What’s so special about suicide bombs?
What makes them more heinous than a package bomb or car bomb?
Plenty of western terrorist organisations have used bombs, and plenty of westerners support(ed) their use, some even wrote songs about it.
Actually, I would say that they are. Plenty of films i’ve seen have the heroes (or sidekicks) engaging in a final “last stand” against overwhelming odds to give the main hero enough time to disarm the bomb/rescue the hostages/eat a sandwich.
Suicide bombings, OTOH, I would agree aren’t.
Well, the Japanese had their kamikazes and the West and Japan seem to be coexisting rather well.
The difference is that it’s not glorified by average people in the West. Can you find many people that idolize the OK bomber, Tim whats-his-name (McVeigh?). I know I couldn’t. The Unibomber? Nope, people pretty much hate him, too. The question is whether suicide bombers are heroes in Muslim culture, which nobody can seem to give me a straight answer or opinion on.
Nothing makes suicide bombs more “heinous” than package bombs, but the psychology involved with it points to a pretty serious rift between Western and Muslim thought. How can we fight suicide bombers when we can’t even comprehend the thought and emotional processes that go into it? My point is that it’s starting to seem like Western and Muslim culture are too foreign and alien to each other to exist peacefully together.
Suicide bombers aren’t on the same level as Kamikazes. For example, I can understand (not necessarily agree with, but at least comprehend) the idolization of a suicide bomber who’s able to sneak in and kill 18 soldiers at a military base. I can’t understand how it’s possible to idolize a suicide bomber that kills 18 people at a pizza parlor.
I imagine this may get me a ton of dissenting opinions, which is why I didn’t say it before. But oh well.
People glorify Jesus. I’m reasonably sure most Christians believe he knew that he wasn’t going to be saved from crucifixion. The point could be made that Jesus sacrificed himself for a greater cause - which is how I imagine suicide bombers also look at things. I think people are hung up too much on the actual bomb part of things, and less on the actual suicide. I think there are plenty of people who would understand sacrificing yourself if it meant helping your people. I think we can in fact comprehend it.
Also I would add that Western and Muslim culture aren’t exactly totally seperate things. There are Muslims living in the West, you know. I really don’t like this whole argument; it seems very much like the kind of thing that leads to genocide. Not that i’m accusing anyone in this thread of wanting that - but I think there are people somewhere saying “Nah, we can’t get along. Fuck it. Kill 'em all.”
Unfortunately I believe that the reality is that they ARE glorified in the mainstream Muslim culture.
Think of the “America, FUCK YA!” crowd. It’s sort of the Muslim equivalent.
There is a culture war. Chappacula and DevNull I think are overstating it, but I think Der Trihs is understating it.
Dinesh D’Souza tried to sell the idea that Conservative Christians and Muslims had common ground.
I think the fact is that Secular Humanism being based off of western values derived from ancient philosophy and Judeo-Christian morality, has a lot more commonality with Christian fundamentalists than Muslim ones.
They are glorified in most of the material that I’ve seen, They are called a shahid, or martyr, and treated as heroes. It’s also viewed as an express train to paradise, complete with 72 virgins and other goodies.
Well, let’s look at some actual numbers. From the Pew Global Initiatives poll in 2005 ( which showed a drop in support for suicide bombing from 2002, except in Jordan ):
Is violence against civilians targets in defence of Islam justified?
Jordan ( population = ~6,000,000 )
Often/Sometimes = 57%
Rarely = 31%
Never = 11%
Don’t Know = 1%
Lebanon ( population = ~4,000,000 )
O/S = 39%
R = 19%
N = 33%
DK = 10%
Pakistan ( population = ~165,000,000 )
O/S = 25%
R = 19%
N = 46%
DK = 10%
Indonesia ( population = ~235,000,000 )
O/S = 15%
R = 18%
N = 66%
DK = 3%
Turkey ( population = ~71,000,000 )
O/S = 16%
R = 6%
N = 66%
DK = 13%
Morocco ( population = ~34,000,000 )
O/S = 13%
R = 3%
N = 79%
DK = 3%
Of the above countries, Lebanon and Jordan, both, in their own ways, on the frontlines of the Palestinian conflict, are definitely in the Middle East. Turkey and Pakistan usually are not considered Middle Eastern countries, though a few do extend it out that far. Morocco is part of the larger ME/NA - Middle East/North Africa, often combined for cultural reasons as part of the same Arab-speaking world. Indonesia definitely isn’t Middle Eastern by even the most generous standard.
The above doesn’t show how many would consider suicide bombers as ‘martyrs’, but it’s probably fair to say it is some lesser proportion of the universe of supporters of violence against civilians in general. Suicide, afterall, is nominally a grave sin in Islam. Justifying suicide attacks as a religiously approved action has taken quite a bit of doublespeak to pull off.
So do over 50% of the population in the Middle East consider suicide bombers ‘martyrs’? Possibly, but I expect it is rather south of that number. My expectation is that only Iran ( on the outer edge of the ME ) and ( definitely ) the Occupied Territories are likely to yield support at levels approaching Jordan. Most countries should be lower, especially in North Africa, as with Morocco. However it might still be pretty high in certain locales.
Are suicide bombers popular heroes among Muslims in general? No, I wouldn’t say so. Certain locales, yes. Worldwide, almost definitely not.
- Tamerlane
Tamerlane I think support for suicide bombers comes largely from Arabs. You don’t hear that much about Persians (Iran) blowing themselves up. Jordan and Lebanon are the only two really Arab countries mentioned there. Conspicuously absent from your list is Saudi Arabia and the smaller satellite nations surrounding it like Oman, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar etc… It’s interesting though that there is less support in Lebanon where they have more connection to Palestine, and the most support in Jordan where we rarely ever hear much about. Syria is another conspicuous absence.
As is being discussed elsewhere on the SD, Americans were funding terrorists, and buying them drinks and singing songs about how brave they were.
Agreed.
Actually it is the Iranians that may have gotten the ball rolling on this. Khomeini ( ever flexible in his theology, despite popular opinion to the contrary ) justified essentially suicidal mass infantry attacks as a form of martyrdom. This was based on some rather bad analysis on just why the Iraqis had been so handily defeated in their invasion in Iran, plus the pressing lack of other resources other than manpower.
It was ( mostly Arab ) Lebanese Hezbollah, then stiffened by Iranian pasdaran incalculated with that ideology, that elaborated the whole suicide bombing thing. Hence the marine barracks incident in Lebanon.
So, no - the Iranians aren’t currently much on blowing themselves up. But they might be if anyone ever invaded Iran. IMO it’s pretty situational.
Morocco. Despite the Berber element, it is still a predominantly Arab state.
Lebanon is a very heterogenous state that’s gone through a lot and their are plenty of folks ( Druse, Muslim and Christian ) none too pleased with the idea of indiscriminate violence. Though Lebanon is notable for having produced ( like the Kurdish PKK ) secular suicide bombers.
Jordan is majority Palestinian by population and said population is very supportive of the intifida in general. Given the high emotions, I suspect it makes it easy to be an “armchair” supporter of such actions against the Israelis at least.
Morocco meanwhile reacted with enormous public revulusion when Islamist bombers struck inside their country.
Syria tends to kill or otherwise supress their native Islamists pretty efficiently. I suspect the numbers there would be somewhere between the Jordanian and Moroccan extremes, but I’mn not sure where.
- Tamerlane
(What follows is my opinion.)
You are correct that at this time, there just aren’t very many fundamentalist Christians, at least in the USA, clamoring to kill groups of people. Part of that has to do with the general affluence and overall life-contentment of those fundamentalists (and most everyone else) in the USA. It’s a different story, by and large, in many Muslim countries. I think many of those religious people feel marginalized by the West and it’s dominance of world culture.
And, there are more fundamentalists holding significant social/political power in Muslim countries (as a group, and for the elite fundamentalists, as individuals) than there are Christian fundamentalists holding such significant powers in the West, though it’s getting closer all the time in the USA. Our president is, after all, if not a fundamentalist Christian, then close to it. In Europe, the Christian fundamentalists are mostly shut out of such power, IMO, because of the progressiveness and liberalism (socially moreso than politically) dominant in European society. But the USA is somewhere between Europe and Muslim dominant countries in terms of fundamentalist’s power within the social/political framework.
(sigh) That all got rather long-winded. Basically, I guess I’m saying that there is not the support for such religious-oriented atrocities in the West because we are not, IMO, as dominated by religious fundamentalists. But there are Christians who would like to be as dominant or preferably, much more dominant than the Muslim fundamentalists are currently in Muslim dominated countries.
If the West ever became as saturated with such close-minded religious dominance and the anti-rationalism that comes with it, then the West would run a real risk of experiencing from within it’s own largely Christian ranks the scale of savagery wrought by some Muslim fundamentalists today.
We have seen such horrors offered up by Christian dominated society before. Thankfully, rampant rationalism has moved us away from that at the present, but it is an on-going fight. There are Christian religious sorts that strive mightily every day to move our society deeper and deeper into darkness.
That is why I say the Muslim and the Christian fundamentalists are on the “same team”.,
From where most of us sit, in the USA or the West, we perhaps over-generalize from vague impressions a homogenized bloc of all the world’s Muslims cheering every time humans are killed in the name of Allah.
I think many Muslims make similar crude generalizations when believing that every American is 100% behind every single killing the U.S. military perpetrates in the Iraq occupation.
Generalizations. Sometimes they are necessary and useful (a grizzly bear is charging toward me. I am going to generalize and assume he means me harm). Sometimes they are not (there’s an Arabic looking dude reading the Qu’ran on my bus. I’m going to generalize and assume he means me harm).
An awesome place to try to get inside other people’s heads, for the OP and anyone else who can’t fathom what suicide bombers etc are thinking is LinkTV . The page I’m linking to shows their documentaries about conflict in the ME, but they have all kinds of topics. Fascinating, intelligent stuff that strives to be objective. I saw the guys who run it speak at a seminar—one Palestinian guy and one Israeli. They showed us a clip where they went with each other into the houses of an Israeli government official and a most-wanted Palestinian sniper, and the Israeli guy interviewed the Palestinian sniper the Palestinian interviewed the government official. That kind of stuff, really interesting.
I disagree. There are some differences; first more of the fundie Christians appear to want the military to do the killing, or God ( haven’t you heard people rant about nuking the ME, or how all the atheists/liberals/Jews/whatever are going to suffer horribly in the End Times ? ). And second, there seems to be less agreement on who to kill among the extremists, probably because Christianty is more factionalized the Islam; that keeps them from, say, having the votes for invading and burning Vatican City.
Look at, say, Ireland; for whatever reason their extremists were willing to do their own killing, and the result was, you guessed it, terrorism.
I’ll say it again. Our culture leaves little room for dumbasses who should kill themselves for dumbass reasons.
Have we made room for more Branch Davidians and Heaven’s Gate cult members in our society? Or have we shunned their behavior as loony and treated their deaths as cases of loonyism gone tragically sad?
There is little room in our society for those who kill others without Congressional approval. Get that approval though, and woo-boy!
Life is going on smoothlike, globally. I believe you are engaging in either wishful thinking or you have been deluded by someone. The only countries who dislike us do not matter much to us in the long run (Iran, NK, Venezuela, Cuba). A country does not need much political capital when business is doing great… and business is going great. Let Chavez yap. Let Iran and NK rattle their swords. Let Cuba live in their socialist paradise. The grown ups have work to do anyway.
And . . . everybody else.
I always felt sorry for the 72 virgins.
Is suicide bombing somehow intrinsic to Hindu culture? Because the Hindu Tamil Tiger terrorists in Sri Lanka use a lot of it.
I think we need to distinguish between a religion as such and particular ethnic subcultures and/or political groups that exist within that religion. As Tamerlane pointed out, only a minority of the world’s Muslims support suicide bombing. Just because there are some Muslim-majority cultures where suicide bombing does get approval doesn’t mean that it’s in any way intrinsic to “Muslim thought” as a whole.
Before agreeing that a particular practice is somehow truly representative of “Muslim thought” (or Christian thought, or Hindu or Jewish thought, or whatever), I’d want to see some evidence that at least a sizeable majority of the world’s Muslims (or Christians or Hindus or Jews or whatever) actually support it.
Read this. 