I meant psychologists…but suicide bombers are not much better, i agree.

I think ‘terrorist-explaining’ is the new Jean Sassoon genre on Mozlems.

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.

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