Would this stop suicide bombers?

Great Debates
1

Suicide bombers, for the most part, appear to have one thing in common – they seem to be religious nuts of one stripe or another. This suggests, to me at least, that there is a way to get inside their warped little minds and twist them to our advantage.

For instance, from what I’ve heard about the 9//11 hijackers, they were convinced that they would get immediate access to paradise. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184

Moe Atta even spent his last days chanting and praying and one of the others was quoted as saying “today we will be with the women of paradise”, in reference to the promised 72 virgins. (side note: Virgins? Bleh - let’s get some gals in here that know what they’re doing).

I’ve also read that devout Muslims are inordinately appalled and disgusted by pigs and swine – Google “Islam and Pork” for any number of references. I even saw a news report, “60 Minutes” IIRC, that said Miss Piggy dolls were confiscated from kids coming into Saudi Arabia, so they are truly hung up about the cloven hoof.

So here’s the deal: (yeah, I know we’ll never do it) Every time one of these nutjobs offs himself, we scrape up whatever bits and pieces we can find, and FEED IT TO SOME PIGS!! There could be a field somewhere, populated by wild hogs, the more disgusting the better, like those that almost got Hannibal Lecter in the movies, for the job. It would be widely publicized, that Americans and whoever else wanted to join in, always feed the remains of SB’s to PIGS!! And we should make it abundantly clear that there are only two things that can happen to anything fed to a pig: the molecules in the “food” either become incorporated into the flesh of the pig itself, or are expelled as PIG EXCREMENT! Which by the way, is occasionally eaten again for another trip.

So there you go, Mr. Suicide Bomber, as a result of your “brave martyrdom”, you’ve become, in the most intimate way possible, the most disgusting thing possible. Wonder if the family will be bragging about you and putting up billboards in your honor?

Let’s contemplate the theological implications of all this. When dipwad shows up in fantasy paradise for his mansion of gold, and rivers of wine and asks the 72 virgins who wants to be first, I can see all 72 of them turning their noses up and saying “I don’t think so, pig boy.” (Except maybe a couple of big ones who may be into it.) The family was supposed to get a free pass to paradise, too - that’s probably not gonna happen. Maybe we could even find the Islamic equivalent of one our phony televangelists who, for a few bucks, would vouch for its canonical accuracy.

Whadya think, Cecil?

Osama, our porcine friends await your arrival for dinner.

2

A similar thread from 2001: Hog’s Blood (warning! Wildest Bill thread!)

Post 20 seems to cover it.

3

I agree. I can think of no religion that has a theology in which one is punished for actions taken against one. Feeding their dead bodies to pigs, (or wrapping their dead bodies in pig skins), would be an action imposed on them that would cause many uncommitted co-religionists to hate whoever committed the sacrilege, but would only confer honor upon whoever was violated. (Look what he or she suffered for our god!)

Rather pointless.

4

Has the Fox News central secretariat dropped the term ‘homicide bomber’?

5

There it is. It would be sort of like burning Korans in response to IED detonations–a guarantee that attacks will increase.

6

All you have to do is for a politic figure
to deny that it is done,
or is even considered to be done.

:wink:

7

We’ve had this argument around here before. No, it would not help, and the theologically it wouldn’t work. On the other hand, the terrorists would get to add ‘corpse defiling’ to their list of complaints againts the US.

8

Since suicide bombers are not four year olds, I suspect that it would not stop them any more than Obama declaring “shield infinity plus infinity” over the continental USA would.

9

Couldn’t we tell them that they don’t get 72 virgins each, but 72 between them, and they are a bit worse for wear now?

10

However, as you raise the key threat of Toddler Bombers, we must stipulate that for those suicide bombers in the 3-5 age range, this could be a viable method. Of course so might picking them up and burping them.

11

Remember the suggestion a few months ago to “test” airline passengers by making them step on the Koran before boarding a plane? If they wouldn’t step on the Koran, they must be extremists, and then they’d be subjected to additional screening.

That idea was at least somewhat more compelling than the OP. I don’t mean it was a good idea, just… interesting in a trainwreck sort of way.

12

Since the bombers themselves are likely to be virgins as well, the 72 they get are the 72 bombers ahead of them.

13

The whole “crash a plane and get 72 virgins” came out of something someone remembered from the Koran about righteous Muslims going to a beautiful garden after death (“paradise” is from an old Persian word for garden) and be attended by male servants called ghilman and female houris. It’s meant to comfort us by telling ourselves that we’re fighting people who believe in silly Arabian Nights fairy tales. “Hardy-har har, stupid rag-heads.”

The reality is that those who have something to gain by waging jihad, but not the means to do so via anything resembling modern warfare, scoop unhappy kids out of refugee camps, youth hostels, dorm rooms, their parent’s basement spare room, etc. and tell them what they themselves have already internalized: that their lives are hopeless and they’re worthless, and the only chance they have to do anything in life is to sacrifice themselves in this desperate war that must be fought.

Their target demographic for indoctrination has shifted to females in the last few years for two reasons: for a long time we didn’t look at females as closely as males at checkpoints, and from their viewpoint, girls are second-class citizens and who cares if they get blown up?

To be fair and honest, you can go to any USMC base and find Marines who’ll swear that before they enlisted, they were just wasting their lives, gang-banging or running wild, and the Corps gave them focus and meaning. **No, I’m NOT saying that our Marines are the equivalent of their suicide bomber, so don’t try to dismiss my point by going off half-cocked. **My point is this: how difficult would it be to find kids who couldn’t pass the Marines’ psychological and physical requirements, disaffected misfits or hoplessly poor, undervalued kids, who nonetheless could be made pawns to a cause that had no qualms about killing innocents?

Happy, well-fed people with goals in life don’t make good suicide bombing recruits. Could we address that, instead of religious fanaticism? Becasue you’ll notice that the senior religious fanatics aren’t the ones strapping on bombs.

14

Except, a number of notorious terrorists sent on suicide missions aren’t poor, starving, hopeless people. How many of the 19 hijackers were raised in middle class families?

15

Slate article about suicide bombers.

Robert Pape wrote a book about suicide bombers in which he claims that the overwhelming majority of them are acting in response to what they see as a foreign military occupation of their land, not a religious issue.

16

Silly Arabian Nights fairy tales are mostly responsible for this mess. Of course I don’t just mean Islam. But in any case…

Several of them were. But my general impression is that in the years since, Al Qaeda has lost the ability to convince educated kids from the middle class to blow themselves up. They’ve alienated those people because, after all, they attack a lot of Muslims themselves and they have not improved anybody’s lot in life. As a result they’re left with people who might have enthusiasm for their cause, but don’t have a lot of skills. People like the Underwear Bomber, in other words.

17

[quote=“Marley23, post:16, topic:535964”]

Silly Arabian Nights fairy tales are mostly responsible for this mess. Of course I don’t just mean Islam. But in any case…[/quoe]

Not sure how that explains the Tamils…

Ah. Mate, while I have a similar sense of things, I’m afraid your mention of the Nigerian lad doesn’t make your point.

That kid is from the elite of the elite of Nigeria. His Papa is a leading figure in Nigerian banking, family is insanely wealthy.

Of course, the kid also seemed to be known for a long time as being fairly awkward and socially uncomfortable. Searching for identity, etc. Rather more like your Unabomber profile.

18

Contrary to the OP’s assumptions, most Muslim suicide bombers are neither poor, nor uneducated, nor even particularly religious.

Most of the 9/11 conspirators spent their spare time getting lap dances at titty bars, not praying at the mosque.

19

??

You base this sweeping assertion on what?

I thought that this had been debunked (most = majority).

20

I’m just curious - do the 9/11 bombers have a memorial anywhere? Surely someone somewhere has set up a shrine glorifying their actions?

I know the families of suicide bombers are known to commemorate their actions, but are there public monuments to their “achievements”, or is it more like their dirty secret that nobody likes to acknowledge, similar to discussion about the nazis in Germany?