Pape and the Neocons Agree: Suicide Terrorists Are Broadly Supported

I missed a central point when writing about Robert Pape’s theory about suicide terrorism yesterday. Pape says that an essential aspect of the practice is that suicide terrorists are venerated by their societies. They are martyrs, and are assured of being martyrs before they act. Streets are named after them.

Of course this is what neocons and Zionists and at times the New York Times also point out: Suicide terrorists are exalted by Muslim/Palestinian society. Their pictures are garlanded. And there is the famous case of Palestinians dancing on rooftops when they saw the TV images of 9/11. The neocons say that this shows the degradation of Muslim society. "Why aren’t Palestinian leaders doing anything to stop these people beyond hollow condemnations?" Sam Harris would say that this shows that Islam is a backward religion.

Pape explains it a different way. He says that suicide terrorism–self-destruction and the murder of random innocents–so violates the norms of religion, all religions, that it must gain a social blessing from a different source. That source is a religious nationalism: the enraged feelings that are engendered in an occupied people when the occupier is of a different religion. So even though not every youth is a suicide bomber, the society broadly supports the bombers in their choice, for that society feels itself to be threatened.

The point here is that suicide bombing involves the demonization of another people: Christian Americans, Jewish Israelis. And nationalism, combined with religious difference, allows that process to occur. The occupier is seen as so alien and malignant that the most extreme methods are considered honorable.  I return to my question of yesterday: If it were purely Iraqi against Iraqi (without occupation, without religious difference, but yes, sectarian difference) would suicide terrorism occur? Or would social mechanisms then clamp down on it, the religious and authoritative enforcers of norms?

20 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments