektive
wird ein Zusammenhang zwischen politischer und epistemischer Gewalt innerhalb
global asymmetrischer Machtverhältnisse argumentiert, in denen sich nicht
nur die beforschten Attentate ereignen, sondern auch die Forschung selbst stattfindet.
Im (sozial-)wissenschaftlichen Wissensobjekt Selbstmordattentat verdichten
sich demnach Zuschreibungen von Eigen-heit und Andersheit, die nicht nur über
Gegenstand und AkteurInnen Auskunft geben. Vielmehr werden an ihm auch die
Konturen, Horizonte und Ambivalenzen von Terrorismusforschung sichtbar. Spezifisch
ideologisiert und generalisiert steht dieses wissenschaftliche Wissensobjekt
auch in Beziehung zu außerwissenschaftlichen Wissensbeständen und wird damit
bisweilen zu einer Sinnformel in einem vermeintlichen »Kampf der Kulturen«. Zu
dieser gegenwärtig allzu plausibel erscheinenden Kulturalisierung des Politischen
trägt auch jene wissenschaftliche Expertise bei, die den Gegenstand der hier vorgestellten
Arbeit bildet: Terrorismusforschung.
... 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 (Reuter, 2002). Prominent examples include the female participants in the campaign waged by the FLN during the Battle of Algiers in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the terror campaigns of the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany and the Italian Red Brigades in Italy from the 1970s to the mid-1980s; and the Palestinian hijackings at the end of the 1960s to the mid-1970s (Schweitzer, 2006). ...
This study examined Boko Haram female suicide bombers in Nigeria from 2014-2018. The objectives of the study are to: examine the reasons for the use of female suicide bombers by Boko Haram in Nigeria from 2014-2018; examine what motivated women to carry out suicide attacks in Nigeria; and find out the implication of Boko Haram female suicide attacks on Nigeria from 2014-2018. The study adopted qualitative method where data were sourced from 20 informants comprising of security experts, security agents and social workers as well as secondary sources using documentary content analysis. The study found out that Boko Haram has deployed 271 female suicide bombers in 130 suicide attacks that resulted to 1,655 deaths and 2,587 injuries. 2017 has the highest number of attacks with 54 attacks, followed by 2015 with 38 attacks, 2016 with 17 attacks, 2014 with 14 attacks and 2018 with 7 attacks. It further revealed that Boko Haram resorted to abduction, kidnapping and use of female suicide bombers in order to preserve their foot soldiers for conventional warfare. It also found out that the female suicide bombers were victims of Boko Haram tactics as they were kidnapped, indoctrinated, abuse and forced to carry out suicide attacks against their wish. Boko Haram may likely continue to use women and girls in their custody for suicide missions beyond 2018 due to desperation to remain relevant and attract widespread publicity. The study recommended that government should mobilized all its arsenals and take the war to the enclave of Boko Haram in the Lake Chad and Sambisa forest and also ensure release of all women in Boko Haram captivity to avoid using them as suicide bombers in the future.
... In fact, Assaf Moghadam (2005:98-99) argues that distinguishing religious and secular motives is itself complex. For example, several commentators and researchers (Dickey 2002;Reuter 2004) have claimed that "a culture of martyrdom" is a fundamental characteristic of suicide terrorism, and martyrdom has obvious connections to religious motives. However, Moghadam (2005:99) points out that martyrdom is also linked to the concept of the hero (see also Hoffman and McCormick 2004:253): "Martyrdom is not merely an act of self-sacrifice that is done for personal reasons, but the self-conscious creation of a model for future emulation and inspiration." ...
Researchers have found consistently that religion reduces criminal behavior. Yet rising levels of political violence are frequently attributed to a new wave of religious terrorism. Our study seeks to reconcile this apparent discrepancy by studying the attitudes of people living in 34 African nations. Using data from the Afrobarometer survey and mixed modeling, we examine the influence of individual and collective religiosity for shaping civic engagement and willingness to engage in political violence. While individual religiosity decreases support for violent political action, collective religiosity increases it. The effects of religiosity are the same for Muslims and Christians and the country religious context minimally affects residents’ civic engagement and interest in violent political behavior. Our study underscores the importance of the theoretical and empirical distinction between individual and collective religiosity and offers insight into how civic engagement can be a pathway through which religion shapes support for political violence.
... Also, it was also observed in Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) in Turkey, and in Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. However, they conclude that what is at work is a strategic calculation by rational organizations that deem suicidal violence to be an effective tactic in the fight against powerful enemies (Kushner, 1996;Gunaratna, 2000;Schweitzer, 2001;Margalit, 2003;Mustafa, 2003B;Rosenberger, 2003;Reuter, 2004;Bloom, 2005;O´Neal, 2005;Grimlan et al., 2006;Ferrero, 2006;Hafez, 2006;Kaplan et al., 2006). ...
The Profile explores all the characteristics of the Palestinian suicide
martyrs (Istishhadiyin) and the operations of their martyrdom as well. A
national representative survey which consists of two-hundred participants of
the Palestinian suicide martyrs (Istishhadiyin) families in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip was used in this current Profile. The Palestinian suicide martyrs
(Istishhadiyin) were able to implement two hundred qualitative martyrdom
operations that rocked Israel, and raised a large wave of reactions both
locally and internationally. The Profile has all their demographic
characteristics; all the characteristics of their martyrdom operations; their
personality characteristics mostly: social, religious, national and
psychological features which qualified them to embark on this strategic
action; also, the Profile has the main motivations which drove the Palestinian
youth to carry out such operations, and the relationship between the
emergence of these operations and Israeli crimes committed against the
rights of the unarmed Palestinian people. Additionally, the Profile includes
the main behavioral changes which appeared on the Palestinian suicide
martyrs (Istishhadiyin) prior to the execution of the martyrdom operation, in
addition to their families’ opinion about martyrdom operations. The Profile
showed that the Palestinian suicide martyrs (Istishhadiyin) were ordinary
people who enjoyed life; they were sociable, religious, national, and had a
high degree of psychological stability. However, their motivations behind the
carrying out of martyrdom operations are nationalistic, and are closely
associated with the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, and the
daily suppressive practices against the helpless and unarmed Palestinian
people. They had to sacrifice their lives for Palestinians, to shake off the
occupation and preserve their holies, homeland, and people.
Keywords: Profile, Istishhady, Palestine, Motivations, Martyrdom
operations, Conflict
... Obviously, the first effect of all of this is unequal development and by extension lack of democracy [9] (pp. [31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. The figures speak for themselves: whereas 1% of the global population possess 46% of the available resources (that is, almost half) and 10% possess 86%, 50% possess nothing and are accordingly counted for nothing by capital -as they are nothing, they should not exist, should not be there, but the problem is that they are there all the same. ...
Armed conflicts and violence have always been concomitant with human history but it is undeniable that our perception of them has undergone some disturbing evolution of late. Whereas in the past wars and organized violence were mainly regarded as being temporary, that is, originating in a number of reasons and tensions that might become eventually solved and confined to very specific zones on the world map, nowadays most people feel that nobody can escape the scourge of indiscriminate violence and this is mainly due to terrorism, in particular to that associated with Muslim fundamentalism. The aim of this paper will be to discuss the origins of this form of terrorism, together with its inextricable relationship with the so-called ‘civilized’ West, putting the emphasis on its more secular aspects and implications so as to show how Tabish Khair’s novel, Just Another Jihadi Jane denounces the effects that this conflict can have upon average people, all the more so if they happen to be Muslim women living in the western world.
... Martyrdom has since the first (1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993) and the second (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) Al-Aqsa intifada increasingly been associated with manhood and political agency (cf. Linos 2010;Abufarha 2009;Asad 2007;Reuter 2002). 10 Based on my fieldwork experiences, I recognised the need and the importance of a sensitised understanding of the concept on different levels. ...
Constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank are discussed in this article through the prism of violence. It focuses on the constructions of uncertain masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss, and the importance of analyzing the body in such processes - both as agential and as victimized - is highlighted. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as "violent," and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men's own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men's realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body is actively involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.
... Die auch in der Öffentlichkeit weit verbreitete Deutung der Selbstmordattentate als Ausdruck einer Psychopathologie der Attentäter hält der empirischen Überprüfung nicht stand (Davis 2003;Reuter 2004;Stern 2003;Victor 2003). Von 462 Selbstmordattentätern, die in der Zeit von 1980 bis 2003 weltweit aktiv waren, wies auf der Basis "psychologischer Autopsie" keiner relevante psychopathologische Auffälligkeiten (z. ...
Die Aufnahme des Themas „Suizid“ in ein Handbuch soziale Probleme lässt sich nicht mehr so selbstverständlich wie in früheren Jahrzehnten begründen, weil sowohl die Zahl der Suizidfälle zurückgegangen ist als auch der moralische Diskurs über den Suizid deutlich an Schärfe verloren hat.
... 4 On this point see also Zimmermann (2004). 5 For a detailed history of suicide terrorism see Reuter (2004). ...
This chapter will apply the methodological understandings developed in the previous chapter to illustrate how metaphors map source onto target domains and how this predicates the action of terrorism and the terrorist actor in the German Bild and the British The Sun newspapers. So far metaphor and predicate analysis has predominantly been applied to elite discourses or what can be called ‘high data’. So for example the focus has been on speeches by leading politicians (Ferrari 2007) or on government statements or documents (Hülsse 2003a) from one country. Although there has been some investigation of media reporting (Pancake 1993; Zinken 2003; Lule 2004) and quality press newspapers (Flowerdew and Leong 2007), analysis of popular tabloid newspapers from different countries has so far been neglected.1 The central idea behind analysing the media rather than the political elite is that the media, and in particular the widely read tabloid media, give an insight into the construction of terrorism possibly held by large portions of the general public and the metaphoric ‘Joe the plumber’ or his German female equivalent ‘Erika Mustermann’. Furthermore, it is important to note that it was not the political elite but the media who were the first to metaphorise the events of 9/11 as war. George Lakoff (2001), one of the leading scholars on metaphors, has pointed out that the Bush administration first used a ‘crime’ metaphor to describe the attacks of 9/11 but then quickly replaced these with a ‘war’ metaphor.
... In addition to these internal challenges, the modern ordering of mortality has also been externally confronted by terrorist groups that seek to invoke the symbolisms of death and sacrifice by using life itself as a weapon (see Reuter, 2004;Rose (2004). The events of 11 September 2001 in the United States, the widespread sense of panic -signified by the belief perpetuated almost by anyone talking on television that this event has changed history -and, more importantly, the economic downturn that followed this event (partly stemming form the fear of air travel), all highlight that what is under attack is not merely a people or a country but, rather, a whole social order that is founded on the inviolable sanctity of life as an absolute value. ...
Death has popularly had the reputation of being the last of life's great mysteries, a subject of speculation, and as a foreboding event both inevitable, and feared. In Life Sentences, Zohreh Bayatrizi examines the many concerted attempts from the last 350 years to strip death of its mystery, and to order, manage, and transform it from an individualized and fatalistic event to a social phenomenon that allows intervention. She examines the process that has caused death to be understood in five quasi-biblical commandments: "thou shalt not die violently; thou shalt not die prematurely; thou shalt not kill thyself; and thou shalt not die an undignified death, so that thou shalt die an orderly death." Beginning with John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality (1662)-considered the first book of statistics-and philosopher Thomas Hobbes's declaration that society must minimize the "greatest evil" of unsanctioned violent deaths, Bayatrizi traces the pivotal moments that have changed our understanding of death. While illuminating the history of our increasingly rationalized understanding of death, she also examines some of our most contradictory reactions to controversial topics such as suicide, euthanasia, suicide bombing, "collateral damage," and how our moral values have been shaped by an understanding of the proper place of a well-ordered death in modern society. Both historically rigorous and vigorously engaged in contemporary debates, Life Sentences will be of interest to anyone interested in how we deal with death before we die.
... Linked to the ideology, we add hating the enemy, which leads to an explosive cocktail of feelings which is relatively easy to indoctrinate into a terrorist organization (in extreme cases, a woman can become a guide for other women to sacrifice and martyrdom). However, it is already known that religious motivations are not necessary and sufficient for the emergence and implementation of suicide terrorism, or even poverty has a very tenuous relationship with such acts (Reuter 2006). ...
In the first instance, this document highlights a conceptualization of what suicide terrorism is. Then, it analyses the role of women as actors of such terrorism. It describes her main psychological characteristics and motivations, comparing the roles of women in these deplorable events. It also describes particular situations that may lead a woman to carry out 1 Security in Infrastructures. Edited by J. Martin Ramírez, and Juan Carlos Fernández. The Terrorist Suicide Woman in Jihadism 187 terrorist attacks. Below, there are some conclusions, focusing on the role of women in active suicidal terrorist activities.
... Although some researchers try to identify common traits of suicide bombers (Lester, Yang, & Lindsay, 2004), there is no dominant profi le of a suicide bomber (Crenshaw, 2007;Hirsh et al., 2005;Hoff man, 2003). Volunteers vary greatly in their demographic characteristics (Pape, 2005;Reuter, 2004;Soibelman, 2004). Most are men, but the numbers of women and children are rising (Cook, 2005). ...
... By contrast, although suicide terrorists display similar behaviors to nonsuicidal, truly altruistic self-sacrifice, deeper analysis reveals these similarities to be superficial. These individuals extensively plan and engage in lethal activities at least in part (by their evaluation) to benefit their families and society (Reuter, 2006). Interviews with individuals who planned to engage in suicide terrorism but who experienced a bomb malfunction or another impediment to enacting their plan suggest that these individuals feel as though they are a burden to their families (Baer, 2008;Berko, 2012)-a similar sentiment expressed by individuals at elevated suicide risk (Brown et al., 2002;Joiner et al., 2002). ...
Building upon the idea that humans may be a eusocial species (i.e., rely on multigenerational and cooperative care of young, utilize division of labor for successful survival), we conjecture that suicide among humans represents a derangement of the self-sacrificial aspect of eusociality. In this article, we outline the characteristics of eusociality, particularly the self-sacrificial behavior seen among other eusocial species (e.g., insects, shrimp, mole rats). We then discuss parallels between eusocial self-sacrificial behavior in nonhumans and suicide in humans, particularly with regard to overarousal states, withdrawal phenomena, and perceptions of burdensomeness. In so doing, we make the argument that death by suicide among humans is an exemplar of psychopathology and is due to a derangement of the self-sacrificial behavioral suite found among eusocial species. Implications and future directions for research are also presented. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Martyrdom has since the first (1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993) and the second (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) Al-Aqsa intifada increasingly been associated with manhood and political agency (cf. Linos 2010;Abufarha 2009;Asad 2007;Reuter 2002). 10 Based on my fieldwork experiences, I recognised the need and the importance of a sensitised understanding of the concept on different levels. ...
Constructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bank are discussed in this article through the prism of violence. It focuses on the constructions of uncertain masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss, and the importance of analyzing the body in such processes - both as agential and as victimized - is highlighted. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portray Middle Eastern Muslim men as “violent,” and as terrorists, we need to understand the motivations and the meanings of violence. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centered approach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body is actively involved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties. © 2015, Centro em Rede de Investigacao em Antropologia. All rights reserved.
... According to Atran, as suicide terrorism became more prevalent, so did popular images of the perpetrators as being 'evil, deluded, or homicidal misfits' (Atran 2004: 73). However, the idea that terrorists in general must be sociopaths or psychopaths has little empirical support (Rasch 1979;Silke 1998;Post and Gold 2002;Horgan 2003;Post et al. 2003;Stern 2003;Reuter 2004). Empirical studies have even had difficulty defining a terrorist profile based on some typical psychological characteristics that drive people to join terrorist groups or commit terrorist acts (Hudson 1999;Sageman 2004). ...
Many scholars have assumed that suicide terrorism is the most lethal form of terrorism. Increasing lethality is important for the terrorists’ expected ability to coerce target states and may explain the increasing popularity of suicide terrorism since the 1980s. This article analyses statistically the lethality of suicide terrorism and suicide bombings with 96,649 terror incidents in the Global Terrorism Database. The results corroborate the hypothesis that suicide terrorism inflicts more casualties than other terrorist tactics. However, suicide bombings are not associated with a greater increase in the casualty rates as compared with non-suicidal terrorist tactics involving, for example, the use of firearms. Moreover, neither suicide terrorism in general nor suicide bombings in particular are associated with an increase in the count of dead when there are many soft targets to choose from, such as in Palestine and Afghanistan. The lethality of suicide bombings is the greatest when there are many hard targets, such as in Israel.
... 'If you understand Islam, you will undoubtedly be able to comprehend that this person is not being killed prior to his time. From here we regard martyrdom as a Muslim's choice of the manner in which he seeks to die' (Reuter, 2002). ...
This work examines the complex phenomenon of global terrorism in a fast evolving International Order (the New World Order) that is driven by the wheel of globalization as a historical process. The discourse is domesticated within the Nigeria geographical space with the onslaught of the Boko Haram attack on the Nigerian state; its premier institutional bulwark represented by the military and its vulnerable populations as case study. The article presents Nigeria as a deeply divided society that is exploited by the terrorist to their advantage. The work contained herein is anchored on the failed state and the relative deprivation theoretical model to sustain its thrust and give meaning to the arguments articulated. The methodology depended-on for data leans heavily on the analysis of secondary sources within the traditional liberal and social science orientations. Finally, the article presents a set of recommendations that could contribute in the reversal of the grounds covered by the Boko Haram since the highly ghoulish movement launched its macabre push against the symbol of Nigeria’s legitimacy as a sovereign state amongst other international system of states.
DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p247
... Trois questions dominent cette littérature. Premièrement, la mort et des différentes techniques visant à utiliser le corps comme arme de guerre ou de lutte ont fait l'objet de nombreux travaux (pour sur les différentes techniques et une perspective historique, voir Lewis 2012 ; sur une histoire plus récente de l'attentatsuicide, Reuter, 2004). Deuxièmement, l'utilisation de l'attentatsuicide comme stratégie par des groupes insurgés ou qualifiés de http://www.revuesignes.info/document.php?id=4632&format=print 2/8 terroristes constitue l'une des questions parmi les plus traitées. ...
Cette introduction présente la problématique générale de ce numéro spécial sur les martyrs. Cette dernière porte sur la construction, par des mouvements sociaux évoluant dans des contextes très différents ou des États, de figures de martyrs qui intègrent une mythologie propre au groupe d’appartenance revendiqué.
This article introduces the special issue on martyrs and martyrdom. It focuses on how dissent social movements, oppositional political party or states construct the martyr figures in their attempt to elaborate an official or an alternative mythology.
http://www.revue-signes.info/document.php?id=4632
‘İslam Hukukunda İntihar Eylemleri’ başlıklı tez çalışmasında kişinin cihad
etmek gayesiyle kendi hayatına son vermesi ve saldırı esnasında yakınlarında bulunanları
kendisi ile birlikte öldürmesinin İslam Hukukundaki yeri incelenmiş, bu konuda ortaya
konan görüşler ve delilleri ele alınarak tarafların konuya yaklaşımları ve ortaya
koydukları yöntemler işlenmiştir.
Çalışmada ilk olarak, intihar eylemleri psikolojik, sosyolojik ve siyasi açıdan ele
alınarak araştırma konusu olan problemin doğru tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. İkinci
aşamada eylemler hakkında ortaya konan görüşler ve dayandırıldıkları deliller ele
alınarak varsayılan meşruiyet zemini değerlendirilmiştir. Son olarak intihar saldırılarının
İslam Hukuku bağlamında değerlendirilmesi yapılmıştır.
İntihar eylemlerinin bazı durumlarda terör eylemlerine dönüşmesi ve saldırılarda
birçok masum sivilin ölmesi ister istemez İslam ve terör kavramlarını zihinlerde
yaklaştırmakta, bu da İslam hakkında bir önyargı oluşturmaktadır. Bu sebepten intihar
saldırılarının meşruiyeti meselesinin şer’î açıdan netliğe kavuşturulması gerekmektedir.
Çalışmada bu hususa katkı yapmak hedeflenmiştir.
İntihar saldırıları hakkında sağlıklı bir hükme varabilmek için eylemler,
gerekçeleri, kullanılan yöntemler, olası sonuçları ile birlikte değerlendirilmeli,
gerçekleştiği zaman ve zamanın getirdiği konjonktürel değişiklikler dikkate alınmalıdır.
Konuyu şer’î açıdan değerlendirirken ortaya konan delillerin sıhhati kadar var olan
delillerin bağlamından koparılmadan doğru yorumlanması, İslam Savaş Hukuku
prensipleri çerçevesinde ele alınması gerekmektedir.
This essay examines the way in which martyrdom has been created and contested in Christianity through the use of narrative. By demonstrating that martyrdom has always been a controversial and contested term in Christianity, and has incorporated both acts of killing and suicide, the essay argues that attempts to define martyrdom are futile. The competing ways in which deaths are narrated make the difference between martyrdom and the execution of heretics, or for that matter, in the contemporary world, of terrorism.
This chapter looks at how suicide is conceptualized and understood in different human groups. The chapter is divided into three parts: Part I looks at how suicide is considered in modern groups including Western, Indigenous, Islamic, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist and the Confucian world; Part II looks at how suicide is considered in the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece, India and China; and Part III three illustrates how age, gender and urban/rural geography relate to suicide. This chapter begins to distinguish how the phenomena of life-ending acts include a number of different motivations and relate to several distinctive life circumstances that impact our understanding of suicide both in the past and in the contemporary world.
An overview of the history, religion, political economy, and politics of the Middle East, with individual chapters devoted to each of the countries in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf, Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa.
El presente escrito analiza las posibles motivaciones que mueven a la mujer a realizar estas acciones, ya sea desde una perspectiva de igualdad de género o desde la posible manipulación que hacen de la mujer las organizaciones terroristas. A pesar de los escasos estudios realizados sobre terrorismo suicida, se intenta describir a continuación la posible existencia de un perfil común a las mujeres terroristas suicidas. Cuando relacionamos el papel de la mujer con el terrorismo internacional, más concretamente, con el Daesh, organización yihadista liderada por Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi, surge un compendio de temas sobre los que se puede hablar, todos ellos entrelazados. ¿Qué papel tienen las mujeres en esta organización terrorista? ¿Cómo conciben a la mujer los yihadistas? ¿Hay mujeres que luchan por la causa del Daesh? Todo ello hay que estudiarlo partiendo de la base de cómo vive una mujer en una sociedad musulmana, o cómo el Islam concibe a la mujer para poder concluir si realmente se puede extrapolar la vida de la mujer en una comunidad musulmana a la vida de la mujer bajo el yugo del Daesh.
Az öngyilkos terrorizmus a pszichológiai hadviselés eszköze. Célja azonnali pánik,
hossztávú félelemérzet kialakítása, figyelmeztetés, büntetés. Ezek révén tudatják a
közvéleménnyel nyíltan bevallott szándékaikat, ezek leple alatt akarják elérni azokat
a célokat, amiket titokban próbálnak tartani. Nyílt cél gátat szabni a Nyugat
térnyerésének, sarí’a törvénykezés, iszlám állam bevezetése. Burkolt szándék
interetnikus konfliktusok gerjesztése. Támadják a modernizációt, a törzsi rendet,
pártokat, választásokat. Az antiiperialista retorika ellenére az iszlamista fegyveresek
nemcsak a nagyvállalatok gazdasági játszmáinak, de a térségben érdekelt országok
politikai manővereinek az eszközei ia. Érdekükben áll az oktatási infrastruktúra
lerombolásával, a munkavállalás lehetőségeinek minimalizálásával a konkurens
munkaerő kiiktatása, a külső hatalmaktól függés erősítése. Nemcsak egyes országok infrastruktúráját, gazdasági függetlenségét vagy politikai stabilitását, de a régió országainak viszonyrendszerét is célozzák, egyrészt az unipoláris világtól való
függést erősítik, másrészt a többpólusúvá váló világ hatalmi játszmáinak a bábjai.
Kulcsszavak: terrorizmus, asszimmetrikus hadviselés, öngyilkos merényletek,
iszlám szélsőségesek, nacionalizmus.
Suicide terrorism is a tool of psychological warfare, to create immediate panic,
permanent fear, to warn, to punish. By these assaults terrorists are communicating
their overt purposes and try to implement secret goals. Overt purpose to restrict
Western influence, implement shari’a law and Islamic state. Covert goal is to
instinct interethnic conflicts. They are attacking on modernization, both traditional
and modern social structures; tribal system, political parties, elections. In spite of
anti-imperialist rhetoric, Islamist militants are tools of economic interests of
multinational concerns, and geo-politic regional maneuvers. By destroying
educational infrastructure and by reducing employment opportunities to abolish
rival labor force their aim strengthening dependence from external powers. Not only
by assaulting infrastructure of particular countries, independence, economic and
political stability, they are targeting the international relations of the countries of the
region, by strengthening dependence from the uni-polar world order they are pawns
of the power games of a formulating multi-polar world order.
Keywords: terrorism, assimmetric warfare, suicide assaults, Islamic radicalism,
ethnic nationalism.
Few issues apply universally to people as poignantly as death and dying. All religions address concerns with death from the handling of human remains, to defining death, to suggesting what happens after life. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying provides readers with an overview of the study of death and dying. Questions of death, mortality, and more recently of end-of-life care, have long been important ones and scholars from a range of fields have approached the topic in a number of ways. Comprising over fifty-two chapters from a team of international contributors, the companioncovers: funerary and mourning practices; concepts of the afterlife; psychical issues associated with death and dying; clinical and ethical issues; philosophical issues; death and dying as represented in popular culture. This comprehensive collection of essays will bring together perspectives from fields as diverse as history, philosophy, literature, psychology, archaeology and religious studies, while including various religious traditions, including established religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism as well as new or less widely known traditions such as the Spiritualist Movement, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Raëlianism. The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, philosophy and literature. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Christopher M. Moreman. All rights reserved.
This chapter examines, dissects and revisits the three-decade-long political violence campaign of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. It argues that in the absence of a uniting, coherent ideology beyond primordialist ethno-nationalism, it was the LTTE’s leader Velupillai Prabhakaran who managed to obtain public support and create devoted and fanatic cadres by propelling his status as an omnipotent leader, who embodied the Tamil struggle. Prabhakaran himself became the manifesto. Prabhakaran and his cadres not only exploited grievances of the Tamil community to justify acts of terror but also silenced Tamil forces that were advocates of democratic, peaceful and constitutional solutions in times of escalating social and ethnic tensions. This chapter also highlights the international outreach and scope of LTTE operations and its connections to and alliances with other terror groups throughout the world. One section is also dedicated to the group’s coercive, extortive and violent actions against the global Tamil diaspora. A key pillar of Prabhakaran’s success was the creation, training and indoctrination of elite suicide cadres, known as the “Black Tigers”, thus creating a “cult of martyrs”, which was strategically aggrandised by incorporating inter-religious and pseudo-socialist rituals and symbolism. This part of the book underscores the vanguard role of the LTTE regarding the innovation of terror practices and placing these core tactical methods within a broader strategic structure of political violence. Finally, this chapter makes the case for assessing the LTTE as one of the most, if not the most, successful terror outlets of the twentieth century.
Suicide and Agency offers an original and timely challenge to existing ways of understanding suicide. Through the use of rich and detailed case studies, the authors assembled in this volume explore how interplay of self-harm, suicide, personhood and agency varies markedly across site (Greenland, Siberia, India, Palestine and Mexico) and setting (self-run leprosy colony, suicide bomb attack, cash-crop farming, middle-class mothering). Rather than starting from a set definition of suicide, they empirically engage suicide fields-the wider domains of practices and of sense making, out of which realized, imaginary, or disputed suicides emerge. By drawing on ethnographic methods and approaches, a new comparative angle to understanding suicide beyond mainstream Western bio-medical and classical sociological conceptions of the act as an individual or social pathology is opened up. The book explores a number of ontological assumptions about the role of free will, power, good and evil, personhood, and intentionality in both popular and expert explanations of suicide. Suicide and Agency offers a substantial and ground-breaking contribution to the emerging field of the anthropology of suicide. It will appeal to a range of scholars and students, including those in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies, suicidology, and social studies of death and dying. © Ludek Broz, Daniel Münster and the contributors, All Rights Reserved.
It is widely believed that the violent activities of Al-Qaeda emanate from the teachings of Islam. The reason is simple: Al-Qaeda claims to be a Muslim organization and makes frequent references to the Koran and other sources of Islamic law to justify its declarations of Jihad against the Anglo-Americans and their allies. This has led to thinking that the Koran is the main source of inspiration for Al-Qaeda’s type of Jihad. Chapter 1 in this book has established that the Koran does not support offensive Jihad. The Koran allows necessary and proportionate use of force for individual and collective self-defense only. It is important to note that, as we shall see later, Al-Qaeda claims that its Jihad is in self-defense, that is, relying on defensive theory of Jihad. This implies that Al-Qaeda is following the defensive rather than extreme interpretation of Jihad. It is a case of misapplication rather than extreme interpretation. This chapter has three main objectives. First, to challenge the Koranic foundation of Al-Qaeda’s 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” and the World Islamic Front’s 1998 declaration of “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” This chapter argues that Al-Qaeda’s declaration of Jihad is un-Koranic (illegitimate) for two main reasons: As a non-state actor, it does not have the authority to declare Jihad, and the circumstances in 1996 and 1998 did not warrant individual declaration of Jihad.
The examination of suicide terrorism has taken on more urgency in the past several years. What is decidedly different in the modern, global war on terrorism (GWOT) is that noncombatant civilians have become the most frequent and virtually exclusive target of violence. Increased resort to extremely violent forms of terrorism revived with the September 2000 inauguration of the Second Intifada, resulting in a tragically heightened number of suicide bombings mostly in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and followed 12 months later by the four suicide aircraft hijackings of September 11, 2001. The unprecedented loss of life in these suicide attacks spurred deep concern among governments and societies alike. In May 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller concluded that future suicide attacks on U.S. soil were “inevitable.”1 Similarly, then Homeland Security director Tom Ridge also agreed that domestic suicide bombings “may be inevitable.”2 Continued acknowledgment of likely further attacks and multiple U.S. vulnerabilities has punctuated policy appraisals and press reports virtually without pause since the 9/11 attacks.
Why, contrary to their predecessors, did the Taliban resort to use of suicide attacks in the 2000s in Afghanistan? By drawing from terrorist innovation literature and Michael Horowitz’s adoption capacity theory—a theory of diffusion of military innovation—the author argues that suicide attacks in Afghanistan is better understood as an innovation or emulation of a new technique to retaliate in asymmetric warfare when insurgents face arms embargo, military pressure, and have direct links to external terrorist groups. The findings of my in-depth case study of Afghanistan between 1978 and 2010 support the proposition and show that it was an arms embargo, coupled with what I call military pressure, and a direct link to an external terrorist network that made the Taliban resort to the use of suicide attack in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Adviser: Patrice C. McMahon
Suicide prevention is for the most part seen in terms of reducing risk factors and increasing
protective factors for suicide, and having a suicide plan is considered to fall on the side of risk. Although it seems likely that the role of a suicide plan in a person’s life is more complex than this, there is to date little research exploring first-hand descriptions of suicidality in order to understand this role. The purpose of this study was to explore the therapeutic effects of having a suicide plan. Secondary, thematic analysis of data from a qualitative study aiming to understand first-hand experiences of the feeling of being suicidal was carried out. Having a suicide plan can function to reduce the immediate experience of suicidal distress through 1) providing a sense of control, and 2) relieving mental effort. Having a suicide plan provides a sense of control by: being ‘able to act’; ‘having an option’; and, ‘having an obstacle’. Having a suicide plan relieves mental effort by: providing resolution; reducing the need to control mental urges; fixing the future, where uncertainty about the future is relieved; and, things not mattering as much. Having a suicide plan can be a protective factor against suicide as well as an indicator of risk. Our analysis suggests that an exploration of both the costs and benefits to someone of having a suicide plan would inform appropriate intervention design for people in suicidal distress.
Anarchist terrorism of bygone and jihadi terrorism of our days show obvious differences but also some similarities. This essay analyses them focusing on four aspects: the concept of terrorism as propaganda, which was pioneered by anarchists and has inspired the spectacular attacks by Al Qaeda; the similarities and differences between anarchist and jihadi ideologies, with special reference to the religious traits of anarchism and the anarchisant traits of jihadism; the use by both of the concept of martyrdom; and finally that decentralized type of organization which was peculiar of anarchism and may become common in the new phase of the global terrorist jihad.
The expression of an Islamic political radicalism in Britain has been one of the most dramatic developments in recent decades. Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics explores the nature of this phenomenon by analysing the origins of Islam and its historical contact with Western Europe and Britain, and the emergence of Islamic political radicalism in the Muslim world and in the West.
John S. Beaty, Program Manager (Capture and Implementation), Editor of the attached unpublished work. Distributed 10/12/2007. Available on the world wide web at the following link: http://epic.org/foia/dhs/terahertz/DHS-THz-15.pdf
This article explores the social mechanisms that lead to the emergence of suicide attacks in new theatres, as well as factors influencing the frequency of such suicide attacks, by studying one of the states in which suicide attacks have most recently occurred – Somalia. The article argues that a suicide attack in the Somali setting seems to be a well-planned reaction to diplomatic or military moves by opposing parties in the conflict. However, it also poses that the initial emergence of suicide attacks in Somalia is grounded in ideological elements new to Somalia. The article thus argues that while frequency variations in suicide attacks are best understood as the result of rational calculations within an organisation, ideological elements and organisational belief systems have to be explored in order to understand the initial adoption of suicide attacks in Somalia.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This paper is focused on the meaning of the artist’s ‘theatre of violence’ and self-sacrifice in Charlie Brooker’s The National Anthem (2011), a parable of power and resistance in the age of technology. To interpret ‘the first great artwork of the 21th century’ (as this resistance is called in the film), I critically draw on Jean Baudrillard’s post-Maussian theory of spectacular terror and on Walter Benjamin’s reflection on technology and the aestheticization of violence. Technology and mass media carve out a ‘domain of the sensible’ where hegemonic power and reactive violence are, as in The National Anthem, theatrically staged with contrasting effects, carnivalesque and dramatic, funny and abject. In Brooker’s film, the aestheticization of dominant power and subversive violence obliterate, and at the same time unveil, a moral problematic. By manoeuvring the logic of the spectacle of hegemonic power, the artist short-circuits it, and clings to the aspiration to an alternative or a political ‘heteroglossia’ (Bakhtin) the staging of a global carnival is a moral protest meant to free people from the delusions of political and mass media power.
After September 11, 2001, Baudrillard wrote a comment that outraged many:1
The fact that we have dreamt of this event and that everyone without exception has dreamt of it—because no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree—is unacceptable. Yet it is a fact, and one which can indeed be measured by the motive of violence of all that has been said and written in the effort to dispel it. At a pinch, we can say that they did it, but we wished for it. If this is not taken into account, the event loses any symbolic dimension.… This goes far beyond hatred for the dominant world power among the disinherited and the exploited, among those who have ended up on the wrong side of the global order. Even those who share in the advantages of that order have this malicious desire in their hearts. Allergy to any definitive order, to any definitive power, is happily universal, and the two towers of the World Trade Center were perfect embodiments, in their very twinness, of that order.
(The Spirit 6)
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