The festivity on the Islamic camp is unimaginable.
Maria (tells, she) lives in Beirut & her neighbour is a devout Muslim scholar smiling at her "you see, I told you we are victims".

Can you elaborate a little.. or do you simply want to make a general statement?

Moshe, stated that we have to kill a certain number of the "rag-headed childern". "The IMF is looked at as being weak and we must kill childern for they was worthless anyway. It was no accident the killing of those kids. We meant to kill them. Do you think we are so inept as to make a mistake like that?" It is revenge for the kids killed in the streets of Israel.

The radical fringe of militant fundamentalist Islam are true sociopaths. They honestly believe that real life, here in the real world, is worthless. They believe that when we "die" we actually just go somewhere else and live forever, so this short experience is a trifle not worthy of consideration.

That is what's wrong with them and that is why we will never be able to reach an understanding with them. They are clinically insane.

They honestly believe that real life, here in the real world, is worthless. They believe that when we "die" we actually just go somewhere else and live forever, so this short experience is a trifle not worthy of consideration.


I am interested in knowing why so many people believe this about Islamic suicide bombers.

The reason I ask is because we have had incidences of suicide bombing in India (in fact one of our Prime Ministers was killed by a female suicide bomber). Most of these are from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist/Hindu country.
http://www.spur.asn.au/chronology_of_suicide_bomb_attacks_by_Tamil_Tigers _in_sri_Lanka.htm

Also, in the ME or in Asia, I have never heard this justification.
I did not even realise how common this conception was until I started writing on this forum. I have personally alwasys believed that suicide bombers (who are usally single with stunted emotional and psychological development and arise in areas with long drawn out and brutal wars) were a product of their environment.

Could you tell me the reason for this belief?

Sam,

India is a beautifull country (a tad too many people in Bombay....).

Many Islamic Radicals believe that when they die fighting a Jihad or for God they automatically go to heaven.

I cannot answer your question about hindu/buddists as I am not familiar with any suicidal buddists (that would seem to conflict with basic buddist beliefs).

You dont see suicide bomber Christians as it has been a long held conservative Christian belief that if you commit suicide you cannot go to Heaven.

As usual it all comes down to Religion.

Sam,

India is a beautifull country (a tad too many people in Bombay....).

Many Islamic Radicals believe that when they die fighting a Jihad or for God they automatically go to heaven.

I cannot answer your question about hindu/buddists as I am not familiar with any suicidal buddists (that would seem to conflict with basic buddist beliefs).

You dont see suicide bomber Christians as it has been a long held conservative Christian belief that if you commit suicide you cannot go to Heaven.

As usual it all comes down to Religion.

Afraid not

''Dying to Win" draws on a thorough database of all suicide attacks recorded since the contemporary practice was born during the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s: a total of 315 incidents through 2003, involving 462 suicidal attackers. Of the 384 attackers for whom Pape has data, who committed their deeds in such danger zones as Sri Lanka (where the decidedly non-fundamentalist, quasi-Marxist Tamil Tigers have used suicide attacks since 1987 in their fight for a Tamil homeland), Israel, Chechnya, Iraq, and New York, only 43 percent came from religiously affiliated groups. The balance, 57 percent, came from secular groups. Strikingly, during the Lebanese civil war, he says, some 70 percent of suicide attackers were Christians (though members of secular groups).

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/07/03/why_do_suicide_bombers_do_it/

Interesting article Sam.

I guess its only Western Christians then. That does surprise me as it is a core belief of Christanity that those who commit suicide cannot go to Heaven. Maybe thier 'secular group' teaches differently?

"The balance, 57 percent, came from secular groups. Strikingly, during the Lebanese civil war, he says, some 70 percent of suicide attackers were Christians (though members of secular groups)."

This seems to be a conflicting statement- if they were Christian and part of a Secular Group wouldnt that put them in the 43% as being part of a religious group (Christian).

It is interesting to note the rest of the article:
In the views of some critics, Pape's original article erred by dismissing all talk of religious or cultural factors in suicide bombings. If suicide attacks were a universally rational weapon of the weak, the critics argued, we would see them everywhere--and we don't. In fact, in a fascinating contribution to the new essay collection ''Making Sense of Suicide Missions" (Oxford), the Yale political scientist Stathis Kalyvas and a Spanish colleague, Ignacio Sanchez Cuenca, point out that FARC, the Columbian rebel group, once hatched a plan to fly a plane into that country's presidential palace but could find no willing pilot, even after dangling an offer of $2 million for the pilot's family. In addition, the Basque group ETA has rejected offers from its members to blow themselves up for the cause.

and

Then there's the question of Islam. There may be non-Islamic suicide bombers, Gambetta writes. But ''we do not have even a single case of a non-Islamic faith justifying" suicide missions.

Once again a very interesting article Sam, just please include both aspects :)

I guess its only Western Christians then.

Something interesting
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/821425/posts

And there are Sinhalese Christians in Sri lanka

This seems to be a conflicting statement- if they were Christian and part of a Secular Group wouldnt that put them in the 43% as being part of a religious group (Christian).

One example of secular Christians:
Hezbollah suicide bombers in the period 1982-1986 were 71% Christian, 21% Communist/Socialist, 8% Islamist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win:_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terro rism


Once again a very interesting article Sam, just please include both aspects :)


Of course, but the concept of honorable suicide is not a new one either.

Suicide For Honor And Country
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/07/21/sunday/main217634.shtml

And its easy to confuse ideology with motives, especially when prejudice and self-interest take precedence. :)

Some little known facts about suicide bombers:

http://www.alternet.org/audits/35815/
http://www.therazor.org/?p=433

Martyr missions made their official twentieth-century debut in the Second World War with the Kamikazes; they showed up again in the 1960s, when Viet Cong sympathizers exploded themselves amidst U.S. troops. Their debut in the Islamic world was not until the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. Facing a far superior Iraqi military, Ayatollah Khomeini rounded up children by the tens of thousands and sent them in "human waves" to overrun the enemy. While Persians accrued losses in the war against Iraq, the role of the martyr in defensive jihad was exalted. As in U.S. wars, the dead became heroes.

The Iranian example had seismic effects. Lebanese groups appropriated the notion of a martyr's death almost immediately, employing human bombs against Israeli and international presences in Lebanon as early as 1981. Half of the human bombs in Lebanon were perpetrated by secular organizations. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka perfected the tactic, becoming the most professional cadre in the world. Human bombs were also used by the Kurdish PKK against Turkey, the Sikhs in India, and the Palestinians against Israel, to name a few.

When we think of suicide bombers, we think of extremism. But the cases above locate the bomber as one popularly supported element in a coherent campaign of resistance against a perceived occupier, and such was true for 95 percent of the bombings prior to 2003. Note that allegiance to resistance appeared to trump allegiance to religion. And most important, for bombers and for the publics that exalted them, the notion of self-sacrifice would not have existed except for the context: a perceived necessity for group defense.

Can you elaborate a little.. or do you simply want to make a general statement?
I have penpals Arabs, including from Lubnan (Lebanon). Let's just be suffice with that for now.