A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign (as with the Japanese ''
kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
'' pilots of 1944–1945 during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
), and more recently as part of
terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
campaigns (such as the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
in 2001).
While few, if any, successful suicide attacks took place anywhere in the world from 1945 until 1980, between 1981 and September 2015 a total of 4,814 suicide attacks occurred in over 40 countries, killing over 45,000 people. During this time the global rate of such attacks grew from an average of three a year in the 1980s to about one a month in the 1990s to almost one a week from 2001 to 2003 to approximately one a day from 2003 to 2015.
Suicide attacks tend to be more deadly and destructive than other
terror attacks
The following is a list of terrorist incidents that have not been carried out by a state or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism). Assassinations are listed at List of assassinated people.
Definitions of terroris ...
because they give their perpetrators the ability to conceal weapons, make last-minute adjustments, and they do not require remote or delayed detonation, escape plans or rescue teams. They constituted only 4% of all terrorist attacks around the world over one period (between 1981 and 2006), but caused 32% of all terrorism-related deaths (14,599). Ninety percent of those attacks occurred in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
,
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
,
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, the
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
, and
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
. Overall, as of mid-2015, about three-quarters of all suicide attacks occurred in just three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.(Click "Search Database", then under "filter by", click "location". Afghanistan (1059) Iraq (1938) and Pakistan (490) have a total 3487 attacks out of a total of 4620 worldwide.)
Suicide attacks have been described (by W. Hutchinson) as a weapon of
psychological warfare
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
to instill fear in the target population, a strategy to eliminate or at least drastically diminish areas where the public feels safe and the "fabric of trust that holds societies together", as well as to demonstrate the lengths to which perpetrators will go to achieve their goals.
Suicide attackers may have various motivations. ''
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
'' pilots acted under military orders, while other attacks have been perpetrated for religious or nationalist purposes. Before 2003, most attacks targeted forces occupying the attackers' homeland, according to analyst
Robert Pape
Robert Anthony Pape Jr. (born April 24, 1960) is an American political scientist who studies national and international security affairs, with a focus on air power, American and international political violence, social media propaganda, and t ...
. Anthropologist
Scott Atran
Scott Atran (born February 6, 1952) is an American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, ...
Suicide attacks include both suicide terrorism—terrorism often defined as any action "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants" for the purpose of intimidation—and suicide attacks not targeting non-combatants. An alternative definition is provided by
Jason Burke
Jason Burke (born 1970) is a British journalist and the author of several non-fiction books. A correspondent covering Africa for ''The Guardian'', he is currently based in Johannesburg, having previously been based in New Delhi as the same paper' ...
, a journalist who has lived among Islamic militants, and suggests that most define terrorism as 'the use or threat of serious violence' to advance some kind of 'cause', stressing that terrorism is a tactic. Academic
Fred Halliday
Simon Frederick Peter Halliday (22 February 1946 – 26 April 2010) was an Irish writer and academic specialising in International Relations and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Cold War, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula.
Biog ...
, has written that assigning the descriptor of 'terrorist' or 'terrorism' to the actions of a group is a tactic used by states to deny 'legitimacy' and 'rights to protest and rebel'.
Suicide terrorism
The definition of "suicide" is another issue. Suicide terrorism (see
Jihadism
Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam."Compare: Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, Wes ...
) itself has been defined by Ami Pedahzur, a professor of government, as "violent actions perpetrated by people who are aware that the odds they will return alive are close to zero". Other sources exclude from their work "''suicidal''" or high risk attacks, such as the
Lod Airport massacre
The Lod Airport massacre"They were responsible for the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972, which was committed on behalf of the PFLP." Jeffrey D. Simon, ''The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism'', Indiana University Press ...
or "reckless charge in battle", focusing only on true "suicide attacks", where the odds of survival are not "close to zero" but required to be zero, because "the perpetrator's ensured death is a precondition for the success of his mission".
Also excluded from the definition are "
proxy bomb
The proxy bomb, also known as a human bomb, is a tactic that was used mainly by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland during the conflict known as "the Troubles". It involved forcing people (including off-duty members o ...
ings", which may have political goals and may be designed to look like suicide bombing, but where the "proxy" is forced to carry a bomb under threat (such as having their children killed); and "suicidal rampage shootings" (such as the
Columbine High School massacre
On April 20, 1999, a school shooting and attempted bombing occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. ...
, the
Virginia Tech shooting
The Virginia Tech shooting was a spree shooting that occurred on April 16, 2007, comprising two attacks on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Seung-Hui Cho, an u ...
or
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and t ...
in the U.S.) which are usually thought of as being driven by personal and psychological reasons, not political, social or religious motives.
It may not always be clear to investigators which type of killing is which. Suicide attack campaigns sometimes also using proxy bombers (as alleged in Iraq). or manipulating the vulnerable to be bombers. At least one researcher ( Adam Lankford) argues that the motivation to kill and be killed connects some suicide attackers more closely to "suicidal rampage" murderers than is commonly thought.
Usage
The usage of the term "suicide attack" goes back a long way but "suicide bombing" dates back to at least 1940 when a ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' article mentions the term in relation to German tactics. Less than two years later that newspaper referred to a Japanese kamikaze attempt on an American carrier as a "suicide bombing". In 1945 ''
The Times of London
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fo ...
'', referred to a
kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
plane as a "suicide-bomb", and two years later an article there referred to a new British pilot-less, radio-controlled rocket missile as originally designed "as a counter-measure to the Japanese 'suicide-bomber'".
Alternative terms
Sometimes, to assign either a more positive or negative connotation to the act, suicide bombing is referred to by different terms.
''Istishhad''
Islamist supporters often call a suicide attack ''Istishhad'' (often translated as "
martyrdom operation
Istishhad ( ar, اِسْتِشْهَادٌ, istišhād) is the Arabic word for "martyrdom", "death of a martyr", or "heroic death". In recent years the term has been said to "emphasize... heroism in the act of sacrifice" rather than "victimizatio ...
"), and the suicide attacker ''
shahid
''Shaheed'' ( , , ; pa, ਸ਼ਹੀਦ) denotes a martyr in Islam. The word is used frequently in the Quran in the generic sense of "witness" but only once in the sense of "martyr" (i.e. one who dies for his faith); ...
'' (pl. ''shuhada'', literally 'witness' and usually translated as 'martyr'). The idea being that the attacker died in order to testify his faith in God, for example while waging '' jihad bis saif'' (
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
by the sword). The term "suicide" is never used because Islam has strong strictures against taking one's own life. The terms ''Istishhad'' / "martyrdom operation" have been embraced by the
Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
, and by
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
,
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades () is a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. The organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
L ...
,
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
and other Palestinian factions.
Homicide bombing
Some efforts have been made to replace the term "suicide bombing" with "homicide bombing", on the grounds that since the primary purpose of such a bombing is to kill other people, homicide is a more apt adjective than "suicide".
The first to use the term for a wide audience was White House Press Secretary
Ari Fleischer
Lawrence Ari Fleischer (born October 13, 1960) is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003.
As press secretary in the Bush a ...
in April 2002. The only major media outlets to use it were
Fox News Channel
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
and the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' (both of which are owned by
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...
and have since mostly abandoned the term).
Robert Goldney, a professor emeritus at the
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...
, has argued in favor of the term "homicide bomber", arguing that studies show that there is little in common between people who blow themselves up, intending to kill as many people as possible in the process, and actual suicide victims. Fox News producer Dennis Murray argued that a suicidal act should be reserved for a person who does something to kill themselves only. CNN Producer Christa Robinson argued that the term "homicide bomber" reflects only that you have killed other people, but not that you have also killed yourself.
Genocide bombing
"Genocide bombing" was coined in 2002 by
Irwin Cotler
Irwin Cotler, PC, OC, OQ (born May 8, 1940) is a retired Canadian politician who was Member of Parliament for Mount Royal from 1999 to 2015. He served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until the Liberal gov ...
, a member of the Canadian parliament, in an effort to focus attention on the alleged intention of
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
by militant
Palestinians
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
in their calls to "wipe Israel off the map".
Sacrifice bombing
In the German-speaking area the term "sacrifice bombing" (Ger. ''Opferanschlag'') was proposed in 2012 by German scholar Arata Takeda. The term is intended to shift the focus away from the suicide of the perpetrators and towards their use as weapons by their commanders.
History, pre-1980
The first-century AD Jewish
Sicarii
The Sicarii (Modern Hebrew: סיקריים ''siqariyim'') were a splinter group of the Jewish Zealots who, in the decades preceding Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE, strongly opposed the Roman occupation of Judea and attempted to expel them and th ...
sect are thought to have carried out suicidal attacks against Hellenized Jews they considered immoral collaborators. The Hashishiyeen (
Assassins
An assassin is a person who commits targeted murder.
Assassin may also refer to:
Origin of term
* Someone belonging to the medieval Persian Ismaili order of Assassins
Animals and insects
* Assassin bugs, a genus in the family ''Reduviida ...
) sect of Ismaili Shi'a Muslims assassinated two caliphs, and many viziers, sultans and Crusader leaders over the course of 300 years, before being annihilated by Mongol invaders. Hashishiyeen were known for their targeting of the powerful, their use of the dagger as a weapon (rather than something safer for the assassin such as a crossbow), and for making no attempt to escape after completing their killing.
Arnold von Winkelried
Arnold von Winkelried or Arnold Winkelried is a legendary hero of Swiss history.
According to 16th-century Swiss historiography, Winkelried's sacrifice brought about the victory of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the Battle of Sempach (1386) over the ...
became a hero in the Swiss struggle for independence when he sacrificed himself at the
Battle of Sempach
The Battle of Sempach was fought on 9 July 1386, between Leopold III, Duke of Austria and the Old Swiss Confederacy. The battle was a decisive Swiss victory in which Duke Leopold and numerous Austrian nobles died. The victory helped turn the lo ...
in 1386.
The earliest known non-military suicide attack occurred in Murchison in New Zealand on 14 July 1905. A long-standing dispute between two farmers resulted in a court case, and the defendant (Joseph Sewell) had sticks of
gelignite
Gelignite (), also known as blasting gelatin or simply "jelly", is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton (a type of nitrocellulose or guncotton) dissolved in either nitroglycerine or nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpe ...
strapped to his body. When Sewell excitedly shouted during the court sitting about the other farmer "I'll blow the devil to hell, and I have enough dynamite to do just that", he was ushered out of the building. Sewell detonated the charge when a police officer tried to arrest him on the street, and his body was blown to pieces, but nobody else died from their injuries.
India
In 1780 an
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
woman named
Kuyili
Kuyili is a fictional character introduced by K Jeevabharathi in his book "Velu Nachiyar". She was portrayed as an army commander of queen Velu Nachiyar who participated in campaigns against the East India Company in the 18th century. She is ...
applied
ghee
Ghee is a type of clarified butter, originating from India. It is commonly used in India for cooking, as a traditional medicine, and for religious rituals.
Description
Ghee is typically prepared by simmering butter, which is churned from c ...
and oil onto her body and set herself ablaze, jumping into an armoury of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
which subsequently blew up. This suicide attack helped to secure victory for her commander,
Qing
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
official
Yu Yonghe
Yu Yonghe () was a traveler from China whose adventures are recorded in '' Small Sea Travel Diaries'' (裨海紀遊). The book contributes significantly to the research on the historical development of Taiwan ( Formosa) in the seventeenth century. ...
recorded that injured
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
soldiers fighting against
Koxinga
Zheng Chenggong, Prince of Yanping (; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), better known internationally as Koxinga (), was a Ming loyalist general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern ...
's forces for control of Taiwan in 1661 would use gunpowder to blow up both themselves and their opponents rather than be taken prisoner. However, the Chinese observer may have confused such suicidal tactics with the standard Dutch military practice of undermining and blowing up positions recently overrun by the enemy which almost cost Koxinga his life during the
Siege of Fort Zeelandia
The siege of Fort Zeelandia () of 1661–1662 ended the Dutch East India Company's rule over Taiwan and began the Kingdom of Tungning's rule over the island.
Prelude
From 1623 to 1624 the Dutch had been at war with Ming China over the Pescador ...
.
On February 5, 1831, during the
Belgian Revolution
The Belgian Revolution (, ) was the conflict which led to the secession of the southern provinces (mainly the former Southern Netherlands) from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Belgium.
T ...
a gale blew a Dutch
gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.
History Pre-steam ...
under the command of
Jan van Speyk
Jan Carel Josephus van Speyk (31 January 1802 – 5 February 1831) was a Dutch naval lieutenant commander with the United Netherlands Navy who became a hero in the Netherlands for his opposition to the Belgian Revolution.
Life
Early ...
into the quay of the
port of Antwerp
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges is the port of the City of Antwerp. It is located in Flanders (Belgium), mainly in the province of Antwerp but also partially in the province of East Flanders. It is a seaport in the heart of Europe accessible to ...
. As the ship was stormed by Belgians Jan van Speyk refused to surrender the ship, instead igniting the ship's gunpowder with either his gun or cigar, blowing up the ship and killing 28 out of the 31 crewmen as well as an unknown number of Belgians.
Aceh Sultanate
The Sultanate of Aceh, officially the Kingdom of Aceh Darussalam ( ace, Keurajeuën Acèh Darussalam; Jawoë: كاورجاون اچيه دارالسلام), was a sultanate centered in the modern-day Indonesian province of Aceh. It was a major ...
performed suicide attacks known as ''Parang-sabil'' against Dutch invaders during the
Aceh War
The Aceh War ( id, Perang Aceh), also known as the Dutch War or the Infidel War (1873–1913), was an armed military conflict between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Kingdom of the Netherlands which was triggered by discussions between represen ...
. It was considered as part of personal
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
in the Islamic religion of the Acehnese. The Dutch called it ''Atjèh-moord'', (literally "Aceh-murder"). The Acehnese work of literature, the '' Hikayat Perang Sabil'' provided the background and reasoning for the "Aceh-mord"— Acehnese suicide attacks upon the Dutch. The Indonesian translations of the Dutch terms are Aceh bodoh (Aceh pungo) or Aceh gila (Aceh mord).
''Atjèh-moord'' was also used against the Japanese by the Acehnese during the Japanese occupation of Aceh. The Acehnese
Ulama
In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...
(Islamic Scholars) fought against both the Dutch and the Japanese, revolting against the Dutch in February 1942 and against Japan in November 1942. The revolt was led by the All-Aceh Religious Scholars' Association (PUSA). The Japanese suffered 18 dead in the uprising while they slaughtered up to 100 or over 120 Acehnese.Ricklefs 2001 p. 252. The revolt happened in Bayu and was centred around Tjot Plieng village's religious school. During the revolt, the Japanese troops armed with mortars and machine guns were charged by sword wielding Acehnese under Teungku Abduldjalil (Tengku Abdul Djalil) in Buloh Gampong Teungah and Tjot Plieng on 10 and 13 November. In May 1945 the Acehnese rebelled again.
Moro Juramentado
Moro Muslims who performed suicide attacks were called ''mag-sabil'', and the suicide attacks were known as ''Parang-sabil''. The Spanish called them ''
juramentado
Juramentado, in Philippine history, refers to a male Moro swordsman (from the Tausug tribe of Sulu) who attacked and killed targeted occupying and invading police and soldiers, expecting to be killed himself, the martyrdom undertaken as a form of ...
''. The idea of the juramentado was considered part of
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
in the Moros' Islamic religion. During an attack, a Juramentado would throw himself at his targets and kill them with bladed weapons such as barongs and
kris
The kris, or ''keris'' in the Indonesian language, is an asymmetrical dagger with distinctive blade-patterning achieved through alternating laminations of iron and nickelous iron (''pamor''). Of Javanese origin, the kris is famous for its disti ...
until he himself was killed. The Moros performed juramentado suicide attacks against the Spanish in the
Spanish–Moro conflict
The Spanish–Moro conflict ( fil, Sagupaang Kastila at Moro) was a series of battles in the Philippines lasting over several centuries. It began during the Spanish Era and lasted until the Spanish–American War, when Spain finally began t ...
of the 16th to the 19th centuries, against the Americans in the Moro Rebellion (1899–1913), and against the Japanese in World War II.
The Moro Juramentados aimed their attacks specifically against their enemies, and not against non-Muslims in general. They launched suicide attacks on the Japanese, Spanish, Americans and Filipinos, but did not attack the non-Muslim Chinese as the Chinese were not considered enemies of the Moro people. The Japanese responded to these suicide attacks by massacring all known family members and relatives of the attacker(s).
According to historian Stephan Dale, the Moro were not the only Muslims who carried out suicide attacks "in their fight against Western hegemony and colonial rule". In the 18th century, suicide tactics were used on the Malabar coast of southwestern India, and in Atjeh (Acheh) in Northern Sumatra as well.
Russia
The first known suicide bomber was a Russian man named
Ignaty Grinevitsky
Ignacy Hryniewiecki or Ignaty Ioakhimovich Grinevitsky). (russian: Игнатий Гриневицкий, pl, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, be, Ігнат Грынявіцкі; — March 13, 1881) was a Polish member of the Russian revolutionary societ ...
. The invention of dynamite in the 1860s presented revolutionary and terrorist groups in Europe with a weapon nearly 20 times more powerful than gunpowder, but with technical challenges to detonating it at the right time. One way around that obstacle was to use a human trigger, and this was the technique that assassinated Tsar
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II ( rus, Алекса́ндр II Никола́евич, Aleksándr II Nikoláyevich, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr ftɐˈroj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ; 29 April 181813 March 1881) was Emperor of Russia, Congress Poland, King of Poland and Gra ...
in 1881.
A would-be suicide-bomber killed
Vyacheslav von Plehve
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve ( rus, Вячесла́в (Wenzel (Славик)) из Плевны Константи́нович фон Пле́ве, p=vʲɪtɕɪˈslaf fɐn ˈplʲevʲɪ; – ) served as a director of Imperial Russ ...
, the Russian Minister of the Interior, in St Petersburg in 1904.
Chinese suicide squads
During the
Xinhai Revolution
The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a d ...
(the Revolution of 1911) and the Warlord Era of the
Republic of China (1912–1949)
The Republic of China (ROC), between 1912 and 1949, was a sovereign state recognised as the official designation of China when it was based on Mainland China, prior to the Retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, relocat ...
, " Dare to Die Corps" () or "Suicide squads" were frequently used by Chinese armies. China deployed these suicide units against the Japanese during the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
.
In the Xinhai Revolution, many Chinese revolutionaries became martyrs in battle. "Dare to Die" student corps were founded, for student revolutionaries wanting to fight against Qing dynasty rule. Dr.
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...
and
Huang Xing
Huang Xing or Huang Hsing (; 25 October 1874 – 31 October 1916) was a Chinese revolutionary leader and politician, and the first commander-in-chief of the Republic of China. As one of the founders of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Republic of ...
promoted the Dare to Die corps. Huang said, "We must die, so let us die bravely." Suicide squads were formed by Chinese students going into battle, knowing that they would be killed fighting against overwhelming odds.
The
72 Martyrs of Huanghuagang
The Second Guangzhou (Canton) Uprising, known in Chinese as the Yellow Flower Mound Uprising or the Guangzhou Xinhai Uprising, was a failed uprising took place in China led by Huang Xing and his fellow revolutionaries against the Qing dynasty i ...
died in the uprising that began the
Wuchang Uprising
The Wuchang Uprising was an armed rebellion against the ruling Qing dynasty that took place in Wuchang (now Wuchang District of Wuhan), Hubei, China on 10 October 1911, beginning the Xinhai Revolution that successfully overthrew China's last i ...
, and were recognized as heroes and martyrs by the
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
party and the
Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
. The martyrs in the Dare to Die Corps who died in battle wrote letters to family members before heading off to certain death. The Huanghuakang was built as a monument to the 72 martyrs. The deaths of the revolutionaries helped the establishment of the Republic of China, overthrowing the Qing dynasty imperial system. Other Dare to Die student corps in the Xinhai revolution were led by students who later became major military leaders in Republic of China, like
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...
, and
Huang Shaoxiong
Huang Shaohong (1895 – August 31, 1966) was a warlord in Guangxi province and governed Guangxi as part of the New Guangxi Clique through the latter part of the Warlord era, and a leader in later years of the Republic of China.
Biography
Hu ...
with the Muslim Bai Chongxi against Qing dynasty forces.
"Dare to Die" troops were used by warlords. The
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
used one to put down an insurrection in Canton. Many women joined them in addition to men to achieve martyrdom against China's opponents. They were known as 烈士 "Lit-she" (Martyrs) after accomplishing their mission.
During the January 28 Incident a dare to die squad struck against the Japanese.
Suicide bombing was also used against the Japanese. A "dare to die corps" was effectively used against Japanese units at the Battle of Taierzhuang. They used swords. They wore suicide vests made out of grenades.
A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese soldiers at
Sihang Warehouse
The Defense of Sihang Warehouse () took place from October 26 to November 1, 1937, and marked the beginning of the end of the three-month Battle of Shanghai in the opening phase of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Defenders of the warehouse he ...
Battle of Shanghai
The Battle of Shanghai () was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan
The also ...
, to stop a Japanese tank column when an attacker exploded himself beneath the lead tank, and at the Battle of Taierzhuang where Chinese troops with dynamite and grenades strapped to themselves rushed Japanese tanks and blew themselves up,
in one incident obliterating four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles.
During the 1946–1950
Communist Revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stage ...
, coolies fighting the Communists formed "Dare to Die Corps" to fight for their organizations, with their lives. During the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...
, protesting students also formed "Dare to Die Corps", to risk their lives defending the protest leaders.
Japanese ''Kamikaze''
''
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
'', a ritual act of self-sacrifice carried out by Japanese pilots of explosive-laden
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...
against Allied warships, occurred on a large scale at the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. About 3000 attacks were made and about 50 ships were sunk.
Later in the war, as Japan became more desperate, this act became formalized and ritualized, as planes were outfitted with explosives specific to the task of a suicide mission. Kamikaze strikes were a weapon of asymmetric war used by the
Empire of Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...
against
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
and
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
s, although the
armoured flight deck
An armoured flight deck is an aircraft carrier flight deck that incorporates substantial armour in its design.
Comparison is often made between the carrier designs of the Royal Navy (RN) and the United States Navy (USN). The two navies followe ...
of the Royal Navy carriers diminished Kamikaze effectiveness. Along with fitting existing aircraft with bombs, the Japanese also developed the
Ohka
The Yokosuka MXY-7 was a purpose-built, rocket-powered human-guided ''kamikaze'' attack aircraft employed by Japan against Allied ships towards the end of the Pacific War during World War II. Although extremely fast, the very short range of t ...
, a purpose-built suicide aircraft, air-launched from a carrying bomber and propelled to the target at high speed using rocket engines. The Japanese Navy also used piloted
torpedo
A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...
es called ''
kaiten
were crewed torpedoes and suicide craft, used by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the final stages of World War II.
History
In recognition of the unfavorable progress of the war, towards the end of 1943 the Japanese high command considered s ...
'' ("Heaven shaker") on suicide missions. Although sometimes called
midget submarine
A midget submarine (also called a mini submarine) is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to six or nine, with little or no on-board living accommodation. They normally work with mother ships, ...
s, these were modified versions of the unmanned torpedoes of the time and are distinct from the torpedo-firing midget submarines used earlier in the war, which were designed to infiltrate
shore
A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...
defenses and return to a
mother ship
A mother ship, mothership or mother-ship is a large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles. A mother ship may be a maritime ship, aircraft, or spacecraft.
Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental airc ...
after firing their torpedoes. Although extremely hazardous, these midget submarine attacks were not technically suicide missions, as the earlier midget submarines had escape hatches. Kaitens, however, provided no means of escape.
Germans
During the Battle for Berlin the Luftwaffe flew "Self-sacrifice missions" (''Selbstopfereinsatz'') against Soviet bridges over the River Oder. These 'total missions' were flown by pilots of the
Leonidas Squadron
The ''Leonidas'' Squadron, formally known as ''5th Staffel of Kampfgeschwader 200'', was a unit which was originally formed to fly the '' Fieseler Fi 103R (Reichenberg)'', a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb, in attacks in which the pilot was ...
. From April 17–20, 1945, using any available aircraft, the ''Luftwaffe'' claimed the squadron had destroyed 17 bridges, however military historian
Antony Beevor
Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works on the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War.
Early life
Born in Kensington, Beevor was educated at two ...
when writing about the missions thinks that this was exaggerated and that only the railway bridge at Küstrin was definitely destroyed. He comments that "thirty-five pilots and aircraft was a high price
to pay for such a limited and temporary success". The missions were called off when the Soviet ground forces reached the vicinity of the squadron's airbase at
Jüterbog
Jüterbog () is a historic town in north-eastern Germany, in the Teltow-Fläming district of Brandenburg. It is on the Nuthe river at the northern slope of the Fläming hill range, about southwest of Berlin.
History
The Slavic settlement of ' ...
.Beevor, Antony. ''Berlin: The Downfall 1945'', Penguin Books, 2002, p. 238; ; accessed April 18, 2015.
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff (27 March 1905 – 27 January 1980) was an officer in the German Army. He attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bombing on 21 March 1943; the plan failed when Hitler left early, but Gersdorff ...
intended to assassinate
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
by suicide bomb in 1943, but was unable to complete the attack.
Korean War
North Korean tanks were attacked by South Koreans with suicide tactics during the Korean War.
American tanks at Seoul were attacked by North Korean suicide squads, who used satchel charges. North Korean soldier Li Su-Bok is considered a hero for destroying an American tank with a suicide bomb.
Suez Crisis
An Arab Christian military officer from Syria,
Jules Jammal
Jules Yusuf Jammal ( ar, جول يوسف جمال) is said to have been a Syrian military officer who killed himself in a suicide attack during the Suez Crisis, in Egypt.
According to a narrative prevailing in the Arab world, Jammal rammed hi ...
, allegedly brought down a French ship with a suicide attack during the
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...
in 1956 according to Egyptian media, although both French ships with that name were unharmed during the crisis.
War of Attrition
On March 21, 1968, in response to persistent PLO raids against Israeli civilian targets, Israel attacked the town of
Karameh
Al-Karameh ( ar, الكرامة), or simply Karameh, is a town in west-central Jordan, near the Allenby Bridge which spans the Jordan River. Karameh sits on the eastern bank of the river, along the border between Jordan, Israel, as well as the Isr ...
, Jordan, the site of a major PLO camp. The goal of the invasion was to destroy Karameh camp and capture
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
in reprisal for the attacks by the PLO against Israeli civilians, which culminated in an Israeli school bus hitting a mine in the
Negev
The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southe ...
. This engagement marked the first known deployment of suicide bombers by Palestinian forces.
United States
On December 27, 2018, the ''Green Bay Press-Gazette'' interviewed veteran Mark Bentley, who had trained for the
Special Atomic Demolition Munition
The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), also known as the XM129 and XM159 Atomic Demolition Charges, and the B54 bomb was a nuclear man-portable atomic demolition munition (ADM) system fielded by the US military from the 1960s to 1980 ...
program to manually place and detonate a modified version of the
W54
The W54 (also known as the Mark 54 or B54) was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s. The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both weight and yield to have entered US service. It wa ...
nuclear bomb. The report stated that he and other soldiers training for the program knew this was a suicide mission because either it would be unrealistic to outrun the timer on the bomb, or that soldiers would be obligated to secure the site before the timer went off. However, in theory the timer could be set long enough to give the team a chance to escape. Specifically, he stated, "We all knew it was a one-way mission, a suicide mission." "You set your timer, and it would click when it went off, or it went ding or I forget what, but you knew you were toast," he said. "Ding! Your toast is ready, and it's you." He also commented, "The Army is not going to set a bomb like that and run away and leave it, because they don't know if someone else would get ahold of it," he said. "They have to leave troops there to make sure it's not stolen or compromised, and that would just be collateral damage. You didn't go out with the thought that it was anything other than a one-way mission. If you're Bruce Willis, you get away, but I ain't Bruce Willis."
However, employment manuals for atomic demolition munitions specifically describe the firing party and their guard retreating from the emplacement site, at which point security of the device is provided through a combination of passive security measures including concealment, camouflage and the use of decoys, and active security measures including booby-traps, obstacles such as
concertina wire
Concertina wire or Dannert wire is a type of barbed wire or razor wire that is formed in large coils which can be expanded like a concertina. In conjunction with plain barbed wire (and/or razor wire/tape) and steel pickets, it is most ofte ...
and landmines, and long ranged artillery fire. Further, the SADM included a Field Wire Remote Control System (FWRCS), a device that enabled the sending of safe/arm and firing signals to the weapon via a wire for safe remote detonation of the weapon.
Post-1980 attacks
History
The concept of self-sacrifice as a means to killing others dates back to antiquity with Samson's suicidal mass killing of the
Philistine
The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when ...
leaders, but the idea of suicide bombing "as a tool of stateless terrorists" was only "dreamed up a hundred years ago by the European anarchists", according to author Noah Feldman. It was not until 1983 when Shiite militants blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, that it became a "tool of modern terrorist warfare".
Modern suicide bombing has been defined as "involving explosives deliberately carried to the target either on the person or in a civilian vehicle and delivered by surprise". (Noah Feldman and many others exclude terror attacks such as the
Lod Airport massacre
The Lod Airport massacre"They were responsible for the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972, which was committed on behalf of the PFLP." Jeffrey D. Simon, ''The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism'', Indiana University Press ...
where "the perpetrator's ensured death" was not "a precondition for the success of his mission".) The intended targets are often civilian, not just military or political.
Suicide bombing was used by factions of the
Lebanese Civil War
The Lebanese Civil War ( ar, الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, translit=Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities a ...
and especially by the
Tamil Tigers
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...
(LTTE) of
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
.
The
Islamic Dawa Party
The Islamic Dawa Party, also known as the Islamic Call Party ( ar, حزب الدعوة الإسلامية, Ḥizb ad-Daʿwa al-Islāmiyya), is an Shia Islamist political party in Iraq. Dawa and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council are two of th ...
Hezbollah
Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...
Ba'ath Party
The Arab Socialist Baʿath Party ( ar, حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي ' ) was a political party founded in Syria by Mishel ʿAflaq, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Bītār, and associates of Zaki al-ʾArsūzī. The party espoused B ...
, and the
Syrian Social Nationalist Party
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) or is a Syrian nationalist party operating in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. It advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present ...
had carried out around 50 suicide bombings between them. (The latter of these groups sent the first recorded female suicide bomber in 1985.)FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBERS , Debra D. Zedalis, Strategic Studies Institute , June 2004 , Debra D. Zedalis, University Press of the Pacific, 2004, Iraq militants turn to women for suicide attacks,
During the Sri Lankan Civil War, the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) adopted suicide bombing as a tactic, using bomb belts and female bombers. The LTTE carried out their first suicide attack in July 1987, and their
Black Tiger
A black tiger is a rare colour variant of the tiger, and is not a distinct species or geographic subspecies.
Description
There are reports and one painting (now lost) of pure black non-striped tigers (true melanistic tigers). Most black mammal ...
unit committed 83 suicide attacks from 1987 to 2009, killing 981 people,including former Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi (; 20 August 1944 – 21 May 1991) was an Indian politician who served as the sixth prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989. He took office after the 1984 assassination of his mother, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to beco ...
, and the president of Sri Lanka,
Ranasinghe Premadasa
Sri Lankabhimanya Ranasinghe Premadasa ( si, රණසිංහ ප්රේමදාස ''Raṇasiṃha Premadāsa'', ta, ரணசிங்க பிரேமதாசா ''Raṇaciṅka Pirēmatācā''; 23 June 1924 – 1 May 1993) was t ...
.
Another non-religious group involved in suicide attacks was the
Kurdistan Workers' Party
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...
which began their insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984. According to the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism's Suicide Attack Database, as of 2015, ten suicide attacks by the PKK from 1996 to 2012 killed 32 people and injured 116. (Suicide attacks are only part of the PKK's militant arsenal as they have killed or wounded hundreds of government workers and destroyed or damaged hundreds of school, post offices and mosques.)
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...
carried out its first suicide attack in the mid-1990s,
and they first appeared in Israel and the
Palestinian Territories
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...
in 1989.
9/11 and after
In early 2000, one analyst (
Yoram Schweitzer
Yoram Schweitzer is an Israeli intelligence official who is a senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and is director of the institute's Research Program: Terrorism and Low-Intensity Conflict.
During 201 ...
) saw a pause in bombing campaigns and argued that "most of the groups that were involved in suicide terrorism either stopped using it or eventually reduced it significantly."
The number of attacks using suicide tactics grew from an average of fewer than five per year during the 1980s to 81 suicide attacks in 2001 to 460 in 2005. By 2005, the tactic had spread to dozens of countries.
Suicide bombing
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
became a popular tactic among Palestinian terrorist organizations such as
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades () is a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. The organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
L ...
, and occasionally by the
PFLP
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( ar, الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين, translit=al-Jabhah al-Sha`biyyah li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn, PFLP) is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary so ...
. The first suicide bombing in Israel was by Hamas in 1994. Attacks peaked from 2001 to 2003 with over 40 bombings and over 200 killed in 2002.
Bombers affiliated with these groups often use so-called " suicide belts",
explosive device
An explosive device is a device that relies on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide a violent release of energy.
Applications of explosive devices include:
*Building implosion (demolition)
* Excavation
*Explosive forming
...
s (often including
shrapnel
Shrapnel may refer to:
Military
* Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use
* Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material
Popular culture
* ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics)
* ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam C ...
) designed to be strapped to the body under clothing. In order to maximize the loss of life, the bombers seek out enclosed spaces, such as cafés or city
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
es crowded with people at
rush hour
A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice every weekday: on ...
.Analysis: Palestinian suicide bombings BBC News (2007-01-29); retrieved 2012-08-19. Less common are military targets (for example, soldiers waiting for transport at roadside).
These bombings have tended to have more popular support than in other Muslim countries, and more
music videos
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...
and announcements that promise
eternal
Eternal(s) or The Eternal may refer to:
* Eternity, an infinite amount of time, or a timeless state
* Immortality or eternal life
* God, the supreme being, creator deity, and principal object of faith in monotheism
Comics, film and television
* ...
reward for suicide bombers can be found on Palestinian television (according to Palestinian Media Watch). Israeli sources observed that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah operate "Paradise Camps", training children as young as 11 to become suicide bombers.
The
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
, orchestrated by al-Qaeda, has been called "the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...
which thrust the United States into
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
". They involved the hijacking of four large passenger
jet airliners
A jet airliner or jetliner is an airliner powered by jet engines (passenger jet aircraft). Airliners usually have two or four jet engines; three-engined designs were popular in the 1970s but are less common today. Airliners are commonly cl ...
because their long transcontinental flight plans meant they carried more fuel, allowing a bigger explosion on impact (unlike earlier airline hijackings, the primary focus was the planes, not the passengers).
Two
2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultur ...
planes were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, destroying both 110-story skyscrapers within less than two hours. A third plane was flown into
the Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metony ...
in
Arlington County, Virginia
Arlington County is a County (United States), county in the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the Washington, D.C., District of Co ...
, causing severe damage to the west side of the building. These attacks resulted in the deaths of 221 people (including the 15 hijackers) on board the three planes as well as 2,731 more in and around the targeted buildings. A fourth plane crashed into a field near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Shanksville is a borough in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It has a population of 197 as of the 2020 U.S. census. It is part of the Somerset, Pennsylvania Micropolitan Statistical Area and is located southeast of Pittsburgh and west of Philade ...
, after a revolt by the plane's passengers, killing all 44 people (including the four hijackers) on board. In total, the attacks killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 others. The U.S. stock market closed for four trading days after the attacks (the first time it had an unscheduled closing since the Great Depression). Nine days after the attack,
U.S. President
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
called for a "War on Terror" and shortly thereafter launched the
War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to:
*Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC)
*Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709)
*Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see als ...
to find and capture
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
, the head of the al-Qaeda organization that mounted the 9/11 attacks.
After the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...
, Iraqi and foreign insurgents carried out waves of suicide bombings. More attacks have been carried out in Iraq (1938 as of mid-2015) than in any other country.
In addition to
United States military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
targets, they attacked many civilian targets such as
Shiite
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
mosque
A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
. Iraqi men waiting to apply for jobs with the new army and
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
force were targets. In the lead up to the Iraqi parliamentary election, on January 30, 2005, suicide attacks upon civilian and police personnel involved with the
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
s increased. There were also reports of the insurgents co-opting disabled people as involuntary suicide bombers.
Other major locations of suicide attack are Afghanistan (1059 attacks as of mid-2015) and Pakistan (490 attacks). In the first eight months of 2008, Pakistan overtook Iraq and Afghanistan in suicide bombings, with 28 bombings killing 471 people.
Suicide bombings have become a tactic in
Chechnya
Chechnya ( rus, Чечня́, Chechnyá, p=tɕɪtɕˈnʲa; ce, Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), officially the Chechen Republic,; ce, Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the ...
, first being used in the conflict in 2000 in Alkhan Kala,
and spreading to Russia, notably with the
Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater by Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, which involved 850 hostages and ended with Russian security services killing o ...
in 2002 to the
Beslan school hostage crisis
The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or the Beslan massacre) was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages ( ...
in 2004.
In Europe four Islamist suicide bombers exploded home-made peroxide explosives on three London underground trains and a bus on 7 July 2005, during the morning rush hour. These "7/7" bombings killed 52 civilians and injured 700.
Since 2006, al-Shabaab and its predecessor, the Islamic Courts, have carried out major suicide attacks in Somalia, the worst year so far being 2014 with 16 attacks and over 120 killed.
On December 25, 2020, a suicide bombing occurred in Nashville, Tennessee.
Strategy and advantages
According to author Jeffrey William Lewis, to succeed, campaigns of suicide bombing need:
* willing individuals
* organizations to train and use them
* a society willing to accept such acts in the name of a greater good
The organizations work to guarantee individual suicide bombers that they "will be remembered as martyrs dying for their communities". By imbuing suicide bombing/attacks with "reverence and heroism", it becomes more attractive to recruits.
According to Yoram Schweitzer, modern suicide terrorism is "aimed at causing devastating physical damage, through which it inflicts profound fear and anxiety". Its goal is not to produce a negative psychological effect only on the victims of the actual attack, but on the entire target population.
Attackers themselves have often framed suicide attacks as acts of courageous self-sacrifice in made necessary by the superior military or security strength of the enemy. The technique has also been called "the atomic weapon of the weak". According to Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organiz ...
, the former leader of Hamas, "Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defense. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves." While arguably this explains the motivation of many early suicide bombings in the 1980s and 90s, it cannot explain many later attacks, such as on funeral processions of the minority Shia in Pakistan.
A major reason for the popularity of suicide attacks despite the sacrifice involved for its perpetrators is its tactical advantages over other types of terrorism, such as the ability to conceal weapons, make last-minute adjustments, increased ability to infiltrate heavily guarded targets, lack of need for remote or delayed detonation, escape plans or rescue teams. Robert Pape observes: "Suicide attacks are an especially convincing way to signal the likelihood of more pain to come, because if you are willing to kill yourself you are also willing to endure brutal retaliation. "... The element of suicide itself helps increase the credibility of future attacks because it suggests that attackers cannot be deterred." Other scholars have criticized Pape's research design, arguing that it cannot draw any conclusions on the efficacy of suicide terrorism.
Bruce Hoffman describes the characteristics of suicide bombing, as "universal": "Suicide bombings are inexpensive and effective. They are less complicated and compromising than other kinds of terrorist operations. They guarantee media coverage. The suicide terrorist is the ultimate smart bomb. Perhaps most important, coldly efficient bombings tear at the fabric of trust that holds societies together."
Attacker profiles and motivations
Studies of who becomes a suicide attacker and what motivates them have often come to different conclusions.
According to Riaz Hassan, "apart from one demographic attribute—that the majority of suicide bombers tend to be young males—the evidence has failed to find a stable set of demographic, psychological, socioeconomic and religious variables that can be causally linked to suicide bombers’ personality or socioeconomic origins." Anthropologist
Scott Atran
Scott Atran (born February 6, 1952) is an American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, ...
agrees:
Reasons vary greatly, and are different in the case of each individual. Fanaticism (nationalist or religious, or both) results from brain-washing, negative experiences regarding “the enemy”, and the lack of a perspective in life. Suicides want to hurt or kill their targets because they hold them responsible for all bad things that have happened to them or in the world, or simply just because they want to escape misery and poverty.
Based on biographies of more than seven hundred foreign fighters uncovered at an Iraqi insurgent camp, researchers believe that the motivation for suicide missions (at least in Iraq) was not "the global jihadi ideology", but "an explosive mix of desperation, pride, anger, sense of powerlessness, local tradition of resistance and religious fervor".
Criminal Justice professor Adam Lankford argues that suicide terrorists are not psychologically normal or stable, and are motivated to suicide/killing to mask their desire to die beneath a "veneer of heroic action", because of the religious consequences of killing themselves outright. He has identified more than 130 individual suicide terrorists, including 9/11 ringleader
Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ar, محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which fo ...
, with classic suicidal risk factors such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, other mental health problems, drug addictions, serious physical injuries or disabilities, or having suffered the unexpected death of a loved one or from other personal crises.
A study of the remains of 110 suicide bombers in Afghanistan for the first part of 2007 by Afghan pathologist Dr. Yusef Yadgari found 80% were suffering from physical ailments such as missing limbs (before the blasts), cancer, or leprosy. Also, in contrast to earlier findings of suicide bombers, the Afghan bombers were "not celebrated like their counterparts in other Arab nations. Afghan bombers are not featured on posters or in videos as martyrs."
Anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
Scott Atran's research has found that the attacks are not organized from the top down, but occurs from the bottom up. That is, it is usually a matter of following one's friends, and ending up in environments that foster
groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...
. Atran is also critical of the claim that terrorists simply crave destruction; they are often motivated by beliefs they hold sacred, as well as their own moral reasoning.Scott Atran, ''The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism'' (p. 136), sitemaker.umich.edu; accessed March 22, 2015.
Robert Pape
Robert Anthony Pape Jr. (born April 24, 1960) is an American political scientist who studies national and international security affairs, with a focus on air power, American and international political violence, social media propaganda, and t ...
, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, found the majority of suicide bombers came from the educated middle classes. ( Humam Balawi, who perpetrated the
Camp Chapman attack
Forward Operating Base Chapman was a United States Armed Forces Forward Operating Base located in Khost province, Afghanistan. As a prominent U.S. base, it was a repeated target of terror attacks. There have been at least seven attacks; t ...
in Afghanistan in 2010, was a medical doctor.)
A 2004 paper by
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
Professor of Public Policy
Alberto Abadie
Alberto Abadie (born April 3, 1968) is professor of the department of economics at MIT and Associate Director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) also at MIT. He was born in the Basque Country, Spain. He received his PhD in ...
"cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence (not just suicide terrorism) is "related to a nation's level of political freedom", with countries "in some intermediate range of political freedom" more prone to terrorism than countries
with "high levels" of political freedom or countries with "highly authoritarian regimes". "When governments are weak, political instability is elevated, so conditions are favorable for the appearance of terrorism".Alberto Abadie. A 2020 study found that while well-educated and economically well-off individuals are more likely to be behind suicide terrorism, it is not because these individuals self-select into suicide terrorism, but rather because terrorist groups are more likely to select high-quality individuals to commit suicide terrorist attacks.
Pape found that among Islamic suicide terrorists, 97 percent were unmarried and 84 percent were male (or if excluding the
Kurdistan Workers' Party
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...
, 91 percent male), while a study conducted by the
U.S. military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
in 2008 found that suicide bombers were almost always single men without children aged 18 to 30 (with a mean age of 22), and were typically students or employed in blue-collar occupations. In a 2011 doctoral thesis, anthropologist Kyle R. Gibson reviewed three studies documenting 1,208 suicide attacks from 1981 to 2007 and found that countries with higher
polygyny
Polygyny (; from Neoclassical Greek πολυγυνία (); ) is the most common and accepted form of polygamy around the world, entailing the marriage of a man with several women.
Incidence
Polygyny is more widespread in Africa than in any o ...
rates correlated with greater production of suicide terrorists. In addition to noting that countries where polygyny is widely practiced tend to have higher
homicide rates
The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year. A mortality rate of 30 (out of 100,000) in a population of 100,000 would mean 30 deaths per year in that entire population, or ...
Islamic countries
The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. In ...
than most of the world causes them to have larger populations susceptible to suicide terrorism, and that promises of harems of virgins for
martyrdom
A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external ...
serves as a mechanism to mitigate
in-group
In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example ide ...
conflict within Islamic countries between alpha and non-alpha males by bringing esteem to the latter's families and redirecting their violence towards out-groups.
Along with his research on the
Tamil Tigers
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...
, Scott Atran found that
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
terrorist groups (such as
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
) provide monthly
stipend
A stipend is a regular fixed sum of money paid for services or to defray expenses, such as for scholarship, internship, or apprenticeship. It is often distinct from an income or a salary because it does not necessarily represent payment for work pe ...
s, lump-sum payments, and massive prestige to the families of suicide terrorists. Citing Atran and other anthropological research showing that 99 percent of Palestinian suicide terrorists are male, that 86 percent are unmarried, and that 81 percent have at least six siblings (larger than the average Palestinian family size), cognitive scientist
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
argues in ''
The Better Angels of Our Nature
''The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined'' is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker, in which the author argues that violence in the world has declined both in the long run and in the short run and suggests explanations as to why this ...
'' (2011) that because the families of men in the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
bride price
Bride price, bride-dowry ( Mahr in Islam), bride-wealth, or bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the woman or the family of the woman he will be married to or is just about to marry. Bride dow ...
s and that many potential brides end up in polygynous marriages, the financial compensation of an act of suicide terrorism can buy enough brides for a man's brothers to have children to make the
self-sacrifice
Self-sacrifice is the giving up of something that a person wants for themselves so that others can be helped or protected or so that other external value can be advanced or protected.
See also
* Altruism (unselfishness)
* Altruistic suicide
* Sacr ...
pay off in terms of
kin selection
Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution i ...
and
biological fitness
Fitness (often denoted w or ω in population genetics models) is the quantitative representation of individual reproductive success. It is also equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation, made by the same individua ...
(with Pinker also citing a famous quotation attributed to evolutionary biologist
J. B. S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...
when Haldane quipped that he would not sacrifice his life for his brother but would for "two brothers or eight cousins").
A study by German scholar Arata Takeda analyzes analogous behavior represented in literary texts from the antiquity through the 20th century (
Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or co ...
' s ''
Ajax
Ajax may refer to:
Greek mythology and tragedy
* Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea
* Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris
* ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...
'',
Milton
Milton may refer to:
Names
* Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname)
** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet
* Milton (given name)
** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...
's ''
Samson Agonistes
''Samson Agonistes'' (from Greek Σαμσών ἀγωνιστής, "Samson the champion") is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's '' Paradise Regained'' in 1671, as the title page of that volume sta ...
'',
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...
's ''
The Robbers
''The Robbers'' (', ) is the first drama by German playwright Friedrich Schiller. The play was published in 1781 and premiered on 13 January 1782 in Mannheim, Germany, and was inspired by Leisewitz' earlier play ''Julius of Taranto''. It wa ...
'',
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
's ''
The Just Assassins
''The Just Assassins'' (original French title: ''Les Justes'', more literal translations would be ''The Just'' or ''The Righteous'') is a 1949 play by French writer and philosopher Albert Camus.
The play is based on the true story of a group of ...
'') and comes to the conclusion "that suicide bombings are not the expressions of specific cultural peculiarities or exclusively religious fanaticisms. Instead, they represent a strategic option of the desperately weak who strategically disguise themselves under the mask of apparent strength, terror, and invincibility."
Nationalist resistance and religion
To what extent attackers are motivated by religious enthusiasm, by resistance to perceived outsider oppression or some combination of the two is disputed.
According to
Robert Pape
Robert Anthony Pape Jr. (born April 24, 1960) is an American political scientist who studies national and international security affairs, with a focus on air power, American and international political violence, social media propaganda, and t ...
, director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, as of 2005, 95 percent of suicide attacks have the same specific strategic goal: to cause an occupying state to withdraw forces from a disputed territory, making nationalism, not religion, their principal motivation.Pape, ''Dying to Win'', p. 128
Beneath the religious rhetoric with which uch terroris perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims. Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism ... Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, al-Qaida is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands.
Alternately, another source found that at least in one country (Lebanon from 1983 to 1999) it was Islamists who influenced secular nationalists—their use of suicide attack spreading to the secular groups. Five Lebanese groups "espousing a non-religious nationalist ideology" followed the lead of Islamist groups in attacking by suicide, "impressed by the effectiveness of Hezbollah's attacks in precipitating the withdrawal of the 'foreigners' from Lebanon". (In Israel suicide attacks by Islamist Islamic Jihad and Hamas also preceded those of the secular
PFLP
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( ar, الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين, translit=al-Jabhah al-Sha`biyyah li-Taḥrīr Filasṭīn, PFLP) is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary so ...
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades () is a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. The organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
L ...
.)
Pape found other factors associated with suicide attacks included
* the government of the targeted country being democratic and the public opinion of the country playing a role in determining policy.
* a difference in religion between the attackers and occupiers;
* grassroots support for the attacks;
* attackers disproportionately from the educated middle classes;Scott Atran, The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism (p. 130), sitemaker.umich.edu; accessed July 11, 2015.
* high levels of brutality and cruelty by the occupiers, and
* competition among militant groups fighting the occupiers.
Other researchers contend that Pape's analysis is flawed, particularly his contention that democracies are the main targets of such attacks. Other scholars have criticized Pape's research design, arguing that it cannot draw any conclusions on the causes of suicide terrorism.
Atran argues that suicide bombing has moved on from the days of Pape's study, that non-Islamic groups have carried out very few bombings since 2003, while bombing by Muslim or Islamist groups associated with a "global ideology" of "martyrdom" has skyrocketed. In one year, in one Muslim country alone – 2004 in Iraq – there were 400 suicide attacks and 2,000 casualties. Other researchers (such as Yotam Feldner) argue that perceived religious rewards in the hereafter are instrumental in encouraging Muslims to commit suicide attacks, or ask why prominent anti-occupation secular terrorist groups—such as the
Provisional IRA
The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...
,
ETA
Eta (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἦτα ''ē̂ta'' or ell, ήτα ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative in most dialects, ...
or
anti-colonialist
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence m ...
insurgents in Vietnam, Algeria, etc.—have not used suicide, why he does not mention that the very first suicide attack in Lebanon (in 1981) targeted the embassy of Iraq, a country which was not occupying Lebanon.
Mia Bloom agrees with Pape that competition among insurgents groups is a significant motivator, arguing the growth in suicide as a tactic is a product of "outbidding", i.e. the need by competing insurgent groups to demonstrate their commitment to the cause to broader public—making the ultimate sacrifice for the insurgency being a "bid" impossible to top. (This explains its use by Palestinian groups, but not that by the Tamil Tigers.)
Still other researchers have identified sociopolitical factors as more central in the motivation of suicide attackers than religion.
According to Atran and former CIA case officer Marc Sageman, support for suicide actions is triggered by moral outrage at perceived attacks against Islam and sacred values, but this is converted to action as a result of small-world factors (such as being part of a football club with other jihadis). Millions express sympathy with global jihad (according to a 2006 Gallup study involving more than 50,000 interviews in dozens of countries, seven percent or at least 90 million of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims consider the 9/11 attacks "completely justified").An estimated 7–14% of Muslims worldwide (depending on the poll taken) supported the Al Qaeda strike against the United States.
Also arguing that the increase in suicide terrorism since 2001 is really driven by Salafi/Jihadist ideology and Al-Qaeda is Assaf Moghadam.
Updating his work in a 2010 book ''Cutting the Fuse'', Pape reported that a fine-grained analysis of the time and location of attacks strongly support his conclusion that "foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5%—and the deployment of American combat forces for 92%—of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world" between 2004 and 2009 Moreover, "''the success attributed to the surge in 2007 and 2008 was actually less the result of an increase in coalition forces and more to a change of strategy in Baghdad and the empowerment of the Sunnis in Anbar.''" (emphasis in the original)
The same logic can be seen in Afghanistan. In 2004 and early 2005, NATO occupied the north and west, controlled by the Northern Alliance, whom NATO had previously helped fight the Taliban. An enormous spike in suicide terrorism only occurred later in 2005 as NATO moved into the south and east, which had previously been controlled by the Taliban and locals were more likely to see NATO as a foreign occupation threatening local culture and customs. Critics argue the logic cannot be seen in Pakistan,Max Boot, Suicide by Bomb " ''The Weekly Standard'', Aug 1, 2011. which has no occupation and the second highest number of suicide bombing fatalities as of mid-2015.
Islam
What connection the high percentage of suicide attacks executed by Islamist groups since 1980 has to do with the religion of Islam is disputed. Specifically, scholars, researchers, and others, disagree over whether Islam forbids suicide in the process of attacking enemies or the killing of civilians. According to a report compiled by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, 224 of 300 suicide terror attacks from 1980 to 2003 involved Islamist groups or took place in Muslim-majority lands.Pape, ''Dying to Win'', computed from Table 1, p. 15 Another tabulation found more than a fourfold increase in suicide bombings in the two years following Papes study and that the overwhelming majority of these bombers were motivated by the ideology of Islamist martyrdom. (For example, as of early 2008, 1121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
Islamic suicide bombing is a fairly recent phenomenon. It was totally absent from the 1979–1989
Afghan jihad
''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term t ...
against the Soviet Union, (an asymmetrical war where the mujahideen fought Soviet warplanes, helicopters and tanks primarily with light weapons). According to author Sadakat Kadri, "the very idea that Muslims might blow themselves up for God was unheard of before 1983, and it was not until the early 1990s that anyone anywhere had tried to justify killing innocent Muslims who were not on a battlefield." After 1983 the process was limited among Muslims to Hezbollah and other Lebanese Shi'a factions for more than a decade.
Since then, the "vocabulary of martyrdom and sacrifice", videotaped pre-confession of faith by attackers have become part of "Islamic cultural consciousness", "instantly recognizable" to Muslims (according to Noah Feldman), while the tactic has spread through the Muslim world "with astonishing speed and on a surprising course".
First the targets were American soldiers, then mostly Israelis, including women and children. From
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
and Israel, the technique of suicide bombing moved to Iraq, where the targets have included mosques and shrines, and the intended victims have mostly been
Shiite
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...
Iraqis
Iraqis ( ar, العراقيون, ku, گهلی عیراق, gelê Iraqê) are people who originate from the country of Iraq. Iraq consists largely of most of ancient Mesopotamia, the native land of the indigenous Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, ...
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, ... both the perpetrators and the targets are orthodox
Sunni
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...
Muslims. Not long ago, a bombing in Lashkar Gah, the capital of
Helmand Province
Helmand (Pashto/Dari: ; ), also known as Hillmand, in ancient times, as Hermand and Hethumand, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces (, '' wilåyat''). The provinces of Afghanistan are the primar ...
, killed Muslims, including women, who were applying to go on
pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...
to
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
. Overall, the trend is definitively in the direction of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. By a conservative accounting, more than three times as many Iraqis have been killed by suicide bombings in just three year (2003–6) as have Israelis in ten (from 1996–2006). Suicide bombing has become the archetype of Muslim violence – not just to Westerners but also to Muslims themselves.
Recent research on the rationale of suicide bombing has identified both religious and sociopolitical motivations.Olivetti, Vincetto (2002), ''Terror's Source''; Those who cite religious factors as an important influence note that religion provides the framework because the bombers believe they are acting in the name of Islam and will be rewarded as martyrs. Since martyrdom is seen as a step towards paradise, those who commit suicide while discarding their community from a common enemy believe that they will reach an ultimate salvation after they die.
In the media attention given to suicide bombing during the
Second Intifada
The Second Intifada ( ar, الانتفاضة الثانية, ; he, האינתיפאדה השנייה, ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada ( ar, انتفاضة الأقصى, label=none, '), was a major Palestinian uprising against Israel. ...
and after 9/11, sources hostile to radical Islamism quoted radical scholars promising various heavenly rewards, such as 70 virgins (
houri
In Islamic religious belief, houris (Pronounced ; from ar, حُـورِيَّـة ,حُورِيّ, ḥūriyy, ḥūrīya), "literally means having eyes with marked contrast of black and white", group=Note are women with beautiful eyes describe ...
) as wives, to Muslims who die as martyrs, (specifically as suicide attackers). Other rewards include "From the moment the first drop of his blood is spilled, he does not feel the pain of his wounds and he is forgiven for all his sins" according to Sheikh Abd Al-Salam Abu Shukheydem, Chief Mufti of the Palestinian Authority police force, (Shukheydem does not specify that the martyrs have been killed as suicide attackers) One Israeli source (Y. Feldner of
MEMRI
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI; officially the "Middle East Media and Research Institute") is a nonprofit press monitoring and analysis organization co-founded by former Israeli military intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and ...
) complained that
the death announcements of martyrs in the Palestinian press often take the form of wedding, not funeral, announcements. "Blessings will be accepted immediately after the burial and until 10 p.m. ...at the home of the martyr's uncle," read one suicide bomber's death notice. "With great pride, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad marries the member of its military wing... the martyr and hero Yasser Al-Adhami, to 'the black-eyed, read another.
Other alleged rewards for those dying in jihad are feeling no pain from the cause of their death, being cleansed of all sin and brought directly to paradise, not having to wait for the
Day of Judgement
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...
.One scholar of history (Leor Halevi) suggests that suicide killers may be motivated by the idea that by dying while waging jihad they are transported directly to paradise, thus bypassing "the tortures of the grave" ("a state akin to the late Christian concept of
purgatory
Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgatory ...
").
Others (such as
As'ad AbuKhalil
As'ad AbuKhalil ( ar, أسعد أبو خليل) (born 16 March 1960) is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus.
AbuKhalil is the author of ''Historical Dictionary of Lebanon'' (1998), ''Bi ...
) maintain that "the tendency to dwell on the sexual motives" of the suicide bombers "belittles" the bombers "sociopolitical causes", and that the alleged "sexual frustration" of young Muslim men "has been overly emphasized in the Western and Israeli media" as a motive for terrorism.
Support for "martyrdom operations"
Islamist militant organisations (including
al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...
,
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
and Islamic Jihad) argue that despite what some Muslims claim is Islam's strict prohibition of suicide and murder,. abdulhaqq.jeeran.com.. abdulhaqq.jeeran.com.
suicide attacks fulfill the obligation of
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
against the "oppressor", "martyrs" will be rewarded with paradise, and have the support of (some) Muslim clerics.
Clerics have supported suicide attacks largely in connection with the Palestinian issue. Prominent Sunni cleric
Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Yusuf al-Qaradawi ( ar, يوسف القرضاوي, translit=Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī; or ''Yusuf al-Qardawi''; 9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of ...
previously had supported such attacks by Palestinians in perceived defense of their homeland as heroic and an act of resistance. Shiite Lebanese cleric Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, the spiritual authority recognized by Hezbollah, holds similar views.
According to the conservative Iranian Shi'ah cleric
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi
Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah ( fa, تقی مصباح; born Taqi Givechi, fa, تقی گیوهچی), commonly known as Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi ( fa, محمدتقی مصباح یزدی, 31 January 1935 – 1 January 2021) was an Iranian Shia ...
, "When protecting Islam and the Muslim
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
depends on
martyrdom operations
''Shaheed'' ( , , ; pa, ਸ਼ਹੀਦ) denotes a martyr in Islam. The word is used frequently in the Quran in the generic sense of "witness" but only once in the sense of "martyr" (i.e. one who dies for his faith); ...
, it not only is allowed, but even is an
obligation
An obligation is a course of action that someone is required to take, whether legal or moral. Obligations are constraints; they limit freedom. People who are under obligations may choose to freely act under obligations. Obligation exists when the ...
as many of the
Shi'ah
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mos ...
Ayatullah
Ayatollah ( ; fa, آیتالله, āyatollāh) is an honorific title for high-ranking Twelver Shia clergy in Iran and Iraq that came into widespread usage in the 20th century.
Etymology
The title is originally derived from Arabic word p ...
Fazel Lankarani
Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Fazel Lankarani (1931 – June 16, 2007) was an Iranian Twelver Shia Marja'. He was student of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi. He was a child of a Persian mother and an Azerbaijani father.
Biography and clerical activities ...
, have clearly announced in their
fatwas
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
."
The Quranic verse used by
Zarein Ahmedzay
Najibullah Zazi (born August 10, 1985) is an Afghan-American who was arrested in September 2009 as part of the 2009 U.S. al Qaeda group accused of planning suicide bombings on the New York City Subway system, and who pleaded guilty as have two o ...
(an Afghanistan-born New York City cab driver who traveled to Waziristan for terrorist training and discussed possible suicide bombing target locations in crowded parts of Manhattan) in support of his actions was 9/11 (Surah
At-Tawba
At-Tawbah ( ar, ٱلتوبة, ; The Repentance), also known as Bara'ah ( ar, براءة, ; Repudiation), is the ninth chapter ('' sūrah'') of the Quran. It contains 129 verses ('' āyāt'') and is one of the last Medinan surahs.
This Surah i ...
):
Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain. It is a promise which is binding on Him in the
Torah
The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
and the
Gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
and the
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...
. Who fulfilleth His covenant better than Allah? Rejoice then in your bargain that ye have made, for that is the supreme triumph.
Supporters of the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
insist their attacks are "martyrdom operations" and not suicide. The June 2013 issue of the Taliban magazine ''Azan'' extolled the virtues of suicide attacks, claiming that "suicide bombing" is a "false term" for jihad martyrdom attacks. "So martyrdom operation ≠ Suicide bombing".
The articles maintains that
Abu Huraira
Abu Hurayra ( ar, أبو هريرة, translit=Abū Hurayra; –681) was one of the companions of Islamic prophet Muhammad and, according to Sunni Islam, the most prolific narrator of hadith.
He was known by the ''kunyah'' Abu Hurayrah "Fathe ...
(a companion of the Muhammad) and
Umar ibn Khattab
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ( ar, عمر بن الخطاب, also spelled Omar, ) was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr () as the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate ...
(the second caliph of Islam), approved acts in which the Muslims knew would lead to certain death, and that the Islamic prophet Muhammad also approved of such acts (according to authors Maulana Muawiya Hussaini and Ikrimah Anwar cited numerous
Hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...
of Muhammad on the authority of Islamic jurist
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Abū al-Ḥusayn ‘Asākir ad-Dīn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj ibn Muslim ibn Ward ibn Kawshādh al-Qushayrī an-Naysābūrī ( ar, أبو الحسين عساكر الدين مسلم بن الحجاج بن مسلم بن وَرْد بن كوشاذ ...
). "The Sahaba ompanions of the Islamic prophet Muhammadwho carried out the attacks almost certainly knew that they were going to be killed during their operations but they still carried them out and such acts were extolled and praised in the sharia."
Opposition and responses from Muslim scholars
Others (such as Middle East historian
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near E ...
) disagree, noting
... a clear difference was made between throwing oneself to certain death at the hands of an overwhelmingly strong enemy, and dying by one's own hand. The first, if conducted in a properly authorized [
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
], was a passport to heaven; the second to damnation. The blurring of their previously vital distinction was the work of some twentieth-century theologians who outlined the new theory which the suicide bombers put into practice."
The difference between engaging in an act where the perpetrator plans to fight to the death but where the attack does not require their death, is important to at least one Islamist terror group—
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT; ur, ; literally ''Army of the Good'', translated as ''Army of the Righteous'', or ''Army of the Pure'' and alternatively spelled as ''Lashkar-e-Tayyiba'', ''Lashkar-e-Toiba'', ''Lashkar-i-Taiba'', ''Lashkar-i-Tayyeba'') ...
(LeT). While the group extols "martyrdom" and has killed many civilians, LeT believes suicide attacks where the attackers dies by their own hand (such as by pressing a detonation button), are haram (forbidden). Its "trademark" is that of perpetrators fighting "to the death" but escaping "if practical". "This distinction has been the subject of extensive discourse among radical Islamist leaders."
A number of Western and Muslim scholars of Islam have posited that suicide attacks are a clear violation of classical Islamic law and characterized such attacks against civilians as murderous and sinful.Muslim scholar's fatwa condemns terrorism Articles.cnn.com; retrieved August 19, 2012.Lewis, Bernard & Buntzie Ellis Churchill. "Islam: The Religion and the People" (p. 53), Wharton School Publishing, 2008.
According to
Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near E ...
, "the emergence of the now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition." Islamic legal rules of armed warfare or military
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
are covered in detail in the classical texts of Islamic jurisprudence, which forbidding the killing of women, children or non-combatants, and the destroying of cultivated or residential areas.Bernard Lewis and Buntzie Ellis Churchill, ''Islam: The Religion and the People'', Wharton School Publishing, 2008, pp. 145–53.
For more than a millennium, these tenets were accepted by Sunnis and Shiites; however, since the 1980s militant Islamists have challenged the traditional Islamic rules of warfare to justify suicide attacks.
A number of respected Muslim scholars have provided scholastic refutations of suicide bombings, condemning them as terrorism prohibited in Islam and leading their perpetrators to hell. In his 400+-page ''
Fatwa on Terrorism
The ''Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings'' is a 600-page (Urdu version), 512-page (English version) Islamic decree by scholar Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri which demonstrates from the Quran and Sunnah that terrorism and suicide bombings are unjust a ...
'' condemning suicide attacks, Muslim Islamic scholar Muhammad
Tahir-ul-Qadri
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri ( ur, ; born 19 February 1951) is a Pakistani–Canadian Islamic scholar and former politician who founded Minhaj-ul-Quran International and Pakistan Awami Tehreek.
He was also a professor of international co ...
directly disputed the rationale of Islamists, arguing among other things that the indiscriminately killing of both Muslims and non-Muslims is unlawful, and brings the Muslim
ummah
' (; ar, أمة ) is an Arabic word meaning "community". It is distinguished from ' ( ), which means a nation with common ancestry or geography. Thus, it can be said to be a supra-national community with a common history.
It is a synonym for ' ...
into disrepute, no matter how lofty the killers intentions. Tahir-ul-Qadri states terrorism "has no place in Islamic teaching, and no justification can be provided to it...good intention cannot justify a wrong and forbidden act".
The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia,
Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al Shaykh
Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh ( ar, عبد العزيز بن عبد الله آل الشيخ ''ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Āllah Āl ash-Sheikh''; born 30 November 1940) is a Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar who is the current Grand Mufti of Saud ...
, issued a fatwa on September 12, 2013, that suicide bombings are "great crimes" and bombers are "criminals who rush themselves to hell by their actions". Al Shaykh described suicide bombers as "robbed of their minds... who have been used (as tools) to destroy themselves and societies".
In 2005, following a series of bombings by the banned outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)Ubaidul Haq, the chief cleric of
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
led a protest of
ulema
In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious ...
denouncing
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
. He said:
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
prohibits suicide bombings. These bombers are enemies of Islam. ...It is a duty for all
Muslims
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...
to stand up against those who are killing people in the name of
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
Shia
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...
fatwa
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
against suicide bombing, declaring it a "terrorist act".
Noah Feldman
Noah R. Feldman (born May 22, 1970) is an American academic and legal scholar. He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chairman of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is the author of 10 books, host of ...
"Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age" ''New York Times'', October 29, 2006 In 2005 Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti also issued a fatwa "Against The Targeting Of Civilians".
Ihsanic Intelligence, a London-based Islamic think-tank, published their two-year study into suicide bombings in the name of Islam, ''The Hijacked Caravan'', which concluded that,
The technique of suicide bombing is anathema, antithetical and abhorrent to Sunni Islam. It is considered legally forbidden, constituting a reprehensible innovation in the Islamic tradition, morally an enormity of sin combining suicide and murder and theologically an act which has consequences of eternal damnation. , Mac.abc.se; retrieved August 19, 2012.
American based Islamic jurist and scholar
Khaled Abou Al-Fadl
Khaled Abou el Fadl ( ar, خالد أبو الفضل, ) (born October 23, 1963) is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprude ...
argues,
The classical jurists, nearly without exception, argued that those who attack by stealth, while targeting noncombatants in order to terrorize the resident and wayfarer, are corrupters of the earth. "Resident and wayfarer" was a legal expression that meant that whether the attackers terrorize people in their urban centers or terrorize travelers, the result was the same: all such attacks constitute a corruption of the earth. The legal term given to people who act this way was ''muharibun'' (those who wage war against society), and the crime is called the crime of ''hiraba'' (waging war against society). The crime of ''hiraba'' was so serious and repugnant that, according to Islamic law, those guilty of this crime were considered enemies of humankind and were not to be given quarter or sanctuary anywhere .... Those who are familiar with the classical tradition will find the parallels between what were described as crimes of ''hiraba'' and what is often called terrorism today nothing short of remarkable. The classical jurists considered crimes such as assassinations, setting fires, or poisoning water wells – that could indiscriminately kill the innocent – as offenses of ''hiraba''. Furthermore, hijacking methods of transportation or crucifying people in order to spread fear are also crimes of ''hiraba''. Importantly, Islamic law strictly prohibited the taking of hostages, the mutilation of corpses, and torture.
According to Charles Kimball, chair of the Department of Religion at
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...
, "There is only one verse in the Qur'an that contains a phrase related to suicide" (4:29):
O you who have believed, do not consume one another's wealth unjustly but only n lawfulbusiness by mutual consent. And do not kill yourselves. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful.
Some commentators posit that "do not kill yourselves" is better translated "do not kill each other", and some translations (e.g., by M. H. Shakir) reflect that view. Mainstream Islamic groups such as the
European Council for Fatwa and Research The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is a Dublin-based private foundation, founded in London on 29–30 March 1997 on the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. The council is a largely self-selected body, co ...
also cite the Quranic verse
Al-An'am
Al-An'am ( ar, ٱلأنعام, ; The Cattle) is the sixth chapter (sūrah) of the Quran, with 165 verses ( āyāt). Coming in order in the Quran after al-Baqarah, Al 'Imran, an-Nisa', and al-Ma'idah, this surah dwells on such themes as the ...
6:151)] as prohibiting suicide: "And take not life, which Allah has made sacred, except by way of justice and law". The ''
Hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...
'', including Bukhari 2:445, states: "The Prophet said, '...whoever commits suicide with a piece of iron will be punished with the same piece of iron in the Hell Fire', nd'A man was inflicted with wounds and he committed suicide, and so Allah said: 'My slave has caused death on himself hurriedly, so I forbid Paradise for him.'"
Other Muslims have also noted Quranic verses in opposition to suicide, to taking of life other than by way of justice (i.e. the death penalty for murder), and to collective punishment.
The international community considers the use of indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations and the use of
human shields
A human shield is a non-combatant (or a group of non-combatants) who either volunteers or is forced to shield a legitimate military target in order to deter the enemy from attacking it. The use of human shields as a resistance measure was popula ...
Muslim support for suicide bombings against civilian targets in order to defend Islam has varied over time and by country. The
Pew Global Attitudes Project
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C.
It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the wo ...
survey of the Muslim public found that support has declined over the years since the post-
9/11
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
high. The highest support for suicide bombings has been reported in the occupied
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The I ...
, where in 2014, 46% of Muslims thought that such attacks were often or sometimes justified.
Gender
Suicide operatives are overwhelmingly male in most groups, but among Chechen rebels and the
Kurdistan Workers Party
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...
(PKK) women form the majority of the attackers.
Female suicide bombers have been observed in many predominantly nationalist conflicts by a variety of organizations against both military and civilian targets. In February 2002, however,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organi ...
, the religious leader of
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
, issued a fatwa, giving women permission to participate in suicide attacks.
During the 1980s the greatest number of female suicide attacks in any single year was five. By contrast, in 2008 alone there were 35 female suicide attacks and in 2014 there were 15 such attacks according to the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) Suicide Attack Database.
* In
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
on April 9, 1985,
Sana'a Mehaidli
Sana'a Mehaidli ( ar, سناء محيدلي; August 14, 1968 – April 9, 1985) was a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party who, at the age of 16 blew herself and a Peugeot filled with explosives up next to an Israeli convoy in Jezzine, Leb ...
, a member of the
Syrian Social Nationalist Party
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) or is a Syrian nationalist party operating in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. It advocates the establishment of a Greater Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present ...
(SSNP), detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, which killed two Israeli soldiers and injured twelve more. She is believed to have been the first
female suicide bomber
Female suicide bombers are women who carry out a suicide attack, wherein the bomber kills herself while simultaneously killing targeted people. Suicide bombers are normally viewed as male political radicals but since the 1960s female suicide attac ...
. She is known as "the Bride of the South". During the
Lebanese Civil War
The Lebanese Civil War ( ar, الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, translit=Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities a ...
, female SSNP members bombed Israeli troops and the Israeli proxy militia the
South Lebanon Army
The South Lebanon Army or South Lebanese Army (SLA; ar, جيش لبنان الجنوبي, Jayš Lubnān al-Janūbiyy), also known as the Lahad Army ( ar, جيش لحد, label=none) and referred to as the De Facto Forces (DFF) by the United Nat ...
.
* Sri Lanka's militant organization, the Black Wing Tigers, executed 330 suicide bombing attacks and were all executed mainly by women. The group was formed in 1987 and was disbanded in 2009.
* On May 21, 1991, former Indian Prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi (; 20 August 1944 – 21 May 1991) was an Indian politician who served as the sixth prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989. He took office after the 1984 assassination of his mother, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to beco ...
was assassinated by
Thenmozhi Rajaratnam
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India, occurred as a result of a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, India on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others, in addition to Rajiv Gandhi, were killed. It was carried ou ...
, a member of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...
. Approximately 30% of the organization's suicide bombings were carried out by women.
* The Chechen
shahidka
Black Widow (russian: чёрная вдова, ''chyornaya vdova'') or shahidka (russian: шахидка— Russian feminine gender derivation from ''shahid''), is a term for Islamist Chechen female suicide bombers, willing to be a manifestat ...
s have attacked Russian troops in
Chechnya
Chechnya ( rus, Чечня́, Chechnyá, p=tɕɪtɕˈnʲa; ce, Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), officially the Chechen Republic,; ce, Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the ...
and Russian civilians elsewhere; for example, in the
Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater by Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, which involved 850 hostages and ended with Russian security services killing o ...
.
* Women of the
Kurdistan Workers Party
The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...
(PKK) have carried out suicide bombings primarily against
Turkish Armed Forces
The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF; tr, Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri, TSK) are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. Turkish Armed Forces consist of the General Staff, the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The current Chi ...
, in some cases strapping explosives to their abdomen in order to simulate pregnancy.
*
Wafa Idris
Wafa Idris ( ar, وفاء إدريس 1975 – January 27, 2002) was the first female suicide bomber in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. At the time of her death, Idris was a 28-year-old, divorced Red Crescent Volunteer. She lived in the Am'ari ...
, under
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades () is a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. The organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United St ...
, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber on January 28, 2002, when she blew herself up on Jaffa Road in Central Jerusalem.
* On February 27, 2002, Darine Abu Aisha carried out a suicide bombing at the Maccabim checkpoint of the Israeli army near Jerusalem. On the same day,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organi ...
, the religious leader of the Palestinian Islamist militant group
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
Ayat al-Akhras
Ayat al-Akhras (February 20, 1985 – March 29, 2002) was the third and youngest Palestinian people, Palestinian female suicide bomber who, at age 18 (some sources report her age to be as young as 16), killed herself and two Israeli civilians on M ...
, the third and youngest
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
female suicide bomber
Female suicide bombers are women who carry out a suicide attack, wherein the bomber kills herself while simultaneously killing targeted people. Suicide bombers are normally viewed as male political radicals but since the 1960s female suicide attac ...
(at age 18), killed herself and two Israeli civilians on March 29, 2002, by detonating explosives belted to her body in a supermarket. She had been trained by the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades () is a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank. The organization has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
L ...
, a group linked to the armed branch of
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
(
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
's party), more secular than
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
. The killings gained widespread international attention due to Ayat's age and gender and the fact that one of the victims was also a teenage girl.
*
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
deployed its first female suicide bomber, Reem Riyashi, on January 14, 2004. Al-Riyashi attacked Erez checkpoint, killing 7 people.
* Two female attackers attacked U.S. troops in Iraq on August 5, 2003. Whereas female suicide bombers are not typically introduced in initial stages of a conflict, this attack demonstrates the early and significant involvement of Iraqi women in the Iraq War.
* On 29 March 2010, two female Chechen terrorists bombed two Moscow subway stations killing at least 38 people and injuring more than 60 people.
* The Taliban has used at least one female suicide bomber in Afghanistan.
* On December 25, 2010, the first female suicide bomber in Pakistan detonated her explosives-laden vest, killing at least 43 people at an aid distribution center in northwestern Pakistan.
* On December 29, 2013, a female Chechen suicide bomber detonated her vest in the
Volgograd
Volgograd ( rus, Волгогра́д, a=ru-Volgograd.ogg, p=vəɫɡɐˈɡrat), geographical renaming, formerly Tsaritsyn (russian: Цари́цын, Tsarítsyn, label=none; ) (1589–1925), and Stalingrad (russian: Сталингра́д, Stal ...
railway station killing at least 17 people.
* On December 23, 2016, the first female suicide bomber in Bangladesh detonated her explosive during a police raid.
According to a report issued by intelligence analysts in the U.S. army in 2011, "Although women make up roughly 15% of the suicide bombers within groups which utilize females, they were responsible for 65% of assassinations; 20% of women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose of assassinating a specific individual, compared with 4% of male attackers." The report further stated that female suicide bombers often were "grieving the loss of family members ndseeking revenge against those they feel are responsible for the loss, unable to produce children, nd/ordishonored through sexual indiscretion."
Male suicide bombers are presented as being motivated more by political factors than female suicide bombers are.
Another study of suicide bombers from 1981 and July 2008 by Lindsey A. O’Rourke found female bombers are generally in their late twenties, significantly older than their male counterparts.
O’Rourke found the average number of victims killed by a female suicide attacker was higher than that for male attackers for every group studied (Tamil, PKK, Lebanese, Chechen, Palestinian). Consequently, terrorist organizations recruit and motivate women to participate in suicide attacks, using traditional attitudes of honor and feminine harmlessness and vulnerability among target populations to insert attackers were they can cause a maximum of death and destruction. Bombs have been disguised as a pregnant belly, avoiding invasive searches, seen as taboo. By stumbling or calling out in distress more victims may be drawn to the explosion. These women have proven to be more deadly with higher success rates with more casualties and deaths than their male counterparts. The woman bomber carriers are not permitted to hold and control the detonator, which are still held by the men in charge. Until recently, attacks of women bombers were considered more newsworthy because of the "unladylike" behavior of their perpetrator.
Gendered Motivations
Women are in some traditions customarily seen as peace-makers rather than as front-line actors in conflicts. This misconception has made them useful as suicide bombers, because they might be underestimated and thus be able to enter target areas inconspicuously, leading to more lethal suicide attacks. Whether women's motivations for becoming suicide bombers generally differ from men's remains a pertinent question. Bloom has suggested some salient reasons for women to turn to suicide bombings, such as “to avenge a personal loss, to redeem the family name, to escape a life of sheltered monotony and achieve fame, or to equalize the patriarchal societies in which they live.”Bloom, Mia. “Female Suicide Bombers: A Global Trend.” Daedalus, vol. 136, no. 1, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 94–102, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028092. Some earlier literature suggested that women tend to be motivated by personal trauma rather than by ideological reasons.Bloom, Mia. “Female Suicide Bombers: A Global Trend.” Daedalus, vol. 136, no. 1, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 94–102, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028092. Other researchers disagree with this assessment and state that it reduces the political agency of women, seeing as they are just as capable of making a choice based on ideology. Women's as well as men's usual motivations for becoming suicide bombers should be assumed to be nuanced and complex.
Specific groups
Studies have attempted to learn the history and motivation of suicide attackers.
Al Qaeda
Analysis of the 9/11
Al Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...
attackers found almost all had joined the group with someone else. About 70% joined with friends, 20% with kin. Interviews with friends of the 9/11 pilots reveal they were not "recruited" into Qaeda. They were Middle Eastern Arabs isolated even among the Moroccan and Turkish Muslims who predominate in Germany. Seeking friendship, they began hanging out after services at the Masjad al-Quds and other nearby mosques in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
, in local restaurants and in the dormitory of the Technical University in the suburb of Harburg. Three (
Mohamed Atta
Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta ( ; ar, محمد محمد الأمير عوض السيد عطا ; September 1, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was an Egyptian hijacker and the ringleader of the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which fo ...
,
Ramzi bin al-Shibh
Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh ( ar, رمزي محمد عبدالله بن الشيبة; also transliterated as bin al-Shaibah; born 1 May 1972Marwan al-Shehhi
Marwan Yousef Mohamed Rashid Lekrab al-Shehhi ( ar, مروان يوسف محمد رشيد لكراب الشحي, , also transliterated as Alshehhi; 9 May 1978 – 11 September 2001) was an Emirati al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist who served a ...
) wound up living together as they self-radicalized. They wanted to go to
Chechnya
Chechnya ( rus, Чечня́, Chechnyá, p=tɕɪtɕˈnʲa; ce, Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), officially the Chechen Republic,; ce, Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the ...
, then
Kosovo
Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...
.
Hamas
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
's most sustained suicide bombing campaign in 2003–04 involved several members of Hebron's Masjad (mosque) al-Jihad soccer team. Most lived in the Wad Abu Katila neighborhood and belonged to the al-Qawasmeh hamula (clan); several were classmates in the neighborhood's local branch of the Palestinian Polytechnic College. Their ages ranged from 18 to 22. At least eight team members were dispatched to suicide shooting and bombing operations by the Hamas military leader in Hebron, Abdullah al-Qawasmeh (killed by Israeli forces in June 2003 and succeeded by his relatives Basel al-Qawasmeh, killed in September 2003, and Imad al-Qawasmeh, captured on October 13, 2004). In retaliation for the assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organiz ...
(March 22, 2004) and
Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
Abdel Aziz Ali Abdul Majid al-Rantisi ( ar, عبد العزيز علي عبد المجيد الحفيظ الرنتيسي; 23 October 1947 – 17 April 2004), nicknamed the "Lion of Palestine" was the co-founder of Palestinian Sunni-Islamic org ...
(April 17, 2004), Imad al-Qawasmeh dispatched Ahmed al-Qawasmeh and Nasim al-Ja'abri for a suicide attack on two buses in Beer Sheva (August 31, 2004). In December 2004, Hamas declared a halt to suicide attacks.
On January 15, 2008, the son of
Mahmoud al-Zahar
Mahmoud al-Zahar ( ar, محمود الزهار ') (born 6 May 1945) is a Palestinian politician. He is a co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. Al-Zahar served as foreign minister in the Hamas-dominated Pa ...
, the leader of Hamas in the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
, was killed (another son was killed in a 2003 assassination attempt on Zahar). Three days later, Israel Defense Minister
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak ( he-a, אֵהוּד בָּרָק, Ehud_barak.ogg, link=yes, born Ehud Brog; 12 February 1942) is an Israeli general and politician who served as the tenth prime minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until Jan ...
ordered
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the Israel, State of Israel. It consists of three servic ...
to seal all border crossings with Gaza, cutting off the flow of supplies to the territory in an attempt to stop rocket barrages on Israeli border towns. Nevertheless, violence from both sides only increased. On February 4, 2008, two friends (Mohammed Herbawi, Shadi Zghayer), who were members of the Masjad al-Jihad soccer team, staged a suicide bombing at commercial center in Dimona, Israel. Herbawi had previously been arrested as a 17-year-old on 15 March 2003 shortly after a suicide bombing on Haifa bus (by Mamoud al-Qawasmeh on March 5, 2003) and coordinated suicide shooting attacks on Israeli settlements by others on the team (March 7, 2003, Muhsein, Hazem al-Qawasmeh, Fadi Fahuri, Sufian Hariz) and before another set of suicide bombings by team members in Hebron and Jerusalem on May 17–18, 2003 (Fuad al-Qawasmeh, Basem Takruri, Mujahed al-Ja'abri). Although Hamas claimed responsibility for the Dimona attack, the politburo leadership in Damascus and Beirut was clearly initially unaware of who initiated and carried out the attack. It appears that Ahmad al-Ja'abri, military commander of Hamas's
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades ( ar, كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام, , Battalions of martyr Izz ad-Din al-Qassam; also spelt Izzedine or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades; often shortened to Al-Qassam Brigades, IQB
in Gaza requested the suicide attack through Ayoub Qawasmeh, Hamas's military liaison in Hebron, who knew where to look for eager young men who had self-radicalized together and had already mentally prepared themselves for martyrdom.
LTTE
The
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...
were thought to have mastered the use of
suicide terrorism
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
and had a separate unit, "The Black Tigers", consisting "exclusively of cadres who have volunteered to conduct suicide operations".
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
The
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...
utilizes suicide attacks against government targets before they attack. The attackers can use a wide range of methods, from suicide vests and belts to bomb trucks and cars and APCs filled to the brim with explosives. Usually, the suicide bomber involved in a "martyrdom operation" will record his last words in a martyrdom video before they start their attack and will be released after the suicide attack was done.
A study published by
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
in 2017 analyzed 923 attacks done between December 2015 and November 2016 and compared the military tactic to those used by kamikaze operations. Charlie Winter, author of the study, indicated that ISIL had "industrialized the concept of matyrdom". Most (84%) of suicide attacks were directed towards military targets usually with armed vehicles. About 80% of the attackers were of Iraqi or Syrian origin.
Response and results
Response
Suicide bombings are often followed by heightened security measures and
reprisal
A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extreme ...
s by their targets. Because a successful suicide bomber cannot be targeted, the response is often a targeting of those believed to have sent the bomber. Because future attacks cannot be deterred by the threat of retaliation if the attackers were already willing to kill themselves, pressure is great to employ intensive surveillance of virtually any potential perpetrator, "to look for them almost everywhere, even if no evidence existed that `they` were `there` at all".
In the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
the
IDF
IDF or idf may refer to:
Defence forces
* Irish Defence Forces
* Israel Defense Forces
*Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006
* Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917
Organizations
* Israeli Diving Federation
* Interac ...
has at times
demolished
Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a ...
B'Tselem
B'Tselem ( he, בצלם, , " in the image of od) is a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization whose stated goals are to document human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, combat any denial of the existence of su ...
, November 2004
Other military measures that were taken during the suicide attack campaign included: A widescale re-occupation of the West Bank and blockading of Palestinian towns; "targeted assassinations" of militants, (an approach used since the 1970s); raids against militants suspected of plotting attacks, mass arrests, curfews, and stringent travel restrictions; and physical separation from Palestinians via the 650-km (400-mile)
Israeli West Bank barrier
The Israeli West Bank barrier, comprising the West Bank Wall and the West Bank fence, is a separation barrier built by Israel along the Green Line and inside parts of the West Bank. It is a contentious element of the Israeli–Palestinian c ...
in and around the West Bank. The
Second Intifada
The Second Intifada ( ar, الانتفاضة الثانية, ; he, האינתיפאדה השנייה, ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada ( ar, انتفاضة الأقصى, label=none, '), was a major Palestinian uprising against Israel. ...
and its suicide attacks are often dated as ending around the time of an unofficial ceasefire by some of the most powerful Palestinian militant groups in 2005. A new "
knife intifada
A knife ( : knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evidenced ...
" started in September 2015, but although many Palestinians were killed in the process of stabbing or attempting to stab Israelis, their deaths were not "a precondition for the success" of their mission and so are not considered suicide attacks by many observers.)
In the United States, the element of suicide in the major attack on it (the 9/11 attacks) persuaded many that previously unthinkable, "out of the box" strategic policies in a "war on terrorism" — from "preventive war" against countries not immediately attacking the US, to almost unlimited surveillance of virtually any person in the United States by the government without normal congressional and judicial oversight—was necessary.Understanding Suicide Terrorism And How To Stop It npr.org; accessed 22 March 2015 These responses "produced their own costs and risks—in lives, national debt, and America's standing in the world".
The "heightened security measures" also affected the target populations. During the bombing campaign Israelis were questioned by armed guards and given a quick pat down before being let into cafes. In the US, the post-9/11 era meant "previously inconceivable security measures—in airports and other transportation hubs, hotels and office buildings, sports stadiums and concert halls".
Results
One of the first bombing campaigns utilizing primarily suicide attacks had considerable success. In the early 1980s Hezbollah used these bombing attacks targeting first foreign peacekeepers and then Israel. The result in both cases was withdrawal from Lebanon by the targets.
Other groups have had mixed results. The
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE; ta, தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள், translit=Tamiḻīḻa viṭutalaip pulikaḷ, si, දෙමළ ඊළාම් විමුක්ති කොටි, t ...
(LTTE) pioneered the use of suicide bombings against civilian and political targets and in 2000 were called (by Yoram Schweitzer) "unequivocally the most effective and brutal terrorist organization ever to utilize suicide terrorism". Their struggle for an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
state in the
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
and
East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
of the island lasted for 26 years and led to the deaths of two heads of state or government, several ministers, and up to 100,000 combatants and civilians (by a UN estimate). Politically its attacks succeeded in halting the deployment of the Indian peace keeping troops to Sri-Lanka and the subsequent postponement of the peace-talks in Sri-Lanka. Nonetheless, it ended in May 2009 not with an independent "Eelam", but with the overrunning of LTTE strongholds and the killing of its leadership by the Sri Lankan military and security forces.
It is more difficult to determine whether Palestinian suicide bombings have proved to be a successful tactic. Hamas "came to prominence" after the first intifada as "the main Palestinian opponent of the
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords are a pair of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993;
" ("the US-sponsored peace process that oversaw the gradual and partial removal of Israel's occupation in return for Palestinian guarantees to protect Israeli security") according to the BBC.
The accords were sidetracked after the election in 1996 of right wing Israeli leader
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu (; ; born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. He is currently serving as Leader of the Opposition and Chairman of ...
. Hamas's suicide bombings of Israeli targets (from 1994 to 1997 there were 14 suicide attacks killing 159—not all of which were attributed to Hamas) "were widely" credited for the popularity among Israelis of the hardline Netanyahu, who—like Hamas—was a staunch opponent of the Oslo accords, but an even stauncher enemy of Hamas.
The efficacy of suicide bombing however, does not appear to have demonstrated by the
al-Aqsa Intifada
The Second Intifada ( ar, الانتفاضة الثانية, ; he, האינתיפאדה השנייה, ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada ( ar, انتفاضة الأقصى, label=none, '), was a major Palestinian uprising against Israel. ...
. During this Intifada, the number of suicide attacks increased markedly, but petered out around 2005 following harsh Israeli security measures (mentioned above) such as "targeted assassinations" of Palestinians reportedly involved in terrorism, and the building of a "
separation barrier
A separation barrier or separation wall is a barrier, wall or fence, constructed to limit the movement of people across a certain line or border, or to separate peoples or cultures. A separation barrier that runs along an internationally recogn ...
" that severely hampered Palestinian travel, but with no withdrawal by the Israelis from any occupied territory.
The drop in suicide bombings in Israel has been explained by the many security measures taken by the Israeli government, especially the building of the "separation barrier", and a general consensus among Palestinians that the bombings were a "losing strategy". The suicide (and non-suicide) attacks on civilians had "a major impact" on the attitudes of the Israeli public/voters, creating not demoralization, but even greater support for the right-wing
Likud
Likud ( he, הַלִּיכּוּד, HaLikud, The Consolidation), officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement, is a major centre-right to right-wing political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon ...
party, bringing to office another hardliner, former
general
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...
,
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon (; ; ; also known by his diminutive Arik, , born Ariel Scheinermann, ; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
S ...
. In 2001, 89% of Israeli Jews supported the Sharon government's policy of "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian militants involved in terrorism against Israel, the number rising to 92% in 2003. Opinion polls of the Jewish Israelis found 78–84% support for the "
separation barrier
A separation barrier or separation wall is a barrier, wall or fence, constructed to limit the movement of people across a certain line or border, or to separate peoples or cultures. A separation barrier that runs along an internationally recogn ...
9/11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Suicide attack, suicide List of terrorist incidents, terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, ...
in the US, at least in the short term, the results were negative for Al-Qaeda, as well as the Taliban Movement. Since the attacks, Western nations have diverted massive resources towards stopping similar actions, as well as tightening up
border
Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...
s, and military actions against various countries believed to have been involved with terrorism. Critics of the
War on Terrorism
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant I ...
suggest the results were negative, as the proceeding actions of the United States and other countries has increased the number of recruits, and their willingness to carry out suicide bombings.
See also
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7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists in London that targeted commuters travelling on the city's public transport system during the mo ...
Explosive belt
An explosive belt (also called suicide belt or a suicide vest) is an improvised explosive device, a belt or a vest packed with explosives and armed with a detonator, worn by suicide bombers. Explosive belts are usually packed with ball bearings, ...
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Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg
The Fieseler Fi 103R, code-named ''Reichenberg'', was German manned version of the V-1 flying bomb (more correctly known as the ''Fieseler Fi 103''). It was developed towards the end of the Second World War and, although it never entered service ...
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
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List of Palestinian suicide attacks
This article contains lists of Palestinian suicide attacks carried out by Palestinian individuals and militant groups, usually against Israeli civilian targets. The use of indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations is illegal under internat ...
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Martyrdom video Martyrdom videos are video recordings, generally from Islamist jihadists who are about to take part in a suicide attack and expect to die during their intended actions. They typically include a statement by the person preparing to be a martyr for ...
Pierre Rehov
Pierre Rehov is the pseudonym of a French–Israeli documentary filmmaker, director and novelist, most known for his movies about the Arab–Israeli conflict and Israeli–Palestinian conflict, its treatment in the media, and about terrorism. Re ...
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Proxy bomb
The proxy bomb, also known as a human bomb, is a tactic that was used mainly by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland during the conflict known as "the Troubles". It involved forcing people (including off-duty members o ...
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Bavarian State Library
The Bavarian State Library (german: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the big ...
Mineta Transportation Institute
The Mineta Transportation Institute is a research institute focusing on issues related to intermodal surface transportation in the United States. Although part of San Jose State University's Lucas Graduate School of Business in San Jose, Californi ...