Good points all Mad. I thought about the Japanese suicide bombers of WWII as well, but I did not include them in my discussion as I think them seperate since it was during war time. The nationalistic spirit and pride runs so so so high during war time, I think it could equate to faith itself in a sense. So I think it an uneven comparison to compare secular suicide bombers during war time with those during a non-war time. Though it could be argued that the Islamic Suicide Bombers of today likely think they are at war, so that could be a factor as well.Can any one think of any Suicide Bombers of Western Descent? I am trying but can not come up with any. Tim McVey bombed a building but not suicide, same with Ted the Unabomber, both bombers but neither suicide. Those are the most famous bombers I can think of from the United States.Perhaps we could also draw into the dicsussion the unfortunate events of columbine and other such shootings that eventually turn suicide. Though they are for vastly different reasons and seemingly completely non-faith based, I think they might be interesting to consider in comparison as they are essentially mass murder suicides.Seems like we have a lot of evidence against Harris's harsh critique of fundamentalist faiths due to their believers who become suicide killers. And if that is Harris's main premise for advocating an "End of Faith," it could be a shakey proposition for more reasons than I have already addressed in the other thread. Good food for thought here!

Quote:Nope. None of that had anything to do with it. Why did the Palestinian kill himself and all those people?Because of his religion.To play Devil's Advocate in defense of Harris (who has clearly oversimplified issues to support his points), I think we could make a distinction between "reasons" for someone wanting to kill people and the "decision" to actually do it. Any one can have a reason to do something but realizes it is wrong, so they decide not to. I think Harris over simplifies the point that religious texts give someone a reason/explanation/validation/excuse to do what is normally unthinkable to support their idea. Would these people be performing suicide bombings without the religious aspect and influence? I asked in another thread for examples in recent Western History of suicide bombings and I don't see anything on the scale of what is happening currently in the middle east and being attempted (carried out in the case of 9/11 and madrid) around the world by people from the Middle East. Are religion and religious texts providing the spark to ignite the dynamite that was created by other grevences (often times legitiment despite the illegitiment violence sparked in retaliation)?I think a more in depth look into Islam would be warrented. I suddenly feel like I do not know enough about that religion nor why followers of Islam see themselves, their religion, and how their religion motivates them. Is it different than Western Religion in these senses and how? Further reading on this subject will definitely be a prioriety for me and I am open to suggestions. A quick scan of Amazon sees a lot of titles but VERY polarizing reviews in both directions. Seems like a widely agreed upon authroitative text on the subject is hard to find (I suspect because of the very nature of the subject).

Are there other Israel-Palestine situations? Maybe it is the almost unique POLITICAL parameters of this situation that have led to suicide bombing. The nearest parallel I can think of is the China-Tibet situation. So it might be informative to look at the Tibetan response to Chinese aggression. Dr Haider Abdel-Shafi, once a top negotiator of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation has said: "The suicide attacks have been very, very damaging to us. They deprived us of the sympathy of the world." I think this is correct, people feel much more sympathetic towards the Tibetan cause largely because they have used non-violence. Why did no countries try suicide bombing against Nazi Germany? If someone in the French resistance, say, had decided to cross over to Germany and blow up German civilians on a bus then Hitler would have had no qualms at unleashing geniocide on the French civilians. So it may be Isreali restraint that leads to suicde bombings!Why didn't Moslem Indians use suicide bombing against the British Raj? That fact they did not indicates that suicide is a modern political act rather than an act inspired by the Koran.

The problems in the area of the middle east are highly religious in nature...and it is not necessarily the Muslims or Palistinians that are the problem IMO. It is the insistance that the "Holy Land" somehow BELONGS to the Jewish people, because of some fictional shit mentioned in the bible, that is causing much of the problems IMO.I am not anti-semetic...so I hope not to hear that crap. It is the plain fact that the Holy land has been contested for...how long? The ignorance of Faith is still sith us...no matter who tries to play it down. Is it now the ONLY factor. No...but it is an underlying one. One that has laid the foundation for the problems we are seeing today.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.Once you perceive the irrevocable truth, you can no longer justify the irrational denial. - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

riverc0il: I think Harris over simplifies the point that religious texts give someone a reason/explanation/validation/excuse to do what is normally unthinkable to support their idea.You have a point, and then, you don't. I think you're probably right that, in a lot of cases, religion is playing a crucial part in the conscious decision to take a particular mode of action. But where did we get the idea that these acts you be "normally unthinkable"? Suicide and mass destruction have been elements in civilization for as long as history can demonstrate. What's fairly novel in the instance of suicide bombing is their combination. And I'm not even sure it's all that novel -- soldiers have almost always been willing to march obediently to their deaths so long as it served a tactical purpose. The refinement here, so far as I can tell, is its particular adaptation as a kind of message and its modus operandi in attacking specifically civilian populations.Further reading on this subject will definitely be a prioriety for me and I am open to suggestions. A quick scan of Amazon sees a lot of titles but VERY polarizing reviews in both directions.Polarization can be, in a topic like this, a good thing, so long as you're up to the task of navigating that polarization and not buying to quickly into any particular point of view. To my knowledge, Bernard Lewis and Edward Said have long been admired as writers on the current state of Islam, although Lewis has recently been criticized for an apparantly Janus-faced view of Islam.mal4mac: Why didn't Moslem Indians use suicide bombing against the British Raj? That fact they did not indicates that suicide is a modern political act rather than an act inspired by the Koran.This doesn't particular relate to the situation of British Imperialism in India, but I might also point out that the technique of suicide bombing is also characteristic of a certain amount of technological and economic change. First of all, you must consider that past generations had limited access to the sorts of explosives needed to carry off a legitimate suicide bombing, both because of the limitations of explosive technology of the time and because of the cost involved in procuring and using demolitions of that sort. The rapidity with which 20th century nations converted industry towards the war machine has resulted in the rapid growth of that technology as well as a surplus of weapons, which means that basic demolitions can be bought at a relatively low price. The second consideration, stemming from the first, is that it is often more economical for a rebel party to buy cheap demolitions than it is for them to buy up-to-date weapons. The insurgents in places like Afghanistan are mostly using, for instance, outmoded and second-hand Russian weapons to face Western enemies who have had the benefit of developing weapons technology. And thirdly, when the theater of war is densely packed urban areas, and the rebel party has very few resources -- especially in terms of well-trained soldiers -- it may be more economical to use the untrained as weapons while conserving the trained for more tactically demanding situations.I think that third point is particularly illuminating. For an operation like the infiltration of American airspace, a certain amount of expertise was needed, but far more often these suicide bombings tend to depend upon untrained civilians, mostly because that is what's available. What I'm saying is that, it looks to me as thought the demands of the conflict have determined the mode, rather than any particular religious influence. If there were a way to isolate the combat to unpopulated areas, or simply to cut the militants off from a sympathetic civilian population, I doubt you'd see their elite strapping on bombs and running into the opposing army's camps. They've found a tactic that is effective so long as they can use it to draw dissaffected and already suicide-prone civilians into their tactical plans.To that end, I would say that religion likely is playing a role, but it's a different role than most people suggest. What it has allowed is an outlet for suicide in a society that otherwise imposes a strict moral injunction against suicide. It plays on a conflict in the culture: the civilians who make the best candidates for suicide bombings are people who already feel crushed by the demands of their society; given a more permissive moral code, they might resort to suicide on their own; but one of the elements of their culture is an injunction against suicide. The militants have played on a kind of loophole in Islamic law -- you can commit suicide so long as, in doing so, you achieve something for Islam. Take away the desire for suicide that already exists in these societies, and I think you'd see a precipitous decline in the number of people willing to strap on bombs in the name of Allah. That might go some measure towards explaining why another culture, like that of Indian Muslims under the British Raj, never ventured into the realm of tactical suicide bombings: some aspect of Indian/British culture at the time -- perhaps identifiable in the British educational system or some aspect of Indian culture -- imposed an injunction against suicide or failed to generate enough potential suicides to meet the sort of demand needed.misterpessimistic: The problems in the area of the middle east are highly religious in nature...and it is not necessarily the Muslims or Palistinians that are the problem IMO. It is the insistance that the "Holy Land" somehow BELONGS to the Jewish people, because of some fictional shit mentioned in the bible, that is causing much of the problems IMO.I think that's a pretty common answer to the question of why the situation is so volatile these days, but I don't know that there's as much evidence to support it as people think. Zionism was not so much a religious movement as it was a political response to the ongoing persecution of Jews, culminating with the Holocaust. Modern Jews have staked a claim on Palestine not so much because they feel they have a contractual claim to it, but because the rise of nationalism in Europe over the last several hundred years has made cultural groups who have no nationalistic homeland particularly vulnerable to persecution.It is the plain fact that the Holy land has been contested for...how long?Not so much by Jews, though. Most of the contests over the Holy Land have been between gentile and secular Europe and the groups of people loosely referred to as Arab or Levant.

Quote:To that end, I would say that religion likely is playing a role, but it's a different role than most people suggest. What it has allowed is an outlet for suicide in a society that otherwise imposes a strict moral injunction against suicide. It plays on a conflict in the culture: the civilians who make the best candidates for suicide bombings are people who already feel crushed by the demands of their society; given a more permissive moral code, they might resort to suicide on their own; but one of the elements of their culture is an injunction against suicide. The militants have played on a kind of loophole in Islamic law -- you can commit suicide so long as, in doing so, you achieve something for Islam. Take away the desire for suicide that already exists in these societies, and I think you'd see a precipitous decline in the number of people willing to strap on bombs in the name of Allah. That might go some measure towards explaining why another culture, like that of Indian Muslims under the British Raj, never ventured into the realm of tactical suicide bombings: some aspect of Indian/British culture at the time -- perhaps identifiable in the British educational system or some aspect of Indian culture -- imposed an injunction against suicide or failed to generate enough potential suicides to meet the sort of demand needed.Great points all of them. Perhaps the best way to stop Islamic Terrorism through Suicide Bombings is discussion with Islamic Clerics and Leaders. It seems if an understanding could be reached that Suicide Bombings and Terror are not furthering Islam, the religious leaders could suggest that murdering innocent civilians does not further Islam to their followers. It could be argued, that Suicide Bombings are actually hurting Islam... Harris sure wants to put Islam to bed and is spreading that word.

riverc0il: Perhaps the best way to stop Islamic Terrorism through Suicide Bombings is discussion with Islamic Clerics and Leaders.If I'm right about the Middle Eastern malaise that makes it possible to recruit suicide bombers, then I would say that the best way to stop this particular tactic would be to address the problems in society that make individuals willing to volunteer. That is, there has to be some sort of effort to assuage suicidal feeling in Middle Eastern societies. But that isn't likely to happen until there's some formal recognition of the problem and a concerted effort to understand precisely what's causing the endemic malaise.Incidentally, I deep a quick search on suicide bombing in the university library. I only turned up two hits -- one a study of Middle Eastern suicide bombing (entitled "Islamikaze" -- the pun makes me suspect its seriousness) even to the exclusion of the Tamil and Sri Lankan variants, and another a more or less personal account of Islamic suicide bombing. I need to find a more precise way to search for titles on the topic, but from the outset this looks like an understudied phenomenon.

Quote:That is, there has to be some sort of effort to assuage suicidal feeling in Middle Eastern societies. But that isn't likely to happen until there's some formal recognition of the problem and a concerted effort to understand precisely what's causing the endemic malaise.Definitely agreed that understanding and fixing the situation that creates suicidal feeling is defintiely the best way to fix the problem. It is also the hardest and is not currently being pursued by governments or large scale action groups. My thought was merely a plausible idea that governments could take action on since they don't seem willing to dig deeper and really solve what the problem is, or at least understand it and make what could remotely be conceived as an effort to understand. While I understand terrorists are out there who want to kill us and that certainly does not excuse the horrible acts that are happening, one needs to understand the "enemy" and come to a resolution even if said "enemy" is doing horribly bad things to advocate their possition.The interesting thing about Suicide Bombers being thrown into the mix is that there is no fear of mutually assured destruction. That normally keeps most violence to a minimum, the fear of death or revoking liberty. Without that barrier to protect us, it seems a diologue and an attempt to correct wrongs that have been and continue to be done seems like a good policy.

I thought an important voice in this discussion is Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery of the leftist Jewish peace organization Gush Shalom. He wrote an essay in response to the terrible murder of a mother and her children in the Kibbutz Mezter, November 2002. The title of the piece is Revenge of a Child. The essay is not addressed specifically to Islamic suicide bombing, but it speaks directly to the rage that compels embattled people to commit atrocious acts...and the similar atrocities that create such rage.Quote:So what makes them do these things? What makes other Palestinians justify them? In order to cope, one has to understand, and that does not mean to justify. Nothing in the world can justify a Palestinian who shoots at a child in his mother's embrace, just as nothing can justify an Israeli who drops a bomb on a house in which a child is sleeping in his bed. As the Hebrew poet Bialik wrote a hundred years ago, after the Kishinev pogrom: "Even Satan has not yet invented the revenge for the blood of a little child." But without understanding, it is impossible to cope. The chiefs of the IDF have a simple solution: hit, hit, hit. Kill the attackers. Kill their commanders. Kill the leaders of their organizations. Demolish the homes of their families and exile their relatives. But, wonder of wonders, these methods achieve the opposite. After the huge IDF bulldozer flattens the "terrorist infrastructure," destroying-killing-uprooting everything on its way, within days a new "infrastructure" comes into being. According to the announcements of the IDF itself, since operation "Protective Shield" there have been some 50 warnings of imminent attacks every day. The reason for this can be summed up in one word: rage. Terrible rage, that fills the soul of a human being, leaving no space for anything else. Rage that dominates the person's whole life, making life itself unimportant. Rage that wipes out all limitations, eclipses all values, breaks the chains of family and responsibility. Rage that a person wakes up with in the morning, goes to sleep with in the evening, dreams about at night. Rage that tells a person: get up, take a weapon or an explosive belt, go to their homes and kill, kill, kill, no matter what the consequences. As Avnery describes it (and he is someone who has spent his life working with Israelis and Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and Jews, Marxists and Secularists building peace in that brutalized region of the world) the key ingredient is not Religion, but Rage.

Quote:riverc0il: The interesting thing about Suicide Bombers being thrown into the mix is that there is no fear of mutually assured destruction. That normally keeps most violence to a minimum, the fear of death or revoking liberty.This is just a rhetorical thought experiment kind of question, not necessarily meant for a verbal answer:"How many Suicide Bombers are alive today?"I ask that question because I wonder if our use of language doesn't stand in our way sometimes. I think the same question could be asked about our habit (induced habit due to watching too much tv?) of labeling certain people "terrorists." Can a person really be a terrorist if he/she has not yet committed an act of terror? To get even more rhetorical, would we be using these labels if we weren't being raised by a corporate owned media? Who's yer Daddy?