Tim Blair offers us a free kick at psychologists (for which I thank him); those people who earn a living by examining the psychological entrails of other people and offer entirely useless suggestions (e.g. perhaps all your problems are caused by some sort of suppressed sexual weirdness, or perhaps you would be happier if your father bought you a red tricycle, or if you hadn’t named your pet ferret “Theodora”).
Psychology Today reports:
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings.
and
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don’t get any wives at all.
Which is surprising because it is factually untrue, and its untruth is easily demonstrable. To begin with the rate of polygamy is very low in Muslim countries, well below the (unreferenced) 50% suggested in the article. The places where polygamy is highest (amongst Muslims AND Christians), Africa, has a low rate of suicide based warfare. In places such as Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, where polygamy is almost unheard of, there is a high incidence of suicide bombing. Clearly the prima facie argument here must be that in these areas, suicide bombing is a crude tactic of asymmetric warfare.
Suicide bombing in the modern era was perfected by secular Tamil nationalists of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. The LTTE have committed hundreds of suicide bombings. In this article in Time magazine, the LTTE explain in great detail how they “build a suicide bomber”. Notably the reporters interviewed an all FEMALE suicide bombing crew. The following are quotes from the women themselves regarding their motivations
Samandi’s chances of a normal life were shaky from the day she was born in Tamil Tiger territory in northern Sri Lanka. But Samandi said it was the death of 125 friends and neighbors in the government’s carpet-bombing of her village that forced her to put aside thoughts of anything much but death. “I saw all that, all that blood and all those bodies and I thought, ‘Tomorrow, I will die like this too. So I will join the L.T.T.E. and die for a reason’.
Almost nothing in Samandi’s life was left to personal choice. The only jewelry the Tiger women can wear are three dog tags, around the wrist, neck and waist that ensure identification of even the most dismembered of bodies. The Tigers enforce a hairstyle of two plaits tied in loops across the back of the head to avoid, so they say, hair snagging on bushes during an attack. Music is limited to revolutionary songs
It is safe to assume that a secular Tamil nationalist woman from a Hindu background is not becoming a suicide bomber in order to fulfill an evolutionary reproductive urge with the Hoor ul-Ayn of Paradise. Nor indeed are the hundreds of other Tamil suicide bombers, both men and women who are also secular, and motivated largely by military and nationalist objectives.
It remains only to dissect the pedigree of this absurd and patently false thesis. Professor Diego Gambetta’s book Making Sense of Suicide Missions is quoted as the reference for this article. I have not read his book, so I cannot determine if the reference accurately reflects Professor Gambetta’s view.
A credible source in this area of scholarship is Robert Pape, on the same subject, who has carefully documented all suicide bombings in the modern era and believes much more plausibly that there is a strategic logic to this form of warfare.
Update: Professor Gambetta has written to Austrolabe to clarify that the Psychology Today article misrepresents his views. “I have never held such a view, never even discussed it in my book or elsewhere and I disagree with it entirely,” he writes.
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Here is a review of Diego Gambetta’s Making Sense of Suicide Missions.
Moghadam, A. 2006. “Making Sense of Suicide Missions,” Political Science Quarterly, 121(1): 142-145.
The attacks of 11 September 2001 have filled entire library shelves with books on terrorism and Islam, and have sparked a jump in the number of works on “suicide terrorism.” Wisely, Oxford University professor Diego Gambetta has shunned the label “suicide terrorism” in this edited volume to focus instead on “suicide missions” -a term that allows the contributors to examine suicide attacks used not only by terrorist organizations, but also by insurgent groups (e.g., the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [LTTE]) and by conventional armies (Japan’s kamikaze). The product of this enterprise is a very readable, insightful, and methodologically rigorous volume that, despite raising more questions than it answers, stands as the most sophisticated book-length treatment of this burgeoning topic to date.
In his well-researched introductory chapter on the kamikaze, Peter Hill convincingly argues that rather than the “glory of dying for [the emperor]” (p. 24), it was the protection of family and country that motivated Japan’s suicide attack squads.
In the following chapter, on the Sri Lankan LTTE, Stephen Hopgood argues that the attacks of the organization’s elite suicide squad, the Black Tigers, “aim primarily to win the war, not to spread terror” (p. 55). He doubts that the cult of the LTTE’s leader, Vellupilai Prabhakaran, is a sufficient explanation for the use of suicide missions. Instead, he contends that the use of this modus operandi results from a desire to achieve victory in an asymmetric war against a more powerful enemy.
Next, Luca Ricolfi discusses suicide attacks against Israel using a statistically valuable analysis based on an integrated database. Ricolfi’s linkage of Lebanese and Palestinian suicide attacks against Israel, however, may raise some eyebrows, especially in light of the chapter’s deceiving title (”Palestinians, 1981-2003″).
In an intellectually stimulating essay (”Al Qaeda, September 11, 2001″), Stephen Holmes shows that the grievances of the September 11 attackers were not distinctively Islamic but were, at the very least, a blurring of personal frustration, political protest, and religious conviction. Although largely speculative, Holmes’s brilliant philosophical foray into the minds of the September 11 hijackers is the most thought-provoking treatment of this subject that has come to this reviewer’s attention.
Among the book’s many strengths is the broad wealth of methodologies used to offer insights into the genesis of suicide missions. Chapters 5 and 6 prove particularly useful in this regard. In chapter 5 (”Dying without Killing”), Michael Biggs examines self-immolations, a subject usually excluded from research on suicide attacks. In chapter 6 (”Killing without Dying”), Stathis Kalyvas and Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca address the question of why so few organizations embark on suicide missions. They observe that suicide missions tend to occur in organizations that enjoy either very limited or very strong support among their constituencies (for example, al Qaeda and Hamas, respectively). In the intermediate cases, such as those of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or the Irish Republican Army, “in which the degree of popular support is crucial but generally weak” (p. 223), suicide missions are a rarity.
Both Jan Elster, in chapter 7, and Diego Gambetta, in the concluding chapter, refer to the inherent complexity of suicide missions. Common themes of all suicide missions, the book’s editor summarizes, include the need for organizational support, which may vary in type and structure. Suicide missions, Gambetta contends, are carried out largely, although not exclusively, by the weaker side in asymmetric conflicts, and they “have been used to attack only democracies” (p. 265)-a statement that seems outdated in light of attacks increasingly directed against non-democratic states (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) as well as particular communities, such as the Shias in Iraq.
Indeed, the book’s limited ability to explain what increasingly crystallizes as a new generation of suicide attacks attributed to global jihadi groups-attacks that do not emanate from traditional organizations or that are not targeted exclusively at democracies, such as attacks in Turkey, Iraq, Morocco, and, most recently, the United Kingdom-is one of its few shortcomings.
ASSAF MOGHADAM
Harvard University
Well I dunno, he may be onto something. Fancy having FOUR women nag at you to put the rubbish out. I don’t think it’s the lack of women that drives suicide bombers, it’s the poor sods with more than their fair share {/sarcasm}
what a loathsome profession.
E, thats interesting, it remains to be seen if his work has been correctly reported by the website.
Umm Yasmin, it would very beneficial for a serious researcher like yourself to examine these books and asses their credibility. I agree that one of the lesser known disadvantages of polygamy and supporting multiple households, is that it is bin night, every night!
PG, I agree. Suicide bombing is a disgraceful, cowardly treacherous act, that is not supported by mainstream sunni religious opinion.
Suicide bombers do not tend to attack military targets, but rather civilian ones, increasing casualties amongst non-combatants, women and children. It is treacherous because they do not engage in direct military action but rather seek to create fitnah (disorder and panic), they punish with fire (also impermissible under the Islamic rules of war). It is also haram to take ones life in ANY circumstances.
Suicide bombing is just as bad in Haifa as it is in Islamabad.
Haha, I read that same article and found it amusing, if totally ridiculous!
Actually Monash Uni has some very good researchers (Pete Lentini and Dave Wright-Neville to name two) who are up to speed on this type of thing. I also heard Riaz Hassan (http://www.riazhassan.com/) speak a couple of weeks ago (including how he’d been harrassed by clueless law enforcement officials who didn’t bother to spend five seconds Googling him) and he had some very interesting things to say.
I think ‘terrorist-explaining’ is the new Jean Sassoon genre on Mozlems.
Baybers
I meant psychologists…but suicide bombers are not much better, i agree.
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