Introduction
Some scholars have argued that an act of suicide cannot be rational (Kramer, Reference Kramer1990; Merari, Reference Merari1990; Post, Reference Post1990).Footnote 1 Pape (Reference Pape2003), who employs a rational choice model, has questioned this conclusion. He argues that those who organize terrorist action are motivated by a strategic logic designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions.Footnote 2 Explanations that highlight rational choice, and the relative advantages of suicide terrorism, have proliferated (Sprinzak, Reference Sprinzak2000; Bloom, Reference Bloom2004; Hoffman and McCormick, Reference Hoffman and McCormick2004; Atran, Reference Atran2006: 129). One criticism of this genre is the lack of attention to the social and cultural dimensions of the phenomenon. Others have highlighted the institutional, social, and cultural factors that shape the world of the suicide bomber (Pedahzur, Reference Pedahzur2005; Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a; Cook and Allison, Reference Cook and Allison2007) or, more theoretically, the relationship between rationality and social context (Fierke and Nicholson, Reference Fierke and M.2001; Fearon and Wendt, Reference Fearon and Wendt2002).
While the strategic objectives of those who organize suicide terrorism may be explained in rationalist terms, the choice of those who volunteer to be candidates for death is far more problematic, given the high premium, at least within international relations theory, on survival as the ultimate rational end. The rational choice model also makes it difficult to take language or emotion into account. What is the link between the rationality of strategic entrepreneurs and the meaning communicated to larger populations, including potential agents of death? How is the meaning of an act of self-destruction packaged, such that individuals who choose this path may understand themselves to be making a rational or even an heroic choice? Why would this have more persuasive value than concerns for self-preservation? Similar questions could be raised about any context of war, where an elite defines strategic objectives and recruits, drawn from the wider population, carry them out. Both may involve some mix of coercion and emotional or moral appeal. But the gravity of the choice is far greater for the human bomb than for the soldier who is drafted or volunteers to go to war. While the latter may face a higher probability of injury or death than his or her civilian counterpart, the ultimate objective is survival. The human bomb, by contrast, signs up for an act of voluntary death. This suggests that the emotional pull of the sacrifice is greater than the emotional resistance to death.
The purpose of this article is to explore these questions. The analysis begins with an observation: In Western discourse the acts of human bombs tend to be referred to as ‘suicide terrorism’ or ‘suicide bombings’; by contrast the terminology of ‘martyrdom operations’ is more prevalent in the Arab and Muslim Middle East. There is a significant difference in the meaning of ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’.Footnote 3 Each gives a different meaning to an act of self-destruction, providing a different rationale for the act and situating it within a moral framework. Each use thereby establishes a context within which the mobilization of resources and the objects of violence are justified. The language may be employed strategically by those who organize violence, but this is only possible because it already has an emotional resonance among relevant populations.
The distinction between the two uses is significant because the language of ‘martyrdom’ politicizes the act of the human bomb, while that of ‘suicide’ depoliticizes. In politicizing, ‘martyrdom’ constitutes the human bomb as a moral agent in pursuit of justice, who is empowered vis a vis an earthly and a divine community. In depoliticizing, ‘suicide terrorism’ constitutes the agency of states vis a vis a moral deviant and an abject other who is outside politics and is thus the object of legitimate violence.
The violent interaction that emerges from the two constitutes a structural logic, which is underpinned by traumatized populations on both sides and becomes self-reproducing. Two different ‘games’ are played within an asymmetrical relationship, which generates a particular logic. ‘Suicide terrorism’ provides a justification for states to retaliate in the name of protecting a traumatized population; state retaliation reinforces the trauma and the sense of injustice experienced by communities that have produced ‘martyrs’.
The first section examines the importance of a context of meaning for understanding the rationality of an action. The second section explores ‘martyrdom’ and ‘suicide’ as two distinct frameworks for giving meaning to an act of voluntary death in the post-9/11 world, and the emotional dynamics that link these two ‘games’ to a larger structural logic. The third section further develops the structural logic that emerges from the interaction between the two. The concluding section analyses the significance of the argument for rethinking both the structural dynamics of this international context as well as the theoretical model of games.
Socio-political games
The question of why individuals choose to become human bombs needs to be reframed in socio-political terms. Why has a practice of voluntary death become so widespread in a particular historical and political context? Emphasis on the latter suggests that the crucial insights are to be found not in the individual mind, but within a social world where a form of agency has meaning. To state the problem in game-like terms, the problem is less one of why the chess player decides to move the knight rather than the tower, but to look at how the movements of the knight only make sense and have meaning within a structure of rules belonging to chess.
Games often do involve rational and strategic thinking, but this thinking is embedded in a structure of rules. In playing checkers, we may move within a very similar context as chess, that is, a board divided into squares, but the pieces of wood have a different identity and move in different ways, guided by distinct rules of what constitutes good play or cheating. In so far as many games, from Diplomacy to Monopoly, abstract from the dynamics of real-life contexts, a thicker analysis might explore the social, historical, or cultural dimensions of these structuring rules. For instance, Diplomacy takes place in the context of pre-World War I Europe and its moves abstract from and simulate the balance of power logic that structured interstate communication at the time, a logic which is quite different than that of the balance of power during the Cold War.
Many practices of everyday life can also be understood to be game-like, in so far as they make sense only when embedded in a context of meaning. For instance, when we step into a Christian Church to observe a marriage, a whole set of shared understandings are already in place. These shared understandings underpin the actions of the main participants and make it possible for observers to grasp what is happening. According to these rules, the main subjects are a man, a woman, a priest or minister, and witnesses. The subjects make a number of moves in managing the transition from two unmarried individuals to the constitution of a marriage. This includes speech acts, such as ‘I do’, which bring the marriage into being (Austin, Reference Austin1962), and the expression of emotions of love for the other.
These shared understandings are not, obviously, uniform across cultural context. The act of stomping a piece of glass is, for instance, central to the constitution of marriage in a Jewish ceremony. The rules may also be contested within a context. Churches have struggled with the question, for example, of whether marriage by definition revolves around a man and a woman, or whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to marry. In this respect, the rules are flexible rather than law-like. In acting, we often follow rules blindly (this is simply what we do when getting married), but the rules may also be the object of contestation.
The marriage example is multidimensional. The ‘game’ has an objective, that is, to bring something into being that did not previously exist – the marriage itself. Emotion is, in many cultural contexts, fundamental to the rationality of the act rather than divorced from it. While there may be rational reasons to marry someone who is not loved, e.g. to get a visa to stay in a foreign country, these are likely to represent forms of cheating.Footnote 4 The use of language (saying ‘I do’) is a form of action that constitutes the objective. Individuals make a choice to marry but the marriage comes into being within a social, cultural, and legal context. This notion of a game is also useful for thinking about the meanings that surrounds an act of voluntary death.
Language and games
‘Suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ are two distinct ways to attribute meaning to an act of voluntary death. In the next section, I explore the socio-political framework surrounding these two words as they relate to the contemporary political phenomenon of human bombs. In what follows, I explicate the link between language and a game as a structure of rules, as it relates to the two concepts. Suicide and martyrdom are not mere labels for an act observed in the world. Each has a distinct meaning which, in use, connects to subjects and objects, emotions, assumptions about social legitimacy, and justified reactions.
In a ‘thin’ use, both words have a more or less universal meaning. Some concept of suicide or martyrdom can be found in most cultures. While the generic use of the first is more closely associated with voluntary death, the second relates more to an act of witness against an injustice of some kind. In a more ‘thick’ use, the meaning of each word is embedded in a context, and must be analysed there. A concept of suicide may exist in both Japanese and English vocabulary, but has a much different cultural meaning and social legitimacy attached to it in each. In Japan suicide brings social prestige (Ueno, Reference Ueno2005: 2). In the United States it is more likely to be viewed as a moral violation. Both Christianity and Islam have a concept of martyrdom, but this tells us little about what is being witnessed in the specific case, or the form of this witness.Footnote 5 The more generic meanings also don’t make sense of a use that distorts or combines more localized traditions in unique ways, as is the case in the contemporary Middle East. Use of the word ‘suicide’ or ‘martyrdom’ in relation to an act of self-destruction, and the destruction of others is not purely descriptive. Each constitutes a different framework of action or reaction, which has to be explored in context.
‘Suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ are ‘essentially contested’ concepts, yet also vulnerable to reification.Footnote 6 To say that a concept is essentially contested, suggests that its meaning cannot be easily fixed, because of its complex connections to a conceptual system and its moral or ideological value. Not unlike concepts of ‘democracy’ and ‘security’, ‘martyrdom’ and ‘suicide’, when used in a political context, are difficult to pin down. For this reason, it is necessary to ‘look and see’ how the words are employed, which includes an analysis of the conceptual system in which they are embedded and the contestation surrounding them. Reification, by contrast, is the process of fixing meaning, such that the label appears to mirror an objective world, independent of social meaning. Reification takes place as a set of assumptions, which are contained in language, seep into public discourse and become part of the taken for granted rules for giving meaning to a practice or observation of, in this case, voluntary death. The pull toward reification is increased by a structural logic of violent interaction, which reinforces a politics of fear and trauma among populations. While these games may become increasingly reified through repeated use of the terms, they remain nonetheless, a subject of political contestation.
This approach to language has several implications. First, language is assumed to be rule-based, and its use a form of action, rather than a mirror of objects or acts in the world.Footnote 7 These rules don’t originate in individual minds. Rather they are social and cultural. Individuals are socialized into the language and practices of a context. Over time, the rules become habitual and we follow them blindly in using language (Wittgenstein, Reference Wittgenstein1958). We may exercise care in choosing to use particular words, but the reason is usually to speak in a language that will have meaning and resonance to an audience. The notion of following a rule highlights both the social underpinnings of language use, as well as the tendency for particular uses to become a part of the assumed furniture of our everyday language for an observed phenomenon.
Second, use of a term may be politically contested. ‘Suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ might be understood to be two different interpretations of the same act.Footnote 8 However, in the present case, the agent who undertakes an act of voluntary death is not engaging in interpretation but rather, as I will illustrate in the next section, follows a rule within a game of ‘martyrdom’, which has acquired ‘sense’ within Arab and Muslim communities, particularly in the Middle East, and in the West as well. It may be more accurate to say that Western actors who observe an act of self-destruction, and of innocent others, are merely interpreting it as a ‘suicide bombing’, but in so far as this use has become part of everyday language, it can also be said that a different rule is employed in giving meaning to the act.Footnote 9 Use of the term ‘suicide bombing’ evokes an alternative framework of meaning in which the identity of the human bomb relates to other identities, e.g. states and victims, which has implications for subsequent practice, including the mobilization of resources, in response. This approach to martyrdom and suicide as rule-based venues of action highlights two points. The first is our tendency to follow rules blindly in using language as a matter of course. The second is the role of this language in constituting not only human action, but material and economic structures as well.
Words do not stand alone, in reference to isolated entities or acts. The ‘game’ metaphor points to the importance of context. The structure of rules underpinning a game is the prior condition for any rational move within it. One acts rationally vis a vis a set of social conditions, possibilities and constraints which constitute the costs and benefits, as well as the legitimacy of any particular course of action.Footnote 10 This does not deny the importance of material power but rather emphasizes how the legitimacy and thus possibility of this power are constituted.
In so far as human bombs are a relatively small proportion of the population from which they are drawn, the structure of the game does not constrain, in the sense of limiting the options of individuals to a choice to give up their lives.Footnote 11 It is more accurate, in this context, to say that the rule constitutes a particular form of agency, by situating the act within a type of context, and thus meaning, where the choice and the action have ‘sense’. Indeed, as Speckhard (Reference Speckhard2006) argues, suicide bombings proliferate in situations where they are widely supported and viewed as legitimate by the relevant populations. This agency is inseparable from a social structure, which provides economic and moral support as well as legitimacy for the act.Footnote 12 Western intelligence agencies have focused on the question of why individuals would be vulnerable to the ideologies that support these organizations (Burke, Reference Burke2008). This analysis asks a different kind of question about the social world within which the agency of death would have meaning.
International relations is, obviously, more complex than a game. Actors situated in different social worlds may bring distinct frameworks of social meaning to a single act (see Fierke, Reference Fierke1996). More specific to this case, those observing from the West attach different meaning to an act of voluntary death than the agents themselves, who tend to be situated within Arab and Muslim communities, both in the Middle East and in the West. Multiple and interfacing games may coexist and constitute a larger structural dynamic. The next section will explore the contours of each world of action and the tension between them in more depth.
Conflicting games
This article began with a question about the usefulness of a rational choice model for understanding the decision to become a human bomb. The first section explored a framework for embedding action within a game-like context of rules. The context, in this case, is more multidimensional than game theory, making it possible to explore the role of emotional meaning and legitimacy, as well as strategic objectives. The next step is to look at the two distinct game-like structures of meaning, that have been used to make sense of an act of self-destruction in the post-9/11 period, that is, ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’. While these games may become increasingly reified through repeated use of the terms, they remain nonetheless a subject of political contestation.
For instance, while use of the term ‘suicide bomber’ is common in the West, the protagonists of 9/11 are more likely to be referred to simply as ‘terrorists’, even though they lost their lives along with the passengers on the planes. A similar distinction has also entered into debates within Islam over the difference between ‘terrorism’ and ‘martyrdom operations’. Some Islamic scholars distinguish the acts of Al Qaida against a foreign power, which they label ‘terrorist’, and acts within, for instance, Israel/Palestine, which are viewed as a legitimate form of resistance to occupation (Malka, Reference Malka2003: 1).Footnote 13 Part of this larger debate is whether the act of a human bomb should be considered suicide. Sheikh Usuf al-Qaradawi, a Sunni religious authority, rejected the term suicide operations, maintaining that ‘marytrdom operations’ should not be attributed to suicide. Distinguishing between terrorism and ‘martyrdom’, Qaradawi declared:
The Palestinian who blows himself up is a person who is defending his homeland. When he attacks an occupier enemy, he is attacking a legitimate target. This is different from someone who leaves his country and goes to strike a target with which he has no dispute’ (as cited in Esposito, Reference Esposito2007: 2)
In so far as Al Qaida uses the language of ‘martyrdom’, and the American presence in Saudi Arabia was presented as one justification for its action,Footnote 14 the debate has not been settled. As structures of meaning in use, ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ are not, respectively, monolithic Western or Islamic discourses. Having said this, use of ‘martyrdom’ is more common within Arab and Muslim communities, which is not surprising, given that Islam is very explicit about the prohibition on suicide.Footnote 15
‘Suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ belong to two distinct meaning structures, which constitute different forms of agency. While both – as used in this context – involve a choice to die, the two terms imply a different reason for the choice and belong to different moral worlds. While acts involving voluntary death can be distinguished from a longer history of terrorism, for instance, by the IRA or ETA, ‘martyrdom’ is further situated in a time and place. The phenomenon of the human bomb emerged in Lebanon in 1983, with the attack on the US embassy in Beirut,Footnote 16 in which 63 people died.Footnote 17 While it has since been used in other parts of the world, with attacks in Iraq, Israel, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Turkey, Russia, the United States, and Uzbekistan (Ramasubramanian, Reference Ramasubramanian2004), the language of ‘martyrdom’ has been less evident in Asia or in Chechnya (Allison, Reference Allison2007), than in the Middle East. The human bomb is neither an Islamic nor a religious phenomenon by definition; however,Footnote 18 as Merari (in Gupta et al., 2002: B4) states, ‘religion is just one element in the persuasion, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient’.
Martyrdom in use
While religion has acquired a persuasive value in the Middle East, its meaning in this context is paradoxical. As Kermani (Reference Kermani2002) argues, aside from the earlier use of human bombs by Shia militants in Lebanon,Footnote 19 contemporary ‘martyrdom operations’ tend to be organized by Sunni groups, such as Hamas and Al Qaida. While the concept of martyrdom exists in both Sunni and Shi’ite traditions, it has a much more prominent place in the memory and consciousness of Shi’ites. For Shi’ites, martyrdom is more closely linked to rituals of suffering, mourning and redemption (Kermani, Reference Kermani2002).Footnote 20 The Battle of Karbala, which took place in 680 CE, is the centrepiece of the Shi’ite rituals of martyrdom.Footnote 21 The culture of martyrdom that has developed around this story, and the accompanying practice of ‘creating martyrs’ (Khosrokhavar, 2005: 5), according to Kermani (Reference Kermani2002), is not only post-Koranic, but also a modern phenomena.Footnote 22
The contemporary martyrdom of Islamic militants, such as Al Qaida, marries the Sunni emphasis on Jihad, or struggle, with the Shi’ite cult of suffering in creating candidates for death. Militant Islamists, primarily Sunni, have hijacked the term Jihad, which may refer to an internal or an external struggle, to focus on external jihad, primarily against the West. In Iraq, the discourse of martyrdom, comes from Jihadi Salafis, who are Sunnis, and has been combined with a virulent anti-Shia discourse which dehumanizes targets and justifies killing them in suicide operations (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006b: 611–612).Footnote 23 The paradox is that the Jihadi Salafis mimic Shia martyrdom in attacking their Shia enemy (Hafez, Reference Hafez2007: 125).
Even a few decades ago, the association of martyrdom with taking one’s own life and that of bystanders would have been foreign to the Muslim world. The more widespread contemporary use of martyrdom in relation to human bombs is a product of a group of middle class and Westernized Arabs who underwent a religious conversion, before becoming the leaders of Al Qaida (Kermani, Reference Kermani2002). Their narrative of martyrdom weaves together strands of religious discourse, often in contradictory ways.
Most scholars are careful to distinguish the justifications made by militant Islamists from mainstream and more scholarly teachings on Islam. As Khashan (Reference Khashan2003: 1051) states: ‘The Qur’an makes it quite clear that those who die for God win immortality’. In traditional Islam, this is not, however, an invitation to destroy the self and others. The ‘martyrdom’ promoted by militant Islamists depends on Islam for its resonance, but grows out of one interpretation, although not one widely shared, in which the rule of Islam – to destroy one life is to destroy all of humanityFootnote 24 – is replaced by one in which destruction of oneself and innocent others is the highest expression of Allah’s will. This ultimately represents the substitution of one rule for another, that is, of all life as sacred as opposed to destroying life as sacred. The latter becomes rule-like when, combined with contemporary political understandings, it constitutes an identity, that is, the ‘martyr’, and a form of practice, i.e. blowing oneself up in a public place, within a moral universe where this is said to be Allah’s will, to the end of restoring dignity.
While resting on one interpretation of Islam, and not incidentally, one lacking in scholarly or religious authority,Footnote 25 the reasons for such an action and the replication of such actions by numerous individuals in various locations, points to the development of a meaningful practice. In this example, the identity of the martyr and the meaning of his or her act, are constituted within a social structure, which is also the point of departure for agency. Action, is thus not determined by the rule – not all Islamists become martyrs and not all Muslim ‘terrorists’ become human bombs – but in acting, the martyr follows a rule which has been institutionalized and become a basis for recruiting individuals (Pedahzur, Reference Pedahzur2005: 12).Footnote 26 ‘Martyrs’ are produced in a social world and depend on the support of that social world; in its absence, the pool of recruits dries up (Speckhard, Reference Speckhard2006). In this respect, the structure of a game, while constraining, also constitutes and legitimizes a particular kind of agency.
There has been widespread criticism that the terms jihad and martyrdom have been misinterpreted or very narrowly interpreted by militant Islamists (Fadl, Reference Fadl2005), but they nonetheless have resonance in the Middle East and among populations elsewhere in a way that ‘suicide’ does not. The association of martyrdom, particularly by Hamas, with the injustice of occupation underpins the social legitimacy. Martyrdom locates the act within a social world of injustice, and an ongoing experience of humiliation, as well as a desire to restore dignity (Saad-Ghorayeb, Reference Saad-Ghorayeb2002: 127). In Islam, as in Christianity, martyrdom is associated with bearing witness, which is itself tied up with the idea of struggle against injustice and oppression.Footnote 27
The martyr gives up earthly life with the promise of continuing life in paradise. It is the dignity of Allah (god) that is the ultimate justice to be restored, but this dignity also resides in the potential for justice toward the Ummah (Islamic community). In the Palestinian context, ‘martyrdom’ is, at one and the same time, the ‘fastest way to immortalize themselves in Allah’s heaven and the surest way to achieve a balance of terror with Israel’s overwhelming military machine’ (Khashan, Reference Khashan2003: 1061). It is the social significance of the act, the promise to address an injustice, as well as the remuneration of the martyr’s family (Rabinovich, Reference Rabinovich2002), that provides the social legitimacy for ending one’s life. It is not only that the organizations behind the acts use it as a coercive strategy, but that most Palestinians are convinced that martyrdom operations provide the ultimate weapon for coercing Israel to submit to their demands, given an inability to challenge Israel’s overwhelming military power in a conventional confrontation (Khashan, Reference Khashan2003: 1061). In 2003, 74% of Palestinians approved of ‘martyrdom operations’ (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a: 172).
This support is expressed in rituals and ceremonies that amplify the heroic nature of the sacrifice. Families are encouraged to celebrate rather than mourn the deaths of loved ones (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a: 177).Footnote 28 The ritual surrounding the act,Footnote 29 from videotapes recording a last will and testament, to headbands and banners, are symbols of the empowered individual making a free choice to self-sacrifice for the cause. As Hafez (Reference Hafez2006a: 177) notes, these rituals turn the act ‘into performative traditions and redemptive actions through which the faithful express their devotion’. These rituals constitute the meaning of risks, rewards, means, and ends within a social and religious logic and framework.
Suicide in use
The language of suicide is more often used by observers of human bombs rather than those who undertake the act, but, nonetheless, shapes a response. This use is somewhat ‘thinner’ than that of martyrdom. It shapes the meaning of an observed act and draws on Western cultural codes that depoliticize and constitute moral deviation, thereby establishing a context within which retaliation is justified.
The individual who is the subject and object of suicide is disconnected from the social world. Maurice Halbwachs (Reference Halbwachs1978: 10) argued that solitude is common to all types of suicide, stating that ‘People only kill themselves following or under the influence of an unexpected event or condition, be it external or internal (in the body or in the mind), which separates or excludes them from the social milieu and which imposed on them an unbearable feeling of loneliness’.
Suicide also violates a social code.Footnote 30 As Ateek (Reference Ateek2002: 11) points out, in Christianity, the person who commits suicide has been considered the only true atheist who has no faith or hope in God and has totally given up on life. It is most likely for this reason that the Church has traditionally not allowed those who committed suicide to have church burials. Suicide has been considered a sin against a loving God, who is the creator. The only example of suicide in the New Testament is Judas Iscariot (Matthew 27: 5) who had committed a sin. Suicide in Arabic is ‘Intihar’, meaning killing one’s self for personal reasons.
Do not kill yourselves, for Allah will have mercy on you. Whoever does so out of aggression and injustice (towards himself), we will cast him into fire. Allah can do that easily (as cited in the Koran, An-Nisaa Verse, 29)
In both traditions, ending one’s life with suicide brings an end to earthly life and, given the religious prohibition, is not generally tied to an expectation of afterlife.
Suicide is taboo in both Christianity and Islam and is the act of the non-believer who has given up all hope. It is also the act of the isolated individual, who is alienated from any human or divine community.Footnote 31 In the more secular world of the West, the association of suicide with criminalization and the moral responsibility of the individual is a product of modernity and the principle that life at any cost is preferable to death (Minois, 1999: 328). Suicide is defined in opposition to Western notions of rationality that focus first and foremost on a self-interest in survival. By contrast, as Minois (1999: 2) notes, actors in other historical periods or cultural contexts, and philosophers, from Cato and Seneca to Bruno Bettelheim, to name just a few, regarded an act of voluntary death as ‘the supreme proof of liberty and of the freedom to decide one’s own being or non-being’.
The terminology of ‘suicide bombing’ is compatible with explanations that emphasize the irrationality of the act, as suicide represents an end to life. Like the more general term ‘terrorism’, it isolates the action from a political context, and thereby depoliticises and criminalizes, focusing on the violence rather than the injustice that the ‘martyr’ hopes to address. The Western language of ‘suicide terrorism’ relocates the act, moving it out of the framework of martyrdom in which the agency of death is given meaning.Footnote 32 ‘Suicide terrorism’ constitutes the illegitimacy and arbitrariness of the act, as well as the legitimacy of retaliation by states.
When applied in the post-9/11 world, the contextual use of ‘suicide’ to refer to the acts of human bombs has been imprecise or even distorted. As a form of voluntary death, the act of blowing oneself up fits more closely with the generic meaning of ‘suicide’ than ‘martyrdom’. A concept of ‘suicide’ does not, however, make an explicit connection to the innocent victims of human bombs. The term ‘homicide bomber’, which has been used by Fox News and the Bush administration (Fleischer, Reference Fleischer2002; King, Reference King2002; Fox, 2003, 2004, 2005), highlights more directly the murder of innocent civilians. This contrasts with the identity given to innocent bystanders within a framework of ‘martyrdom’. Israel, for instance, is understood to be ‘one big military camp’, which obscures the distinction between soldier and civilian, thereby dismissing the latter’s deaths as ‘collateral damage’ and thus acceptable (Malka, Reference Malka2003: 4). As already highlighted, this concept is also imprecise. The ‘martyr’, while dying for a just cause, does not, in a more generic use, do so through an act of self-immolation; neither does he or she take the lives of innocent others in the process. Both ‘suicide’ and the possibility of killing civilians or other Muslims are forbidden in Islamic tradition and law and therefore require flexible interpretations to appear legitimate (Allison, Reference Allison2007: 1; Malka, Reference Malka2003: 2).
Both the internal logic of each use, and the interaction between them, contain distortions. Use of ‘suicide’ to give meaning to an act that arises out of a moral world of martyrdom establishes a tension, which is at the heart of a larger regional and global logic. However, the important issue here is not whether these acts are more accurately given meaning as ‘suicide’ or ‘martyrdom’. It is rather to examine how a particular, albeit distorted, use of each constitutes a type of agency. In the one world, the agency of ‘martyrdom’ is constituted and has sense among communities who feel powerless to otherwise address the injustice they experience. It is thus understood to be an act of empowerment that is politicized. In the other world, the agency of retaliation is a product of attempts to make sense of an act of violence in terms of ‘suicide’, that is, as an illegitimate and apolitical death.
Terror and trauma
Martyrdom and suicide are two distinct game-like structures for giving meaning to an act of voluntary death. The distinction raises two further questions. The first concerns the relationship between these two structures of meaning and a logic of violent interaction. The second regards the emotional dynamics that underpin and fuel this interaction. Rather than being specific to the individual, the emotional dynamic belongs to a social and political world and arises from the experience of populations.
There are thus three ‘levels’ of analysis at work here. The first is the game-like structures by which the act of voluntary death is given meaning as either a suicide or martyrdom, each of which constitutes a different form of agency. The second is the structural logic of interaction that grows out of the coexistence of the two games. This structural logic constrains the choices of those involved. Third, there is the emotional link between ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ on the one hand, and the structural logic of violence on the other, that is, how the two feed into each other. The emotional dynamic is the focus here. The structural logic will be further developed in the next section.
The main driver of the emotional dynamic is an experience of trauma among populations on both sides. Trauma tends to be associated with a numbing of emotions. However, trauma arguably involves a freezing of positive emotions and an excess of negative emotions, such as fear and humiliation. The body and mind, in the individual case, or the social body and collective memory, politically, become overwhelmed by a continuous hypervigilance for threats to recur. Subsequently, there is a tendency to react to each new situation as if the threat is recurring.Footnote 33 In the process, the memory of a trauma from the past is kept alive, as it is reproduced in interactions in the present and future.Footnote 34
Trauma, in this type of context, finds expression in two ways. First, the objective of the human bomb is to guarantee that the enemy population will be traumatized (Sela-Shayovitz et al., Reference Sela-Shayovitz2007: 161). In a situation of military inferiority, it is argued, negotiations lead to a dead end. ‘Martyrdom’, by contrast, is said to have a tremendous impact because of the fear it inspires in the population of the enemy (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a: 174–75). Human bombs, like terrorism more generally, undermine public confidence in authorities, and specifically their ability to protect citizens, thereby creating a climate of fear (Hoffman, Reference Hoffman2003: 4). Human bombs account for a minority of all terrorist acts, yet are responsible for the majority of terrorist-related casualties (Atran, Reference Atran2006: 127), killing four times as many people as other terrorist acts (Hoffman, Reference Hoffman2003: 2).
On the one hand, suicide terrorism provides a pretext for state retaliation in response to the traumatization of a population; on the other hand, state retaliation reinforces the sense of injustice in the communities that have spawned ‘martyrs’. In this environment of insecurity, both sides perceive themselves to be victims. This perceived victimization gives rise to an increased public support for extreme measures. In 1999, prior to the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, 26.1% of Palestinians supported ‘martyrdom operations’ against Israel; this figure doubled to 66.2%, 3 months after the uprising had begun. The Israelis responded to Palestinian violence with aerial and naval attacks on Palestinian police stations and government institutions, imposed curfews, closures, and checkpoints on Palestinian towns. These acts were perceived by the Palestinians to be unfair collective punishment and an attempt to humiliate them in their own land. ‘Martyrdom operations’ have been fuelled by a combination of a desire for revenge in the face of perceived victimization, and empowerment in the face of overwhelming threats by a superior adversary (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a: 180).
Second, ‘martyrdom’ can be a response to the traumatization of a population. The emotional pull of martyrdom relates less to individual socio-economic status, educational status, age, or, increasingly, gender, than a shared social and political experience and the meaning it has been given. Most who choose this path within conflict zones, according to Speckhard (Reference Speckhard2006), have experienced trauma, arising from an on-going experience of loss, of watching the death of neighbours and loved ones, of witnessing countless acts of violence, of losing self value, given frequent experiences of humiliation and lost opportunities, either of education or employment, thus, a loss of those features of life that constitute a sense of human dignity. For actors located in Western countries, issues of identity arising from their location across two cultures, the televised images of death and destruction in Arab and Muslim countries, as well as social alienation may be contributing factors. Sarraj and Butler (Reference Sarraj and Butler2002) reinforce the point that ‘suicide bombings, and other forms of violence are the reaction to this chronic and systematic process of humiliating people in [an] effort to destroy their hope and dignity’.
Numerous scholars have highlighted the pervasiveness of a discourse of humiliation, and its relationship to the swelling ranks of recruits who are willing to act as human bombs (e.g. Moghadam, Reference Moghadam2002: 27–28, 2007; Telhami, Reference Telhami2001, Reference Telhami2002; Khashan, Reference Khashan2003: 1062; Stern, 2003; Speckhard, Reference Speckhard2005; Cook and Allison, Reference Cook and Allison2007: 4; Hafez, Reference Hafez2007: 142–4). The experience of humiliation and trauma is reinforced by the organizations that do the recruiting. Extremist recruiters identify people in, for instance, Gaza refugee camps who see little future for themselves and enlist and induct them into a cell, with a new life of perpetual fear and threat, such that emergency modes of behaviour become habits of being (Apfel and Simon in Robben and Suarez-Orozco, Reference Robben and Suarez-Orozco2000: 124).
The dramatic increase in the number of people willing to become human bombs as levels of violence increase, suggests that the marriage of ‘being already dead’ (Speckhard, 2006), with a religious justification and a belief that one is contributing to a better future for the community, constitute the conditions under which a decision to give up one’s life, appears to be not only a viable option but a heroic one. Resistance to occupation and sacrifice for the struggle is highly praised and commemorated in Palestine, regardless of the form it takes (Allen, Reference Allen2002: 2).
Martyrdom operations are understood to be effective because they traumatize the enemy’s population; martyrdom also provides a way for traumatized individuals to give meaning to what they have experienced and to retain some agency in the face of powerlessness, both individually and socially. The structure is less causal than constitutive, which explains why the phenomena is prevalent among Arab and Islamic populations in the Middle East or those living abroad, but less so in other contexts that have experienced oppression historically. It rests on a distorted interpretation of Islam, builds on a longer history of referring to those who resist as martyrs,Footnote 35 as well as the success of a particular tactic first used in Lebanon, to package a set of rule-based meanings and practices.
As Speckhard (Reference Speckhard2005, Reference Speckhard2006) states, those who become ‘martyrs’ want to escape their psychic pain but to do so honourably and to use their lives – even if it means dying – to help their communities. They are vulnerable to promises that they can have an impact on the socio-political experience of their communities and become heroes in the process. By failing to address the factors that lead to both the individual vulnerability and support from society, which makes these groups self-replenishing, the West unwittingly creates the conditions in which the pool of recruits expands dramatically. Ronald Kraybill (Reference Kraybill2004), a professor of Conflict Studies, presents this logic in relation to Al Qaeda:
So we see al-Qaeda, which is seeking to stir up angry retaliation by the United States in order to bring backlash at the level of the Muslim masses. Al-Qaeda cannot succeed at that strategy without our help. Until recently, terrorist groups lived at the margins of their communities, but we have played into their hands at every step of the way by giving them exactly what they want, namely an overwhelming, invasive, military response. The thousands and probably millions (of people) that we’ve driven into their arms is the real danger for our long-term security.
Shibley Telhami (Reference Telhami2002: 2) reinforces the idea that violent retaliation is unlikely to end these acts of voluntary death, stating that they ‘may even increase it by adding to the humiliation that hardens the heart of even decent people’.
A distinction can be made between the strategic, ideological and territorial goals of suicide bombings, noted by Pape, and the more personal concerns of individual agents, ranging from revenge, redemption, desperation, or eternal reward (Allison, Reference Allison2007: 2). What binds the two together is the language of martyrdom, which has both a strategic and an emotional resonance and value. On the one hand, the strategic entrepreneurs who organize violence may be instrumental in packaging and mobilizing a particular understanding of ‘martyrdom’. On the other hand, as the logic ‘seeps’ into the everyday discourse of a population, it may become a part of the taken for granted assumptions that underpin the decision of individuals to become human bombs. One theme unifies much of the Islamist discourse supporting militant activity and especially martyrdom: the global Muslim narrative of Western oppression and humiliation, a sense of persecution that has been fuelled by symbols such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the Iraq War (Allison, Reference Allison2007: 2; Burke, Reference Burke2008).
The structural logic
The language of ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ may appear to be simply icing on the cake of military structures that long precede the use of these words. The central point, however, is the role of this language in reconstituting the boundaries of conflict. Suicide bombing emerged in the early 1980s at a time when the global structures of military power were organized around the Cold War threat. The human bombs came not from the secular PLO, for instance, but from Shia militants in Lebanon. While Middle Eastern violence was at the time structured around a violent tit-for-tat between ‘terrorists’ and ‘states’, the suicide bombings in Lebanon, and their perceived success, contributed to a transformation in the region that had been underway since at least 1967. The defeat of Arab states by Israel in the 1967 War was the point of departure for a re-articulation of the widespread sense of injustice within a framework of transnational Islam as an alternative to secular resistance and the Arab state (Fattah and Fierke, Reference Fattah and Fierke2009). The earlier act, undertaken by a Shia group, was repackaged by the Sunni Al Qaida and other militant Islamists.
The attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 transformed the global military structure. Western forces, and particularly those of the United States, were realigned to fight the War on Terror. The fear and trauma of Americans, engendered by the attacks, legitimated a massive military mobilization. In this light, the 1983 bombings in Lebanon did not create a new structure but rather planted a seed which over time has grown and contributed to the transformation of existing structures, based on a repackaging of the problem and the solution. Secular resistance was repackaged as religious martyrdom in a struggle not only against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, but against the Western occupation of a transnational Islamic empire, lost and in need of restoration, going back at least 80 years (Bin Laden, Reference Bin Laden2001). After 9/11, not only Israelis but Americans were traumatized and fearful of ‘terrorism’, reorganizing extant military structures to the end of eliminating the source of this fear in a war of indefinite duration. Military structures were bolstered by a public opinion that viewed extraordinary measures against terrorists as not only legitimate but necessary. The language is important in so far as it constitutes the boundaries and definition of the ‘problem’ and the ‘response’. Without it, military structures could neither define the enemy, nor strategic objectives in relation to them, nor could populations identify the source of their fear.
The asymmetrical structure of the War on Terror, as an organizing logic of international relations, grew out of earlier structures, while representing a transformation of them. Unlike the traditional balance of power or the balance of terror during the Cold War, the conflict not only spills over into civilian life but largely takes place in civilian spaces. Civilians, whether as targets or ‘collateral damage’, are the central victims within a ‘war’ of infinite duration in which mutual destruction is the likely end. Like the security dilemma, this analysis emphasizes the rationality of acts that generate insecurity. The key difference, which cannot be explained by a rational choice model, is the role of traumatized and largely civilian victims on both sides, the meaning given to their experience, and how this meaning legitimizes further violence.
The emotional resonance of the discourse, alongside the experience of trauma, fuels the structural logic of interactions between Western military powers and those who organize the violence of ‘martyrdom’. In the language of militant Islamists, ‘martyrs’ act against injustice to the end of restoring dignity, which has acquired some legitimacy among communities with a long experience of suffering, and not least the Palestinians, who view the act as a form of social redress otherwise denied by their circumstances (Speckhard, Reference Speckhard2005). By contrast, in Western discourse, an act of ‘suicide’ not only lacks legitimacy, but also helps to constitute the agency and legitimacy of retaliation by states. In this respect, the coexistence of the two meaning structures constitutes and reproduces a military asymmetry by reinforcing the legitimacy of the use of force by the state against non-state actors who use illegitimate force.
Having said this, the overkill that has characterized the ‘War on Terror’, as well as the public exposure of the human costs, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to Fallujah to Palestine, have destabilized the legitimacy of the US in particular, not only in the larger world but domestically. The approval ratings of the Bush administration were at an all time low by the end of its second term, and US presidential candidates defined themselves in opposition to its policies. Repairing the US image in the world became one of the central platforms of candidates from both parties. US military officials as well as scholars have acknowledged the damage that the practices of the ‘War on Terror’ have done to America’s ‘soft power’ abroad (Nye, Reference Nye2004, Reference Nye2008; Hyde Smith, Reference Hyde Smith2007).
Questions of legitimacy are at the core of the asymmetric logic of the War on Terror. The legitimacy of retaliation against suicide terrorists rests on the injustice of killing innocent civilians, not to mention moral prohibitions on suicide, and the resulting traumatization of Western societies. Given these acts may result in a loss of public trust in the ability of authorities to protect, the mobilization of retaliatory violence may be understood as part of an attempt to re-establish public trust. The legitimacy of the martyrdom operation, by contrast, rests on the injustice and traumatization that has been suffered by Arab and Muslim communities in the Middle East and the adoption, albeit distorted, of an interpretation of Islam to give meaning to that experience.
This emphasis on legitimacy is reinforced by an assumption on both sides that violence is the only option. Many argue suicide bombing has proliferated because it works. The 1983 attacks against US and French forces and diplomatic missions in Lebanon resulted in the evacuation of the Multinational Force from that country. Edward S. Walker, a senior State Department official at the time, said that the ‘long-term implications [of the subsequent US withdrawal] was it appeared to terrorists that…all you have to do is hurt the Americans and you will get what you want. That’s been a persistent problem for us’ (CNN, 2003). Palestinian suicide terrorism in Israel, in 1996, resulted in a change of government and had a major, if deleterious, impact on the Middle Eastern peace process (Merrari in Bongar et al., Reference Bongar2007: 101). Human bombs have influenced political processes, such as the Spanish elections that followed the Madrid train bombings; they have drawn global attention to more localized political issues, as in Chechnya; and disrupted military, humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. While campaigns of this kind have been successful in achieving limited goals, as Pape (Reference Pape2003) points out, they have been less successful in accomplishing their overall objectives. Pape’s argument that suicide terrorism has a 54 percent success rate has been challenged by Moghadam (Reference Moghadam2006: 713), who argues it has only been successful in 24% of the cases and has thus more often resulted in failure than success.Footnote 36
A similar conclusion might be drawn about the Western response. As Hoffman (Reference Hoffman2003) notes, the greatest military onslaught in history against a terrorist group crushed the infrastructure of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, depriving it of training camps, operational bases, and command-and-control headquarters, killing and wounding many of its leaders and fighters and dispersing the survivors. Yet, this group still actively seeks to rally its forces and attract recruits (Hoffman, Reference Hoffman2003: 8). The invasion of Iraq, which was partly justified by a tenuous link between Saddam and Al Qaida, created the conditions for the emergence of an insurgency there. Both sides operate with an assumption that violence is the best way to achieve their ends. While this may be true in a limited sense, the actions of both also reinforce the very conditions that reproduce and exacerbate the problem. The appearance of relative success may defuse tensions in the system, at least temporarily, while leaving the structural violence intact (Abu-Nimer, Reference Abu-Nimer2003: 55).
In this respect, the structural logic is not qualitatively different than the larger security dilemma between states (see Booth and Wheeler, Reference Booth and Wheeler2007). As violence escalates, there is a progressive radicalization among combatants and escalations in violence intensify the feeling of threat. In this kind of situation, one’s security becomes dependent on generating and deepening the insecurity of the other side (Hafez, Reference Hafez2006a: 171). It is different, however, in so far as the conditions that are reinforced and exacerbated, as a result, impact more directly on innocent civilians than states, reproducing a political culture of fear and trauma on both sides.
In so far as the classic security dilemma presumes a focus on states, it further implies a separation between military and civilian life, and the responsibility of the state and its military to shield the latter from harm, although this distinction has blurred since the advent of total war. In the interaction between ‘martyrs’ and state retaliation for ‘suicide bombing’, it is primarily civilians that suffer on both sides, either because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, or live in a state that is targeted because of its military actions, or as victims in a military confrontation where insurgents and civilians are not easily distinguished. It is the injustice or trauma experienced by civilians that differs from the traditional security dilemma where the state acts in defense of a population, which, at least in theory, is shielded from conflict.
While ‘suicide’ and ‘martyrdom’ relate to distinct forms of agency, the relationship between them has developed into a structure that constrains. First, as already stated, the interaction itself is structured, in the sense that both martyrdom and suicide as used in this context constitute violent action or reaction by both sides. Second, the actions have come to rest on institutionalized processes of recruitment. Formal Western military structures, while more often voluntary, are well-established and, as Michael Moore points out, the ‘choice’ to join, at least in the United States, grows more often out of economic necessity than a desire to go into battle.Footnote 37 In Israel military service is compulsory. Among Arab and Islamic populations, individual martyrs are more often chosen by the institutions that organize the act. The individual only volunteers in so far as they are part of a larger pool of recruits who have set themselves on this potential course. Finally, populations on each side play an important role in legitimizing action and thus are both a limiting and enabling factor. Civilians are more likely to be victims of violent action and the fear and trauma they experience is easily channelled into a politics of vengeance. As Hafez (Reference Hafez2006a: 171) argues, this type of mass support is rarely a function of persuasive ideas or organizational initiatives. In order for the violence to expand beyond a militant core, populations have to feel victimized and threatened, which means that they do not see an alternative to violence. In this respect, the logic is self-reproducing.
Rethinking the game
The terminology of suicide is more powerful than that of ‘homicide bombers’ because of the incomprehension it highlights. It is far easier to comprehend murder, however reprehensible, than a decision to take one’s own life, given an assumption that survival has priority over all other interests. The Romans who viewed acts of martyrdom by early Christians with incomprehension, asked how a rational being could commit ‘irrational suicide’ (Khosrokhavar, Reference Khosrokhavar2005: 6). The contemporary phenomenon of human bombs inspires similar questions and incomprehension given the combination of self-sacrifice with harm to others.
Aside from a few examples of cult suicide, the word suicide highlights the choice of the individual to take his or her own life and the problem thus fits within a model of individual preference, if not rational choice. However, suicide, no less than martyrdom, is a socio-cultural phenomenon, which has varied in meaning across historical and cultural space (Durkheim, [1897] Reference Durkheim2006; Minois, Reference Minois1999). Martyrdom is more directly recognizable as a social phenomenon in so far as one does not martyr the self for the self’s own sake, but for a cause, whether this be religious, political or humanitarian. Both concepts have acquired a political meaning in the post-9/11 world. These words are not labels for an objective world, but rather forms of action which constitute a reality. Their meaning in use can only be excavated from a social and political context. In the post-9/11 world, each meaning in use enables a particular kind of agency, but, as already noted, the meanings are contested.
A thicker notion of a game makes it possible to understand of how two distinct social and political meanings interact in producing a structural logic and to understand the relationship between this strategic dynamic and the public emotions and legitimacy that are its motor. This thicker notion of a game requires attention to the emotional resonance that is embedded in everyday discourse. While this does not explain why some individuals choose to engage in an act of voluntary death, while others do not, it does provide an understanding of how the act is given meaning and reproduced within particular communities, as well as how recipient communities make sense of the act and define a response. While the language of suicide depoliticizes, it is nonetheless part of a political dynamic that produces primarily civilian victims.
The language of suicide bombing establishes a relationship between violent acts by human bombs and retaliation by state authorities. The language of martyrdom establishes a different relationship: the act of the martyr is a response to a history and ongoing conditions of humiliation and powerlessness. Understanding the two as mutually constitutive, and mutually reinforcing, is a first step in beginning to view the problem from a different angle and to open a space for thinking about alternatives.
One way of opening a space is to explore the distortions in these games, as a basis for transforming them. The conceptual network surrounding martyrdom, for instance, includes a relationship between humiliation and dignity. A Hamas activist, who rejected the idea that hunger or ‘hatred of humanity’ drive suicide bombers argued that the primary factor is the loss of ‘dignity’ (karama) that comes with living under Israeli occupation (Collins, Reference Collins2004: 181). Islamists have married the language of humiliation to dignity, arguing that the latter can be established through violence. A similar conflation was made indirectly by US President Bush when he suggested that practices of waterboarding are compatible with human dignity (MacAskill, Reference MacAskill2008).
In international law, or more traditional Islamic thought, these two concepts suggest a different relationship. The right of all human beings to dignity is enshrined in international law (UN GA, 1948: Article 1) and is the opposite of humiliation, which is clearly prohibited.Footnote 38 Dignity relates not only to a right to life, but a quality of life.Footnote 39 In the context of Gaza, the concept of Dignity has been put to use to this end and in a nonviolent form. ‘Dignity’ is the name of a boat that has regularly sailed to Gaza to deliver medical supplies and other humanitarian aid to victims of the 18 month siege there.Footnote 40 The language of dignity in this use relies on a framework that highlights the humanitarian problem and a nonviolent path to its resolution. This example points not only to a way to rethink the distortions, but also how to begin playing a different game, shifting from a military logic to a humanitarian one.
Structural violence, in limiting and constraining, maintains and reinforces particular relations of power and interest. Institutions of violence on both sides have acquired a life of their own and may benefit from the prolongation of violence. Questioning the assumptions upon which the current logic of violence rests is a first step in beginning to think outside the box. A second step is to recognize how the Western response to suicide terrorism has fed the widespread sense of injustice and humiliation, which has in turn fed ‘martyrdom’ among Arab and Muslim populations, not only in the Middle East, but Western countries as well. A third step is to refocus the problem and the solution on the humanitarian issues and loss of dignity that underpin the public emotions and the structural logic generated by both sides.
Acknowledgements
This article was written for a workshop in honor of Professor Bud Duvall, University of Minnesota, April 2008 and for publication in International Theory. I would like to thank Khaled Fattah for research assistance and Tarak Barkawi, Michael Boyle, Arjun Chowdhury, Faye Donnelly, Ron Krebs, Tony Lang, Jeffrey Murer, Diana Saco, Adham Saouli and the reviewers for International Theory, for comments on various drafts of the paper.
