Question: Discuss critically the widespread popular assumption that suicide bombing is a product of so-called ‘Holy Terror’.

“In the name of Allah the Avenger and in the name of Imam Khomeini I swear on the Holy Book to perform my sacred duty as a Child of Imam and a Soldier of Islam in our Holy War to restore to this world the Light of Divine Justice. May Allah be my Guide on the Path of Jihad and of qital [armed struggle].”¹

- Oath sworn by the children selected as ‘Volunteers for Martyrdom’ by the Bassidj militia during the Iraq-Iran war before they were deployed unarmed, sometimes in the tens of thousands, into the line of fire or across minefields to clear the way for the soldiers who followed them.

If one searches for the origins of modern suicide attacks, most scholars agree,² one must look to the Iranian Revolution. And there, one finds religion returning mightily into the political sphere and a baffled and confused U.S. watching from the side line – an ideal starting point to set the context for the discussion at hand. Before the revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had turned down a proposed assessment of the power of religious leaders in Iran as mere ‘sociology’ (as in, irrelevant).³ Barry Rubin sketches the U.S. (and Western) befuddlement:

“[T]he United States deemed it impossible that a fundamentalist government would take power; inconceivable that Khomeini would mean what he said; unexpected that Tehran would seize U.S. diplomats as hostages; unbelievable that Iran would continue a war with Iraq long after the battle was counter-productive; and irrational that Khomeini would call for the murder of author Salman Rushdie at the moment Iran needed Western investment for reconstruction.”⁴

This ‘revenge of God,’⁵ or the resurgence of religion in politics, was neither anticipated by Western policy makers nor academics. Modern European culture had, for very good historical reasons, assumed the secularisation thesis to be self-evidently true: Modernisation will, for better or worse, hurl religion into the dustbin of history.⁶ However, and, again, for better or worse, this is simply factually wrong.⁷ Globally, religion is as alive as ever and there are no signs of demise – the Iranian Revolution is just one case in point where the West utterly misperceived the role of religion in conflicts.⁸ The ‘odd case’, thus, is not Iranian religion, but Western secularism. Or, as a leading scholar of the sociology of religion, Peter Berger, rather comically remarks: “The difficult-to-understand phenomenon is not Iranian mullahs but American university professors.”⁹

It is therefore no surprise that David C. Rapoport sees a qualitative shift in terrorism after the Iranian Revolution. In his framework of ‘Four Waves of Rebel Terror’¹⁰, 1979 sets off the fourth wave, whose principal feature – ‘Holy Terror’¹¹ – is the subject of the discussion at hand. If one agrees with sociologists of religion (and I do), it has always been purely secular terror that was the ‘odd case’. ‘Ancient’ terror was mostly religiously inspired; then it was interrupted by three waves of secular terrorism; and now religion is relevant again.¹² Back to normal, so to speak.

Given these introductory remarks, one could mistake me for saying that now all terror is again religious and we can go drink tea. Of course that is not the case. But likewise will I refrain from simply pointing at the Tamil Tigers or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and hastily conclude that religion has nothing to do with suicide bombing.

I will now proceed by first defining the core concepts of the assumption that suicide bombing is a product of Holy Terror¹³: terrorism, suicide bombing and Holy Terror. As a dwarf in the field, I then attempt to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before me by first assembling their conclusions. I find there is overwhelming agreement on some of the basic factors that motivate suicide bombing. Hence, after distilling these common factors, I will try to assess ‘how much religion’ there is in these factors in reference to four organisations that conducted suicide attacks: The Iranian state (human waves), Hezbollah (suicide bombers), the Tamil Tigers (suicide bombers) and al Qaeda (suicide attacks). It will become obvious that religion, and especially a concept of an afterlife, is always found in the context of suicide attacks – including the Tamil Tigers. ‘Religion in general,’ if there is such a thing, does by no means cause suicide attacks, but transcendent beliefs can also not simply be ignored. Only multicausal models allow for such differentiated debate and, hence, the Assumption, in the monocausal form stated, should be considered wrong. Lastly, I will follow the insight of the ‘Thomas Theorem,’¹⁴ and very briefly assess the role the Assumption itself might play in society, never mind it is factually wrong.¹⁵ This last part concludes that the narrative of Islamic fundamentalism is probably an outcome of conflict escalation and as such totalises the conflict between Salafi Jihadists and the West; it is probably not deliberately manufactured.

So, before jumping into the fray, let us first define the core concepts and comment upon an internal tension they elicit. If ‘suicide bombing’ or ‘suicide attacking’ is “an operational method in which the very act of the attack is dependent upon the death of the perpetrator,”¹⁶ and terrorism means deliberately and violently targeting civilians,¹⁷ then it becomes obvious that there is no a priori reason to assume that all suicide is terrorism. This is precisely the point Assaf Moghadam¹⁸ and Jeff Goodwins¹⁹ criticise about Robert Pape’s definitions in his Dying to Win²⁰: Cases of suicide attacks “against uniformed soldiers that were on duty at the time the attacks took place” are readily found²¹ – but such attacks cannot be labelled terror without fatally biasing or inflating the concept.²² So, a rhetorical point can already be made against the Assumption: Suicide attacks against uniformed soldiers should by definition not be called terrorism, holy or not.

With such definitional points aside, I now turn to the actual substance of the Assumption, which I understand thus: For suicide attacks, religious (preferably Islamic) convictions are a requirement. Who would be so fanatic to blow themselves up without, e.g., a concept of an afterlife?

This Assumption corresponds to the concept of Holy Terror: Terrorism in which religion is not only supplying identity markers (as in Shi’ites vs. Sunnis, Catholic vs. Protestant), but also “justifications and organizing principles for the New World to be established.”²³ To illustrate this, consider the Hindu cult of the Thuggees (members are called “Thugs”, which is where the word comes from) who strangled innocent travellers solely to please Kali, the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction.²⁴ They are almost an incarnation the Weberian ideal-type²⁵ of Holy Terror: Terror purely for the pleasure of gods without any this-worldly, ‘secular’ reasons for it.

At this point, it is helpful to elicit Robert A. Pape’s argument, because he delivers the precise anti-thesis to Holy Terror: He holds that ‘suicide terrorism’ is of strategic utility against military occupation and that religion is not relevant beyond identity.²⁶ In other words, suicide bombers are invariably motivated by a struggle against occupation in this world, rather than the next. The motivations of suicide bombers are invariably ‘secular’; Holy Terror is negligible.²⁷

One can imagine all possible positions lying on a gradient between ideal-type Holy Terror and ideal-type ‘strategic logic’: The one pole informed by Rapoport’s Holy Terror holds that religious convictions are a requirement for suicide terrorism, and the other pole informed by Pape’s ‘strategic logic’ holds that suicide bombing always happens within a ‘secular’ strategic rationale.²⁸

The problem that arises is the differentiation between ‘using religion’ and ‘being genuinely inspired by religion.’²⁹ However, it is possible to operationalise it thus: Those inspired by religion are guided by the content of religious concepts; those using religion simply use its symbols without regards to their content; and, finally, purely secular suicide attackers use purely secular vocabulary.

To illustrate this, consider the concept of afterlife in Mohammad Sidique Khan’s unforgettable video message recorded before he and his friends committed the 7/7 bombings³⁰:

“We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation. … With this I leave you to make up your own minds and I ask you to make dua [prayer] to Allah almighty to accept the work from me and my brothers and enter us into gardens of paradise.” – Mohammad Sidique Khan³¹

There is no reason to assume that Khan, who is suspected to have been the ring-leader of the other three suicide attackers, did not believe he would enter paradise for his suicide attack. On the following number line (Fig. 1), if 0 to 1 is secular, 1 to 2 ‘using religion’, and 2 to 3 ‘inspired by religion, Khan’s concept of ‘paradise’ would be a 3.

Figure : Khan’s concept of ‘paradise’

This, however, is only Khan himself. It is obvious and the point seems common-sensical: Different actors will attach unequal importance to the same concept. Yet here lies the most powerful theoretical challenge against monocausal explanations like Pape’s: All giants, even Pape himself, agree that virtually all suicide attackers are helped by an organisation.³² But it would be a miracle if all suicide attackers’ and their organisations’ intentions, holy or not, were always congruent. Yes, organisations might sometimes be guided by a secular ‘strategic logic,’ but what about individual suicide attackers? A sufficient explanation has to be able to accommodate the multiple actors involved.

To this end, most giants differentiate the traditional micro-meso-macro levels: The individual suicide attacker’s motivations (micro), the organisation’s intentions (meso), and the broader socio-cultural context or community (macro). So, to Khan himself (micro level), one can add his organisation (al-Qaeda³³) and the socio-cultural context or community (his group of friends, English society). This gives a three dimensional space within which one can place the concept of afterlife. The location of the concept then represents how important Holy Terror is for the concept in this case (the dot in Fig. 2, my personal estimates):

Figure : The concept of ‘paradise’ in three dimensions

One might find my assessment odd, but this is really just to illustrate the idea of the framework. I will now distil common concepts found in popular studies on suicide attacks. This could then be repeated in any given situation for all relevant concepts that the giants have already identified or discounted (Table 1):

	Individual	Organisation	Context/Community
Louise Richardson, What terrorists want34	Black-white thinking Revenge Tend to act on behalf of group Defence narrative Stories of radicalisation/moral outrage NOT poor	Charismatic leader Functioning structures Legitimising ideology	Rapid modernisation Saturated labour market unable to absorb esp. young men NOT poverty or inequality NOT porous border controls
Assaf Moghadam, The globalization or martyrdom35	Ideology for justifying act and moral disengagement Revenge, Humiliation Commitment Rewards	Tactical advantage of suicide attacks
Moghadam, local campaigns	Residents of conflict area	Target local ‘enemy’ Political goal	bestows legitimacy support networks
Moghadam, global campaigns	Salafi-Jihadist	Transnational networks No specific zone of conflict No clear political goals
Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad36	Reverence of sacrifice and heroism Strong sense of justice diaspora (1st generation 60%, including 2nd gen. 80%) NOT religiously literate, poor, ‘brainwashed’, irresponsible, or sexually frustrated	modern al-Qaeda as ‘social movement’ rather than ‘organization’
Robert A. Pape, Dying to win and Cutting the Fuse37	often NOT religious Residents of conflict area or neighbouring country	Tactical advantage of suicide attacks Against occupying force	Military occupation
Jon Elster, ‘Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions’38	normal psyche but strong convictions importance of fear/shame/peer pressure importance of point of no return (letters, videotapes, ‘living martyr’) NOT personally poor/illiterate	most have goal (territorial/religious) belief of evil omnipotence of enemy	permanence of feelings of inferiority and resentment poor/illiterate societies more likely to produce terrorism belief of evil omnipotence of enemy
Domenico Tosini, ‘A Sociological Understanding of Suicide Attacks’39	Revenge Status crisis Benefits for community Political/religious commitment Pursuit of martyrdom	Tactical: practical, psychological and symbolic advantages	Presumed political/economic benefits Economic aid from organisation Recognition/social capital Political/religious commitment Response to coercion

Table 1: Compilations of motivations previous research has found

It seems reasonable to attempt to compile a list of the most salient factors. This list, I shall give in writing to add some justifying remarks. The concepts I draw from this are written in square brackets “[]”.

Individual. The overwhelming consensus is that suicide attackers are psychologically sound and seldomly poor. They often identify strongly with some ‘imagined community’⁴⁰ that often owns (invaded) territory [group identity]. They either feel this community is threatened or humiliated and that they need to defend it. The moral categories (good/bad, friend/enemy) are absolute [conflict definition]. There is often a higher purpose (for community, revolution, or God) that they share with their organisation [vision]. Some seek to gain or are afraid of losing [respect]; some seek martyrdom [afterlife]. (Whether suicide is culturally or religiously acceptable at all will be considered under [afterlife] too.)

Organisation. Before the Globalization of Martyrdom (that is the spread of Salafi-Jihadi ideology),⁴¹ suicide attacks happened in the context of a local conflict with often conventional armed fighting. Organisations usually know well what motivates individual suicide attackers and they often foster these factors deliberately. They are the main propagators of the vision that individuals follow [vision], and they mostly determine the strategy [strategy]. Also, they (portray themselves to) act on behalf of the same community the individual identifies with [group identity] and propagate a narrative of conflict [conflict definition]. Sometimes they say what rewards await in [afterlife] –whether in this world (e.g. martyr worship) or the next world (e.g. 72 virgins).

Community/Context. The consensus is that socio-economic status explains terrorism badly. The macro-level provides the beliefs and values the individual is socialised into, which configures all of the above concepts in the first place. In localised conflicts, the influence the real community has to sanction and legitimise the organisation is stronger. The ‘community’ in globalised terrorism can quite literally be virtual and float in the ether(net) without any support of the real, surrounding community. In such cases as 7/7, the actual ‘community’ supporting the act might consist only of a group of friends. The strongest influence the community has is through promises of worship of the martyr [afterlife], or through peer pressure [respect].

Having isolated these six concepts common concepts that motivated suicide attacks (group identity, conflict definition, vision, afterlife, strategy and respect), I will now attempt to establish how much Holy Terror (religious inspiration) there was in them in reference to four organisations that conducted suicide attacks: The Iranian state (human waves), Hezbollah (suicide bombers), the Tamil Tigers (suicide bombers) and al Qaeda (suicide attacks).

The Iranian state. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran (which after the Iranian revolution was in a state of anarchy), Khomeini theologically justified terrorism. Bruce Hoffman illustrates the rationale (quoted at some length, the concepts are added):

“It begins with the notion of the Shi’a as a centuries-old minority within Islam [group identity], persecuted because of its special, revealed knowledge [conflict definition], but it further entails an unswerving conviction of the inherent illegitimacy of all secular government. Under his rationale, legitimacy can be conferred only through adoption of Islamic law in order to facilitate the return of the Prophet Mohammed to earth as the Messiah [vision]. … Not only are violence and coercion permissible [strategy] in order to achieve the worldwide spread of Islamic law [vision], but they are also a necessary means to this divinely sanctioned end. [strategy]”⁴²

Moghadam adds that “the children were provided with a plastic key that they worse around their neck. If they would die as martyrs, they were told, that key would open the gate to paradise [afterlife]. … Recruiters went to schools, where the schoolchildren were subjected to systematic manipulation.”⁴³ Of course, it is impossible for me to establish how much the Iranian society really believed in these concepts, so the figures I gave them are at best an educated guess. In the plot (Fig. 3) a data table is given, to compensate for the confusion the two-dimensional nature of paper can cause (all words are abbreviated by their initial letter, e.g., ‘group identity’ becomes GI).

Figure : Plot of Holy Terror in Iranian Revolution

It is obvious from the scores I assigned that I believe there is reason to assume that the Iranian public, while religious, did not share Khomeini’s visions and was ‘playing safe’ by publicly using Khomeini’s concepts without believing them. I say this for two reasons: Khomeini never convinced a democratic majority, his ascent to power had more to do with a shared popular discontent with Shah Pahlavi and his exclusive ability to mobilise mass support through religious institutions.⁴⁴ In the context, it can be assumed, secondly, that many Iranians’ support for the Khomeini regime was a masquerade.⁴⁵ Because of the difficulty to establish this macro level (and because two dimensions look better on paper), I will henceforth omit it –I hope the proof of concept has been demonstrated.

As for the Assumption, religion did play a powerful role in informing all of Khomeini’s key concepts. Special attention should be paid to ‘strategy’, because it is often missed that if God is the audience, many ‘secular’ restraints on violence tend to fade away. Even when secular terrorist groups resort to suicide attacks, their violence tends to be more restrained.⁴⁶ Holy Terror, on the contrary, is informed by religious constraints, for example, “[t]he role of clerical authority in sanctioning terrorist operations has always been critical to both Shi’a and Sunni organizations.”⁴⁷

So, even though the first suicide bomb went off in Beirut, it is in Iran where modern Shi’a suicide attacks have their theological root in these human waves attacks – “the most disturbing and gruesome parade of mass self-sacrifice in living memory.”⁴⁸ “[I]ts influence on the godfathers of modern suicide terrorism, the Lebanese Hezbollah, is unmistakable.”⁴⁹

Hezbollah. The first modern suicide attack on record was directed against the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1981.⁵⁰ Earlier the same year, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Khomeini had remarked: “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world.”⁵¹ The most powerful armed Shi’a milita in Lebanon at the time (remember the context of the Lebanese civil war, 1975-90) was Harakat Amal. “The Amal political platform called for equality for all citizens, social justice, and non-sectarian commitment to national unity; it did not propose the creation of an Islamic state in Lebanon.”⁵² It is thus logical for the Khomeini regime to have supported Hezbollah, which was a result of a split in the Amal militia, led by its pro-Iranian second in command, Hussain Mussawi, who disapproved of the leaders’ collaboration with Israel and did support an Islamic state.⁵³

Unsurprisingly therefore, Hezbollah’s rhetoric is similar to Iran’s. As stated in a 1985 communiqué, Hezbollah considers itself “a part of the world Islamic community [group identity], attacked at once by the tyrants and the arrogant of the East and the West [conflict definition]. … Our way is one of radical combat against depravity [strategy], and America is the original root of depravity [conflict definition].”⁵⁴ In practise, however, Hezbollah’s actions are firmly associated with the local struggle against Israel⁵⁵ and, “[a]s a result, the Al Qaeda leadership strongly criticizes these groups [Hizballah and Hamas] for failing to wage jihad on a global scale.⁵⁶ Thus, Hezbollah seems to be using a somewhat bloated rhetoric.

As for the individual (micro), much better research is available than in Iran’s case. Pape, who seeks to prove his ‘strategic logic’ theory, assembles helpful statistics of all suicide attacks in Lebanon (according to the CPOST database): “Of the 46 attackers, CPOST can reliably identify the ideology of 32. Of these, 27 do not fit the description of Islamic fundamentalism; 22 were communists or socialists with no commitment to religious extremism, and 5 were Christians. Only 5 of the 32 suicide attackers were affiliated with Islamic fundamentalism.”⁵⁷ So, there is indeed reason to question whether all individual suicide attackers actually shared Hezbollah’s religious concepts, as expressed in Fig 4:

Figure : Hezbollah

The suicide attacks on foreign targets in Lebanon, particularly the famous attacks on the U.S. embassy, the U. S. Marine barracks and the French paratrooper headquarters, substantially raised the costs of their military presence. Their subsequent withdrawal was seen a clear success – because it was – and serves as a prime case in favour of Pape’s ‘strategic logic’ argument (however, Hezbollah’s suicide attacks have not caused the Israeli withdrawal and nobody blew themselves up in the 2006 Lebanon war⁵⁸). Nevertheless, the U.S. and French withdrawal did certainly help the spread of the tactic to other conflict zones – one of which was in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Tigers. The leader of the Tamil Tigers, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was impressed by success of the Hezbollah⁵⁹ and emulated the tactic starting from 1984. The Tamil Tigers are often cited as ‘proof’ that suicide campaigns can be purely secular. Indeed, the organisation has had a secular aim: The independence of Tamil Eelam, which the Tigers saw as their homeland (though the historical record for this claim is weak⁶⁰). However, it is probably exaggerated to say that “[r]eligion has nothing to do with it”⁶¹: Not only is religion (Singhalese Buddhism and Hinduism) important in the broader conflict,⁶² the Tamil Tigers to draw extensively on religious concepts in their fostering of a culture of martyrdom [afterlife]:

“Heroic death founded within the fire of Tamil nationalism has given birth to a new set of terms, almost all derived from the ancient Tamil religion of Saivism; indeed, within the North and East Tamil nationalism has the appeal of a new religious movement. Prabhakaran… requests the people to venerate those who died in the battle for Eelam as sannyasis (ascetics) who renounced their personal desires and transcended egoistic existence for a common cause of higher virtue. I have seen hundreds of shrines erected in Jaffna by the friends and relatives of those LTTE cadres who have died in various actions; and the rituals performed with offering of flowers and lighting of oil lamps are those normally reserved to Saivite deities and saints. (all emphases original)”⁶³

Furthermore, the Tamil Tigers do not only revere the dead Black Tigers because of their sacrifice, rather, “[t]hey are drawing energy (sakti, accaryam, darsan, akarsana, haskam) from these ‘seeds’ of divine force for their ongoing endeavors. It is a regenerative act. [strategy]”⁶⁴ Thus, one is led to question just how ‘secular’ the Tamil Tigers really are (Fig. 5) – a possible subject of further study.

Figure : Tamil Tigers

al Qaeda. The last ‘organisation’ to be discussed is al Qaeda, which can refer to both, the actual organisation al Qaeda or a dispersed Salafi Jihadi social movement.⁶⁵ A movement that criticises Hezbollah and Hamas as not being religious enough⁶⁶ must indeed be very religious (of course, why they are theologically mistaken I must leave for others to discuss⁶⁷). Furthermore, what makes al Qaeda hard to discuss in the scope of this discussion is that so many attacks in many countries have been conducted in its name. It should, however, suffice to quote Moghadam, who offers three very good reasons why al Qaeda terrorism cannot be accounted for by Pape’s ‘strategic logic’:

“First, suicide attacks increasingly occur where there is no discernible occupation.⁶⁸ … Second, in those countries where there is an occupation, the attacks are not always directed at the occupiers themselves.⁶⁹ … Third, many suicide attacks, even if they do target the occupation forces, are not carried out by those individuals who, theoretically, should be most affected by the occupation.”⁷⁰

When Pape claims U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia can account for al Qaeda attacks by his ‘strategic logic’,⁷¹ he is fatally inflating his definition of occupation. If perceived occupation is all that is required, there are an infinite number of groups who could potentially spin such a narrative (simply because it is rather common to frame aggression as defence). I agree with Moghadam that al Qaeda is better explained by the spread of its ideology rather than perceived occupation – this is reflected in my assessment of ‘how much religion’ the key concepts contain (Fig 6).

Figure : al Qaeda

The only two concepts besides ‘respect’ that I downgraded a little ‘strategy’, for the simple reason that even al Qaeda’s actions are informed by what is possible.

Having discussed four organisations that employ suicide attacks, this is now a good point to quickly look back at the discussion and draw conclusions from it. Two regularities occurred: First, [respect} I always considered as purely secular social psychology. Second, the concept of [afterlife] has always been religiously inspired. So, while this feature is obviously not shared by all suicide attackers, it is interesting to see how splitting up the discussion into several concepts can add a depth of understanding that would otherwise be hidden. One should reiterate that the Assumption, because it is formulated in a monocausal way, is false. However, it is also true that the discussion has touched upon good reasons to assume that religiously inspired concepts do facilitate suicide attacks, especially a concept of [afterlife].

The one thing left to discuss is whether the Assumption itself might play some role in society. Pape sees the function of the ‘narrative of Islamic fundamentalism’ as having justified the invasion of Iraq. To support this, he cites polling data which shows that, in the run-up to the war, there is little correlation between either aggregate support for the invasion and aggregate perception that Iraq had ties to terrorism or the belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. What does correlate to support for the war is the question “Is Islam likely to encourage violence?”⁷² However, Pape then goes on to advertise his ‘strategic logic’ theory and forgets to clarify two crucial questions: Is this correlation really the cause for support for the invasion? And if he thinks so, is it intentionally manufactured and circulated?

In answering these questions, it should be noted that particularly the Bush government actually took decisive measures to counteract the association between violence and Islam after 9/11.⁷³ Furthermore, the case of the Iraq war shows how the internet eroded some of the power of government to own a truth, as in [conflict definition]. Jeffrey Kaplan gives an example: “The Vietnam War bitterly divided the nation, … but as long as American boots were on Vietnamese soil, the majority of Americans supported the war. By contrast, the consensus over the War in Iraq lasted less than a year. [Even though there] was from the beginning a conscious decision in the mainstream media … not to show suffering other than that of the Americans themselves.”⁷⁴ While this is probably partly due to the decline of bellicisme (the glorification of warfare),⁷⁵ it is reassuring that government or the established media companies do apparently not have a monopoly on truth – besides maybe an initial ‘priming’ effect.⁷⁶

Thus, what is much more likely is that the Assumption is an outcome of a well-documented phenomenon in conflict psychology: simplistic thinking. Nearly all conflict escalation models agree⁷⁷ that, as a conflict escalates, participants’ psychological categories harden and that self- and enemy-image begin to diverge from what was initially mild outgroup prejudice. Once violence has erupted, clear, black and white markers will have emerged by which what has become ‘the enemy’ can be identified. In this case, the enemy is identified by their different religion, that is, their very essence is different from self. A tragic but rather predictable phenomenon. Such conflict escalation need no ‘man behind the curtain’ to secretly pull the strings: The enemy images propagate and interact with the wider culture without any added pressure – and I have attached an example of a comic book I came across during my research in the appendix. It is in this state of mind that one can hear a president say: “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”⁷⁸

And here the body of this discussion ends. After distilling six common concepts from previous research on suicide attacks, I have attempted to assess just ‘how much religion’ there is in these concepts in four different suicide campaigns. While the main conclusion should be considered to be methodological – that it is possible to do justice to the complexity of religion and suicide terrorism by assessing each concept separately in each situation – particularly one commonality has been found: All suicide campaigns had a religiously inspired conception of [afterlife]. Given that I have nevertheless disagreed with the Assumption for its simplistic, monocausal nature, I have proceeded by (rather shortly) assessing why such an Assumption might circulate and gain popularity. To this, I have given an answer from the perspective of conflict research: Conflict escalation leads to identifying the enemy by one singular identity – in this case it is religion.

 

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Richardson, L. What terrorists want : understanding the enemy, containing the threat, New York: Random House, 2007.

Roberts, M. ‘Tamil Tiger “Martyrs”: Regenerating Divine Potency?’ In: Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol 28, Iss. 6 (2005), pp. 493-514.

Root, M. Philosophy of social science, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.

Rubin, B. ‘Religion and International Affairs’ In: Johnston & Sampson. Religion…, op. cit., pp. 20-34.

Saad-Ghorayeb, A. Hizbu’llah : Politics & Religion, Sterling: Pluto Press, 2002.

Sageman, M. Leaderless Jihad : Terror Networks in the twenty-first century, Pennsylvania: UPP, 2008.

Scott, A. et al. ‘Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’ In: American Political Science Review, Vol. 102, No. 2 (April 2008).

Street, A. L. & Kelly, A. P. ‘Public Opinion and the London 2005 Bombings’ In: APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper, 2009.

Tosini, D. ‘A Sociological Understanding of Suicide Attacks’ In: Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 26, Iss. 4 (2009), pp. 67–96.

Question: Discuss critically the widespread popular assumption that suicide bombing is a product of so-called ‘Holy Terror’.
“In the name of Allah the Avenger and in the name of Imam Khomeini I swear on the Holy Book to perform my sacred duty as a Child of Imam and a Soldier of Islam in our Holy War to restore to this world the Light of Divine Justice. May Allah be my Guide on the Path of Jihad and of qital [armed struggle].”1
- Oath sworn by the children selected as ‘Volunteers for Martyrdom’ by the Bassidj militia during the Iraq-Iran war before they were deployed unarmed, sometimes in the tens of thousands, into the line of fire or across minefields to clear the way for the soldiers who followed them.
If one searches for the origins of modern suicide attacks, most scholars agree,2 one must look to the Iranian Revolution. And there, one finds religion returning mightily into the political sphere and a baffled and confused U.S. watching from the side line – an ideal starting point to set the context for the discussion at hand. Before the revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had turned down a proposed assessment of the power of religious leaders in Iran as mere ‘sociology’ (as in, irrelevant).3 Barry Rubin sketches the U.S. (and Western) befuddlement:
“[T]he United States deemed it impossible that a fundamentalist government would take power; inconceivable that Khomeini would mean what he said; unexpected that Tehran would seize U.S. diplomats as hostages; unbelievable that Iran would continue a war with Iraq long after the battle was counter-productive; and irrational that Khomeini would call for the murder of author Salman Rushdie at the moment Iran needed Western investment for reconstruction.”4
This ‘revenge of God,’5 or the resurgence of religion in politics, was neither anticipated by Western policy makers nor academics. Modern European culture had, for very good historical reasons, assumed the secularisation thesis to be self-evidently true: Modernisation will, for better or worse, hurl religion into the dustbin of history.6 However, and, again, for better or worse, this is simply factually wrong.7 Globally, religion is as alive as ever and there are no signs of demise – the Iranian Revolution is just one case in point where the West utterly misperceived the role of religion in conflicts.8 The ‘odd case’, thus, is not Iranian religion, but Western secularism. Or, as a leading scholar of the sociology of religion, Peter Berger, rather comically remarks: “The difficult-to-understand phenomenon is not Iranian mullahs but American university professors.”9
It is therefore no surprise that David C. Rapoport sees a qualitative shift in terrorism after the Iranian Revolution. In his framework of ‘Four Waves of Rebel Terror’10, 1979 sets off the fourth wave, whose principal feature – ‘Holy Terror’11 – is the subject of the discussion at hand. If one agrees with sociologists of religion (and I do), it has always been purely secular terror that was the ‘odd case’. ‘Ancient’ terror was mostly religiously inspired; then it was interrupted by three waves of secular terrorism; and now religion is relevant again.12 Back to normal, so to speak.
Given these introductory remarks, one could mistake me for saying that now all terror is again religious and we can go drink tea. Of course that is not the case. But likewise will I refrain from simply pointing at the Tamil Tigers or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and hastily conclude that religion has nothing to do with suicide bombing.
I will now proceed by first defining the core concepts of the assumption that suicide bombing is a product of Holy Terror13: terrorism, suicide bombing and Holy Terror. As a dwarf in the field, I then attempt to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before me by first assembling their conclusions. I find there is overwhelming agreement on some of the basic factors that motivate suicide bombing. Hence, after distilling these common factors, I will try to assess ‘how much religion’ there is in these factors in reference to four organisations that conducted suicide attacks: The Iranian state (human waves), Hezbollah (suicide bombers), the Tamil Tigers (suicide bombers) and al Qaeda (suicide attacks). It will become obvious that religion, and especially a concept of an afterlife, is always found in the context of suicide attacks – including the Tamil Tigers. ‘Religion in general,’ if there is such a thing, does by no means cause suicide attacks, but transcendent beliefs can also not simply be ignored. Only multicausal models allow for such differentiated debate and, hence, the Assumption, in the monocausal form stated, should be considered wrong. Lastly, I will follow the insight of the ‘Thomas Theorem,’14 and very briefly assess the role the Assumption itself might play in society, never mind it is factually wrong.15 This last part concludes that the narrative of Islamic fundamentalism is probably an outcome of conflict escalation and as such totalises the conflict between Salafi Jihadists and the West; it is probably not deliberately manufactured.
So, before jumping into the fray, let us first define the core concepts and comment upon an internal tension they elicit. If ‘suicide bombing’ or ‘suicide attacking’ is “an operational method in which the very act of the attack is dependent upon the death of the perpetrator,”16 and terrorism means deliberately and violently targeting civilians,17 then it becomes obvious that there is no a priori reason to assume that all suicide is terrorism. This is precisely the point Assaf Moghadam18 and Jeff Goodwins19 criticise about Robert Pape’s definitions in his Dying to Win20: Cases of suicide attacks “against uniformed soldiers that were on duty at the time the attacks took place” are readily found21 – but such attacks cannot be labelled terror without fatally biasing or inflating the concept.22 So, a rhetorical point can already be made against the Assumption: Suicide attacks against uniformed soldiers should by definition not be called terrorism, holy or not.
With such definitional points aside, I now turn to the actual substance of the Assumption, which I understand thus: For suicide attacks, religious (preferably Islamic) convictions are a requirement. Who would be so fanatic to blow themselves up without, e.g., a concept of an afterlife?
This Assumption corresponds to the concept of Holy Terror: Terrorism in which religion is not only supplying identity markers (as in Shi’ites vs. Sunnis, Catholic vs. Protestant), but also “justifications and organizing principles for the New World to be established.”23 To illustrate this, consider the Hindu cult of the Thuggees (members are called “Thugs”, which is where the word comes from) who strangled innocent travellers solely to please Kali, the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction.24 They are almost an incarnation the Weberian ideal-type25 of Holy Terror: Terror purely for the pleasure of gods without any this-worldly, ‘secular’ reasons for it.
At this point, it is helpful to elicit Robert A. Pape’s argument, because he delivers the precise anti-thesis to Holy Terror: He holds that ‘suicide terrorism’ is of strategic utility against military occupation and that religion is not relevant beyond identity.26 In other words, suicide bombers are invariably motivated by a struggle against occupation in this world, rather than the next. The motivations of suicide bombers are invariably ‘secular’; Holy Terror is negligible.27
One can imagine all possible positions lying on a gradient between ideal-type Holy Terror and ideal-type ‘strategic logic’: The one pole informed by Rapoport’s Holy Terror holds that religious convictions are a requirement for suicide terrorism, and the other pole informed by Pape’s ‘strategic logic’ holds that suicide bombing always happens within a ‘secular’ strategic rationale.28
The problem that arises is the differentiation between ‘using religion’ and ‘being genuinely inspired by religion.’29 However, it is possible to operationalise it thus: Those inspired by religion are guided by the content of religious concepts; those using religion simply use its symbols without regards to their content; and, finally, purely secular suicide attackers use purely secular vocabulary.
To illustrate this, consider the concept of afterlife in Mohammad Sidique Khan’s unforgettable video message recorded before he and his friends committed the 7/7 bombings30:
“We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation. … With this I leave you to make up your own minds and I ask you to make dua [prayer] to Allah almighty to accept the work from me and my brothers and enter us into gardens of paradise.” – Mohammad Sidique Khan31
There is no reason to assume that Khan, who is suspected to have been the ring-leader of the other three suicide attackers, did not believe he would enter paradise for his suicide attack. On the following number line (Fig. 1), if 0 to 1 is secular, 1 to 2 ‘using religion’, and 2 to 3 ‘inspired by religion, Khan’s concept of ‘paradise’ would be a 3.

Figure : Khan’s concept of ‘paradise’
This, however, is only Khan himself. It is obvious and the point seems common-sensical: Different actors will attach unequal importance to the same concept. Yet here lies the most powerful theoretical challenge against monocausal explanations like Pape’s: All giants, even Pape himself, agree that virtually all suicide attackers are helped by an organisation.32 But it would be a miracle if all suicide attackers’ and their organisations’ intentions, holy or not, were always congruent. Yes, organisations might sometimes be guided by a secular ‘strategic logic,’ but what about individual suicide attackers? A sufficient explanation has to be able to accommodate the multiple actors involved.
To this end, most giants differentiate the traditional micro-meso-macro levels: The individual suicide attacker’s motivations (micro), the organisation’s intentions (meso), and the broader socio-cultural context or community (macro). So, to Khan himself (micro level), one can add his organisation (al-Qaeda33) and the socio-cultural context or community (his group of friends, English society). This gives a three dimensional space within which one can place the concept of afterlife. The location of the concept then represents how important Holy Terror is for the concept in this case (the dot in Fig. 2, my personal estimates):

Figure : The concept of ‘paradise’ in three dimensions
One might find my assessment odd, but this is really just to illustrate the idea of the framework. I will now distil common concepts found in popular studies on suicide attacks. This could then be repeated in any given situation for all relevant concepts that the giants have already identified or discounted (Table 1):

Individual
Organisation
Context/Community
Louise Richardson, What terrorists want34
Black-white thinking
Revenge
Tend to act on behalf of group
Defence narrative
Stories of radicalisation/moral outrage
NOT poor
Charismatic leader
Functioning structures
Legitimising ideology
Rapid modernisation
Saturated labour market unable to absorb esp. young men
NOT poverty or inequality
NOT porous border controls
Assaf Moghadam, The globalization or martyrdom35
Ideology for justifying act and moral disengagement
Revenge, Humiliation
Commitment
Rewards
Tactical advantage of suicide attacks

Moghadam, local campaigns
Residents of conflict area
Target local ‘enemy’
Political goal
bestows legitimacy
support networks
Moghadam, global campaigns
Salafi-Jihadist
Transnational networks
No specific zone of conflict
No clear political goals

Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad36
Reverence of sacrifice and heroism
Strong sense of justice
diaspora (1st generation 60%, including 2nd gen. 80%)
NOT religiously literate, poor, ‘brainwashed’, irresponsible, or sexually frustrated
modern al-Qaeda as ‘social movement’ rather than ‘organization’

Robert A. Pape, Dying to win and Cutting the Fuse37
often NOT religious
Residents of conflict area or neighbouring country
Tactical advantage of suicide attacks
Against occupying force
Military occupation
Jon Elster, ‘Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions’38
normal psyche but strong convictions
importance of fear/shame/peer pressure
importance of point of no return (letters, videotapes, ‘living martyr’)
NOT personally poor/illiterate
most have goal (territorial/religious)
belief of evil omnipotence of enemy
permanence of feelings of inferiority and resentment
poor/illiterate societies more likely to produce terrorism
belief of evil omnipotence of enemy
Domenico Tosini, ‘A Sociological Understanding of Suicide Attacks’39
Revenge
Status crisis
Benefits for community
Political/religious commitment
Pursuit of martyrdom
Tactical: practical, psychological and symbolic advantages
Presumed political/economic benefits
Economic aid from organisation
Recognition/social capital
Political/religious commitment
Response to coercion
Table 1: Compilations of motivations previous research has found
It seems reasonable to attempt to compile a list of the most salient factors. This list, I shall give in writing to add some justifying remarks. The concepts I draw from this are written in square brackets “[]”.
Individual. The overwhelming consensus is that suicide attackers are psychologically sound and seldomly poor. They often identify strongly with some ‘imagined community’40 that often owns (invaded) territory [group identity]. They either feel this community is threatened or humiliated and that they need to defend it. The moral categories (good/bad, friend/enemy) are absolute [conflict definition]. There is often a higher purpose (for community, revolution, or God) that they share with their organisation [vision]. Some seek to gain or are afraid of losing [respect]; some seek martyrdom [afterlife]. (Whether suicide is culturally or religiously acceptable at all will be considered under [afterlife] too.)
Organisation. Before the Globalization of Martyrdom (that is the spread of Salafi-Jihadi ideology),41 suicide attacks happened in the context of a local conflict with often conventional armed fighting. Organisations usually know well what motivates individual suicide attackers and they often foster these factors deliberately. They are the main propagators of the vision that individuals follow [vision], and they mostly determine the strategy [strategy]. Also, they (portray themselves to) act on behalf of the same community the individual identifies with [group identity] and propagate a narrative of conflict [conflict definition]. Sometimes they say what rewards await in [afterlife] –whether in this world (e.g. martyr worship) or the next world (e.g. 72 virgins).
Community/Context. The consensus is that socio-economic status explains terrorism badly. The macro-level provides the beliefs and values the individual is socialised into, which configures all of the above concepts in the first place. In localised conflicts, the influence the real community has to sanction and legitimise the organisation is stronger. The ‘community’ in globalised terrorism can quite literally be virtual and float in the ether(net) without any support of the real, surrounding community. In such cases as 7/7, the actual ‘community’ supporting the act might consist only of a group of friends. The strongest influence the community has is through promises of worship of the martyr [afterlife], or through peer pressure [respect].
Having isolated these six concepts common concepts that motivated suicide attacks (group identity, conflict definition, vision, afterlife, strategy and respect), I will now attempt to establish how much Holy Terror (religious inspiration) there was in them in reference to four organisations that conducted suicide attacks: The Iranian state (human waves), Hezbollah (suicide bombers), the Tamil Tigers (suicide bombers) and al Qaeda (suicide attacks).
The Iranian state. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran (which after the Iranian revolution was in a state of anarchy), Khomeini theologically justified terrorism. Bruce Hoffman illustrates the rationale (quoted at some length, the concepts are added):
“It begins with the notion of the Shi’a as a centuries-old minority within Islam [group identity], persecuted because of its special, revealed knowledge [conflict definition], but it further entails an unswerving conviction of the inherent illegitimacy of all secular government. Under his rationale, legitimacy can be conferred only through adoption of Islamic law in order to facilitate the return of the Prophet Mohammed to earth as the Messiah [vision]. … Not only are violence and coercion permissible [strategy] in order to achieve the worldwide spread of Islamic law [vision], but they are also a necessary means to this divinely sanctioned end. [strategy]”42
Moghadam adds that “the children were provided with a plastic key that they worse around their neck. If they would die as martyrs, they were told, that key would open the gate to paradise [afterlife]. … Recruiters went to schools, where the schoolchildren were subjected to systematic manipulation.”43 Of course, it is impossible for me to establish how much the Iranian society really believed in these concepts, so the figures I gave them are at best an educated guess. In the plot (Fig. 3) a data table is given, to compensate for the confusion the two-dimensional nature of paper can cause (all words are abbreviated by their initial letter, e.g., ‘group identity’ becomes GI).

Figure : Plot of Holy Terror in Iranian Revolution
It is obvious from the scores I assigned that I believe there is reason to assume that the Iranian public, while religious, did not share Khomeini’s visions and was ‘playing safe’ by publicly using Khomeini’s concepts without believing them. I say this for two reasons: Khomeini never convinced a democratic majority, his ascent to power had more to do with a shared popular discontent with Shah Pahlavi and his exclusive ability to mobilise mass support through religious institutions.44 In the context, it can be assumed, secondly, that many Iranians’ support for the Khomeini regime was a masquerade.45 Because of the difficulty to establish this macro level (and because two dimensions look better on paper), I will henceforth omit it –I hope the proof of concept has been demonstrated.
As for the Assumption, religion did play a powerful role in informing all of Khomeini’s key concepts. Special attention should be paid to ‘strategy’, because it is often missed that if God is the audience, many ‘secular’ restraints on violence tend to fade away. Even when secular terrorist groups resort to suicide attacks, their violence tends to be more restrained.46 Holy Terror, on the contrary, is informed by religious constraints, for example, “[t]he role of clerical authority in sanctioning terrorist operations has always been critical to both Shi’a and Sunni organizations.”47
So, even though the first suicide bomb went off in Beirut, it is in Iran where modern Shi’a suicide attacks have their theological root in these human waves attacks – “the most disturbing and gruesome parade of mass self-sacrifice in living memory.”48 “[I]ts influence on the godfathers of modern suicide terrorism, the Lebanese Hezbollah, is unmistakable.”49
Hezbollah. The first modern suicide attack on record was directed against the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1981.50 Earlier the same year, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Khomeini had remarked: “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world.”51 The most powerful armed Shi’a milita in Lebanon at the time (remember the context of the Lebanese civil war, 1975-90) was Harakat Amal. “The Amal political platform called for equality for all citizens, social justice, and non-sectarian commitment to national unity; it did not propose the creation of an Islamic state in Lebanon.”52 It is thus logical for the Khomeini regime to have supported Hezbollah, which was a result of a split in the Amal militia, led by its pro-Iranian second in command, Hussain Mussawi, who disapproved of the leaders’ collaboration with Israel and did support an Islamic state.53
Unsurprisingly therefore, Hezbollah’s rhetoric is similar to Iran’s. As stated in a 1985 communiqué, Hezbollah considers itself “a part of the world Islamic community [group identity], attacked at once by the tyrants and the arrogant of the East and the West [conflict definition]. … Our way is one of radical combat against depravity [strategy], and America is the original root of depravity [conflict definition].”54 In practise, however, Hezbollah’s actions are firmly associated with the local struggle against Israel55 and, “[a]s a result, the Al Qaeda leadership strongly criticizes these groups [Hizballah and Hamas] for failing to wage jihad on a global scale.56 Thus, Hezbollah seems to be using a somewhat bloated rhetoric.
As for the individual (micro), much better research is available than in Iran’s case. Pape, who seeks to prove his ‘strategic logic’ theory, assembles helpful statistics of all suicide attacks in Lebanon (according to the CPOST database): “Of the 46 attackers, CPOST can reliably identify the ideology of 32. Of these, 27 do not fit the description of Islamic fundamentalism; 22 were communists or socialists with no commitment to religious extremism, and 5 were Christians. Only 5 of the 32 suicide attackers were affiliated with Islamic fundamentalism.”57 So, there is indeed reason to question whether all individual suicide attackers actually shared Hezbollah’s religious concepts, as expressed in Fig 4:

Figure : Hezbollah
The suicide attacks on foreign targets in Lebanon, particularly the famous attacks on the U.S. embassy, the U. S. Marine barracks and the French paratrooper headquarters, substantially raised the costs of their military presence. Their subsequent withdrawal was seen a clear success – because it was – and serves as a prime case in favour of Pape’s ‘strategic logic’ argument (however, Hezbollah’s suicide attacks have not caused the Israeli withdrawal and nobody blew themselves up in the 2006 Lebanon war58). Nevertheless, the U.S. and French withdrawal did certainly help the spread of the tactic to other conflict zones – one of which was in Sri Lanka.
Tamil Tigers. The leader of the Tamil Tigers, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was impressed by success of the Hezbollah59 and emulated the tactic starting from 1984. The Tamil Tigers are often cited as ‘proof’ that suicide campaigns can be purely secular. Indeed, the organisation has had a secular aim: The independence of Tamil Eelam, which the Tigers saw as their homeland (though the historical record for this claim is weak60). However, it is probably exaggerated to say that “[r]eligion has nothing to do with it”61: Not only is religion (Singhalese Buddhism and Hinduism) important in the broader conflict,62 the Tamil Tigers to draw extensively on religious concepts in their fostering of a culture of martyrdom [afterlife]:
“Heroic death founded within the fire of Tamil nationalism has given birth to a new set of terms, almost all derived from the ancient Tamil religion of Saivism; indeed, within the North and East Tamil nationalism has the appeal of a new religious movement. Prabhakaran… requests the people to venerate those who died in the battle for Eelam as sannyasis (ascetics) who renounced their personal desires and transcended egoistic existence for a common cause of higher virtue. I have seen hundreds of shrines erected in Jaffna by the friends and relatives of those LTTE cadres who have died in various actions; and the rituals performed with offering of flowers and lighting of oil lamps are those normally reserved to Saivite deities and saints. (all emphases original)”63
Furthermore, the Tamil Tigers do not only revere the dead Black Tigers because of their sacrifice, rather, “[t]hey are drawing energy (sakti, accaryam, darsan, akarsana, haskam) from these ‘seeds’ of divine force for their ongoing endeavors. It is a regenerative act. [strategy]”64 Thus, one is led to question just how ‘secular’ the Tamil Tigers really are (Fig. 5) – a possible subject of further study.

Figure : Tamil Tigers
al Qaeda. The last ‘organisation’ to be discussed is al Qaeda, which can refer to both, the actual organisation al Qaeda or a dispersed Salafi Jihadi social movement.65 A movement that criticises Hezbollah and Hamas as not being religious enough66 must indeed be very religious (of course, why they are theologically mistaken I must leave for others to discuss67). Furthermore, what makes al Qaeda hard to discuss in the scope of this discussion is that so many attacks in many countries have been conducted in its name. It should, however, suffice to quote Moghadam, who offers three very good reasons why al Qaeda terrorism cannot be accounted for by Pape’s ‘strategic logic’:
“First, suicide attacks increasingly occur where there is no discernible occupation.68 … Second, in those countries where there is an occupation, the attacks are not always directed at the occupiers themselves.69 … Third, many suicide attacks, even if they do target the occupation forces, are not carried out by those individuals who, theoretically, should be most affected by the occupation.”70
When Pape claims U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia can account for al Qaeda attacks by his ‘strategic logic’,71 he is fatally inflating his definition of occupation. If perceived occupation is all that is required, there are an infinite number of groups who could potentially spin such a narrative (simply because it is rather common to frame aggression as defence). I agree with Moghadam that al Qaeda is better explained by the spread of its ideology rather than perceived occupation – this is reflected in my assessment of ‘how much religion’ the key concepts contain (Fig 6).

Figure : al Qaeda
The only two concepts besides ‘respect’ that I downgraded a little ‘strategy’, for the simple reason that even al Qaeda’s actions are informed by what is possible.
Having discussed four organisations that employ suicide attacks, this is now a good point to quickly look back at the discussion and draw conclusions from it. Two regularities occurred: First, [respect} I always considered as purely secular social psychology. Second, the concept of [afterlife] has always been religiously inspired. So, while this feature is obviously not shared by all suicide attackers, it is interesting to see how splitting up the discussion into several concepts can add a depth of understanding that would otherwise be hidden. One should reiterate that the Assumption, because it is formulated in a monocausal way, is false. However, it is also true that the discussion has touched upon good reasons to assume that religiously inspired concepts do facilitate suicide attacks, especially a concept of [afterlife].
The one thing left to discuss is whether the Assumption itself might play some role in society. Pape sees the function of the ‘narrative of Islamic fundamentalism’ as having justified the invasion of Iraq. To support this, he cites polling data which shows that, in the run-up to the war, there is little correlation between either aggregate support for the invasion and aggregate perception that Iraq had ties to terrorism or the belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. What does correlate to support for the war is the question “Is Islam likely to encourage violence?”72 However, Pape then goes on to advertise his ‘strategic logic’ theory and forgets to clarify two crucial questions: Is this correlation really the cause for support for the invasion? And if he thinks so, is it intentionally manufactured and circulated?
In answering these questions, it should be noted that particularly the Bush government actually took decisive measures to counteract the association between violence and Islam after 9/11.73 Furthermore, the case of the Iraq war shows how the internet eroded some of the power of government to own a truth, as in [conflict definition]. Jeffrey Kaplan gives an example: “The Vietnam War bitterly divided the nation, … but as long as American boots were on Vietnamese soil, the majority of Americans supported the war. By contrast, the consensus over the War in Iraq lasted less than a year. [Even though there] was from the beginning a conscious decision in the mainstream media … not to show suffering other than that of the Americans themselves.”74 While this is probably partly due to the decline of bellicisme (the glorification of warfare),75 it is reassuring that government or the established media companies do apparently not have a monopoly on truth – besides maybe an initial ‘priming’ effect.76
Thus, what is much more likely is that the Assumption is an outcome of a well-documented phenomenon in conflict psychology: simplistic thinking. Nearly all conflict escalation models agree77 that, as a conflict escalates, participants’ psychological categories harden and that self- and enemy-image begin to diverge from what was initially mild outgroup prejudice. Once violence has erupted, clear, black and white markers will have emerged by which what has become ‘the enemy’ can be identified. In this case, the enemy is identified by their different religion, that is, their very essence is different from self. A tragic but rather predictable phenomenon. Such conflict escalation need no ‘man behind the curtain’ to secretly pull the strings: The enemy images propagate and interact with the wider culture without any added pressure – and I have attached an example of a comic book I came across during my research in the appendix. It is in this state of mind that one can hear a president say: “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”78
And here the body of this discussion ends. After distilling six common concepts from previous research on suicide attacks, I have attempted to assess just ‘how much religion’ there is in these concepts in four different suicide campaigns. While the main conclusion should be considered to be methodological – that it is possible to do justice to the complexity of religion and suicide terrorism by assessing each concept separately in each situation – particularly one commonality has been found: All suicide campaigns had a religiously inspired conception of [afterlife]. Given that I have nevertheless disagreed with the Assumption for its simplistic, monocausal nature, I have proceeded by (rather shortly) assessing why such an Assumption might circulate and gain popularity. To this, I have given an answer from the perspective of conflict research: Conflict escalation leads to identifying the enemy by one singular identity – in this case it is religion.

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