Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Paul Kix, in the Boston Globe, reports on a challenge to the consensus view of suicide bombers:
The traditional view of suicide bombers is well established, and backed by the scholars who study them. The bombers are, in the post-9/11 age, often young, ideologically driven men and women who hate the laissez-faire norms of the West — or at least the occupations and wars of the United States — because they contradict the fundamentalist interpretations that animate the bombers’ worldview. Their deaths are a statement, then, as much as they are the final act of one’s faith; and as a statement they have been quite effective. They propagate future deaths, as terrorist organizers use a bomber’s martyrdom as propaganda for still more suicide terrorism.
But Williams is among a small cadre of scholars from across the world pushing the rather contentious idea that some suicide bombers may in fact be suicidal. At the forefront is the University of Alabama’s Adam Lankford, who recently published an analysis of suicide terrorism in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. Lankford cites Israeli scholars who interviewed would-be Palestinian suicide bombers. These scholars found that 40 percent of the terrorists showed suicidal tendencies; 13 percent had made previous suicide attempts, unrelated to terrorism. Lankford finds Palestinian and Chechen terrorists who are financially insolvent, recently divorced, or in debilitating health in the months prior to their attacks. A 9/11 hijacker, in his final note to his wife, describing how ashamed he is to have never lived up to her expectations. Terrorist recruiters admitting they look for the “sad guys” for martyrdom.
As so often in academia, what should be a discussion has been turned into a pointless turf-battle. If you think about it for even a minute, you'll see that the two interpretations are complimentary, not contradictory. Obviously there's a particular ideology at work here: Suicidal Wiccans don't strap on explosive belts and head for the nearest crowded subway. And it is also common sense to surmise that terrorist recruiters would take a particularly keen interest in kids who are already eager to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Especially in this light, I was gratified to hear from Salim Mansur this morning that Canada's parliament passed Bill S-215 today into law. This bill amends Canada's criminal code to cite suicide-bombing, explicitly, as a capital crime. Your first reaction to that sentence might be, as mine was, "I'm entirely with you in spirit, Canadian lawmakers, but I'm not sure you've thought that one through." But it actually makes sense. The targets of the legislation are the suicide bombers' sponsors, organizers, recruiters, financers and teachers--who would now be defined as accessories to a capital crime. The above-cited research suggests that they tend to be more attached to their lives than those they recruit, so deterrence is, indeed, a relevant concept here.
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Nov '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
This story does not even begin to touch the sordid reality of Islamic suicide-bombers.
Some are coerced by terrorists who threaten the reluctant bomber's family. Some are completely unwitting; they have no idea that, during the night, terrorists quietly stuffed the trunk of the family car with high-explosives. In particularly despicable cases, the terrorists will put a suicide belt on a mentally-handicapped child, slip the kid a buck, and say, "Why don't you go over to that crowded Jewish restaurant and get yourself an ice cream?" And US Army autopsies report that virtually all suicide-bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan are juiced to the gills on opiates. Many wrap their genitals in aluminum foil in order to protect the family jewels for the benefit of the 72 heavenly whores. Talk about depravity...
More to the original point, I believe that suicidal feelings are much more widespread in the Islamic world than is generally reported. In particular, it seems to be a real problem among Saudi youths. The reason is simple: being a Muslim is a miserable way to live — especially if you are a woman. There is your "politically incorrect remark for the week."
Oct '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Good for Canada! Sadly, it will be at least two years before we here in the USA can even indulge the fantasy that we can follow Canada's lead. That somehow appears to ring strange. Actually, not noted in your comments is the fact that some suicide bombers actually survive. It lends rather an important emphasis on success in that particular profession.
Jun '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Just to add to Lady Kurobara's remarks, let's not forget the elementary schools even in relatively moderate Islamic countries like Jordan where boys and girls as young as five and six years old are applauded and praised for standing and shouting until tears streak down their faces that they'd be willing to be martyrs for the jihad. It's a sick culture of brainwashing and one can only hope and pray that if there is a hell that the adults who have been condoning or encouraging this evil practice are or will someday be roasting in it.
Edited on Dec 11, 2010 at 9:10amOct '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
How do you have a capital crime in a country with no capital punishment?
Edited on Dec 11, 2010 at 9:42amRe: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Good Berean: How do you have a capital crime in a country with no capital punishment? · Dec 11 at 9:41am
Edited on Dec 11 at 09:42 am
You don't. I asked myself the same question, and came to the conclusion that it's a relic of a legal category--but I'd be curious to hear a more complete explanation of this from an expert. What this seems to mean is that suicide bombing has been defined as a unique category of egregious crime such that any individual or party involved in any way with the planning or execution of it can be brought to court. Among the goals:
Oct '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
I am proud of my government for passing this legislation. Thank you for discussing this Claire because I had no idea that this was even going on. I am not a legal expert but this law will give the Department of Justice broad power to hold anyone involved in suicide bombing to account, both criminally and financially. Arguably what is more important is the symbolic message this sends, that the West is willing and able to fight back against this reprehensible crime.
Dec '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
As you say, Claire, the two motives are mutually-reinforcing. The ideologues offer the desperate and hopeless a spiritual release from their pain, to wit:
A WOMAN on a suicide bombing mission was caught at an Israeli checkpoint with 20lbs of high explosives hidden in her underwear...
Security officials working at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, said they became suspicious of al-Biss because her gait was strange...
Residents of Gaza are only allowed through the Erez checkpoint subject to strict rules. Al-Biss was being allowed through to receive treatment at an Israeli hospital after she was disfigured at her refugee camp home when a gas canister exploded on a fire while she was cooking...
During her television interview, which lasted more than an hour, al-Biss appeared confident and defiant but became shaky.
"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she began. But she became tearful and began to contradict herself. At one point she denied she wanted to carry out an attack. When she denied any involvement in a suicide bombing, her minders intervened.
Aug '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
In any polygamous culture, there are a lot of excess young men who know perfectly well that their chances of finding a mate and having a family are close to nil. It's not surprising that many of them turn to martyrdom.
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Actually, it is surprising. When middle-aged Western women sense this conclusion, they go into endless therapy and put up sad ads on Match.com suggesting the triumph of hope over experience. "Martyrdom" is by no means a predictable, rational solution to the problem of recognizing that ones chances of finding a mate and having a family are close to nil. It requires quite a bit of cultural mediation, as they put it, to get from Point A to Point B.
Jul '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
If you want a glimpse into the minds of suicide bombers, watch the movie "Paradise Now". These sorry losers believe they've been humiliated by the West and by Israel and that the only way to remove the stain of humiliation is through martyrdom.
Nov '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
The terrible irony, of course, is that the pain, hopelessness and desperation come from living under a repressive theocracy run by those same ideologues.
Aug '10
Re: Suicide Bombing as a Capital Crime
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Actually, it is surprising. When middle-aged Western women sense this conclusion, they go into endless therapy and put up sad ads on Match.com suggesting the triumph of hope over experience. "Martyrdom" is by no means a predictable, rational solution to the problem of recognizing that ones chances of finding a mate and having a family are close to nil. It requires quite a bit of cultural mediation, as they put it, to get from Point A to Point B.
It would be surprising in our culture, or in most cultures, but apparently in the Muslim world there are a lot of people doing their best to lure people into martyrdom. The leftovers in any culture are ripe for being turned into fodder for some sort of cannon or another, whether it's suicide bombing, the wrong side of the drug war, or even just petty crime.