Suicide bombers in Western literature: demythologizing a mythic discourse

Abstract

In facing the challenge of suicide terrorism today on a global scale, it is tempting to attribute the phenomenon to cultural or religious behavior patterns observed solely in non‐Western countries. Yet recent scholarly research on its possible cultural or religious origins has led less to convincing and satisfactory results than to an unresolved aporia between arbitrariness and contingency. By the same token, little notice is taken of the fact that, in Western history and literature, actions and figures can be found whose development and strategies conspicuously resemble those of today’s suicide bombers. A series of such analogous examples in Western literature from antiquity to the present is explored in order to provide deeper insights into situational and systemic factors at work beyond cultural and religious determinants. To more effectively counter suicide terrorism, alternative policies are proposed with the vision of a peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures and religions.

Keywords:

• asymmetric warfare
• freedom fighting
• heroism
• military practice
• slave ethic
• suicide bombing

Acknowledgements

This article is based on my doctoral dissertation presented to the Faculty of Modern Languages of the University of Tübingen in 2008 and honored with the University of Tübingen Doctoral Research Award in 2009. I am especially grateful to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty for its financial support during my doctoral research, Professor Dr Jürgen Wertheimer for his supervision and guidance over the years, Professor Dr Howard Zehr for his encouragement to produce this article, and Dr Thomas Riplinger for his painstaking reading of the manuscript.

Notes

1. See, on the contrary, the concise and impartial historical survey of suicidal missions by Laqueur (2003, chap. 4, pp. 71–97); see also Kermani’s claim in allusion to Nietzschean philosophy that suicide terrorism is ‘just a variety of nihilism’ (Kermani, 2002, p. 35).

2. Laqueur’s introductory paragraph to the chapter ‘Suicide’ (Laqueur, 2003, pp. 71–97), is worth being quoted here at length: ‘Suicide bombing, one of the most prominent features of contemporary terrorism, has been one of the most difficult to understand for those living in what is commonly known as the postheroic age. … it is frequently maintained that suicide attack is something new in history and specifically Muslim. (At one time, in the 1980s, it was believed to be specifically Shiʾite.) However, such missions have occurred over a long time in many countries and cultures. In fact, a review of the history of terrorism over the ages up to the 1960s shows that in the great majority of cases, all terrorism was suicide terrorism. … An attempt to understand the suicide bombers ought to take into account a great variety of circumstances and motives and should not focus on one specific group and religion, even if that group happens to figure very prominently at the present time’ (Laqueur, 2003, p. 71; see also p. 77).

3. Atran, for instance, qualifies the suicide attack practiced by Russian anarchists and Japanese kamikaze as ‘a weapon of terror’ (Atran, 2003, p. 1534), even if the Japanese example does not fit into his description of suicide terrorism as ‘the targeted use of self‐destructing humans against noncombatant – typically civilian – populations to effect political change’ (Atran, 2003, p. 1534). The Japanese kamikaze, as a military operation, did not target any noncombatant populations.

4. For an extensive analysis and a working taxonomy of heroism see Zimbardo (2007, chap. 16, pp. 444–488).

5. Note, for instance, the large number of so‐called green‐card soldiers serving in the US Army since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

6. Needless to mention, the general trend described here applies only to conventional wars between states, not to civil wars or asymmetric conflicts including terrorism. George Orwell, for instance, who joined the POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), laments not only the miserable instruction and equipment provided there, but also, with a cynical undertone, the astonishing lack of ethical restraints against using – and thus sacrificing – children ‘of sixteen years at the very most’ (Orwell, 1938/1996, p. 18): ‘this mob of eager children, who were going to be thrown into the front line in a few days’ time, were not even taught how to fire a rifle or pull the pin out of a bomb’ (Orwell, 1938/1996, p. 8; see also pp. 25–26).

7. Hobbes substantiates his view a few lines above as follows: ‘nothing the Soveraign Representative can doe to a Subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be called Injustice, or Injury; because every Subject is Author of every act the Soveraign doth; so that he never wanteth Right to any thing, otherwise, than as he himself is the Subject to God, and bound thereby to observe the laws of Nature. And therefore it may, and doth often happen in Common‐wealths, that a Subject may be put to death, by the command of the Soveraign Power; and yet neither doe the other wrong’ (Hobbes, 1651/1997, p. 117).

8. One of the prominent examples of human trade within the Western states, which is reflected in Friedrich Schiller’s tragedy Cabal and Love (1784) (Schiller, 2004, p. 780; see also p. 977, n. 780), is the traffic in mercenaries. For Karl Eugen, the Duke of Württemberg, the sale of his soldiers to America in the late eighteenth century was a profitable business.

9. Among those figures who fit the behavior scheme of a suicide bomber and play important parts in dramatic texts, one can cite, for instance, Haimon in Sophocles’ Antigone (442 BC), Stolzius in Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz’s The Soldiers (1776), Max Piccolomini in Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy (1798–1799), Joan in Schiller’s The Maid of Orleans (1801), and Ephraim in Friedrich Hebbel’s Judith (1839/1840).

10. For further important reasons for the relatively rare occurrence of the motif of suicide bombing in Western literature see the analyses of motivic restrictions given by Aristotelian poetics and Hegelian aesthetics in Takeda (2010, pp. 71–76).

11. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, on the contrary, gives no indication in his version of the Samson story in Jewish Antiquities (ca 93–94 AD) that Samson’s killing himself was intended (Josephus, 1988, pp. 125–143, here pp. 141–143).

12. Assum significantly summarizes Micca’s deed as ‘heroic sacrifice’ (Assum, 1926, p. 145), albeit the two accounts he quotes (Assum, 1926, pp. 143–145) make it more or less clear that Micca actually wanted to save himself from the explosion.

13. There are various theories revolving around the etymology of the word ‘assassin’. Its possible roots range from hašīš (Arab. ‘hashish’) via asās (Pers. ‘foundation’) to the name of the sect founder Hasan‐i Sabbah himself. Kermani points out that medieval European knowledge of the Assassins was above all fed by the Sunni polemics directed against the Ismaʾili sect as the epitome of evil (Kermani, 2002, pp. 39–40) and refers in turn to Daftary (1994). In any case, there is no historical evidence that the Assassins consumed hashish.

14. Agamemnon and Menelaus have influenced the judges of the competition for Achilles’ armor in Odysseus’ favor.

15. In Jewish Antiquities, as indicated above, Josephus portrays Samson as an avenger, but not as a suicide (Josephus, 1988, pp. 125–143, here pp. 141–143). In the Letter to the Hebrews, on the other hand, Samson is mentioned among those who were ‘approved because of their faith’ (Hebrews 11:39; see 11:4–38, here 11:32). John Donne sums up the problem in his sermon ‘Deaths Duell’ (1630/1962): ‘God … received Sampson, who went out of this world in such a manner (consider it actively, consider it passively, in his owne death, and in those whom he slew with himselfe) as was subject to interpretation hard enough. Yet the holy Ghost hath moved S. Paul to celebrate Sampson in his great Catalogue, and so doth all the Church’ (Donne, 1630/1962, p. 241, emphasis in original).

16. For a review of the recruitment and use of children by Palestinian militant organizations see, e.g., Human Rights Watch (2002, pp. 89–93).

17. Note, however, that Euripides’ The Bacchae (405 BC) can be referred to as the first extant tragedy that reflects the phenomenon of collective terror prior to the theorizing of poetics by Aristotle. For an analysis of the tragedy from this viewpoint see Eagleton (2005, pp. 1–41).

18. Zimbardo’s objection is that ‘Traditional analyses by most people, including those in legal, religious, and medical institutions, focus on the actor as the sole causal agent. Consequently, they minimize or disregard the impact of situational variables and systemic determinants that shape behavioral outcomes and transform actors’ (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 445). With regard to terrorism at large, different approaches are pursued. Whereas Laqueur claims that ‘the decision to engage in terrorist acts’ is ‘as much a matter of personality as of ideological conviction’ (Laqueur, 2003, p. 13), Eagleton asserts that ‘Justice is the only prophylactic of terror’ (Eagleton, 2005, p. 15).

19. Doris Lessing, in her novel The Good Terrorist (1985), anticipates the perceptual shift toward cultural and religious biases with regard to the terrorists’ life‐despising conduct already in the 1980s. After a dreadful terrorist attack perpetrated by a group of left‐wing activists on a luxury hotel in central London – it is to note that Faye, who drives the car bomb to the target destination, uses the opportunity to commit suicide – Lessing lets a third party express its point of view: ‘The taximan said it was a shocking thing; probably those Arabs again; they had no sense of the sacredness of life, not like the Westerners, if he had his way he would stop the Arabs from coming here’ (Lessing, 1985, p. 357).

20. Hoffman, for instance, quotes an Israeli policeman as saying, ‘There was one event where a suicide bomber had been told all he had to do was to carry the bomb and plant explosives in a certain place. But the bomb was remote‐control detonated’ (Hoffman, 2003). Recall, furthermore, the al Qaʾida suicide bombing using two mentally ill women as unwitting suicide bombers in Baghdad on 1 February 2008.