Suicide bombers are usually no different than an average everyday person. When someone thinks of a suicide bomber they may think of a terrorist, someone who is suicidal, or someone who has some something wrong with them. Most people who become suicide bombers have been known to have nothing mentally wrong with them. Suicide bombers are no different than anyone else; anybody could become one. Mental illnesses are usually not the reason for someone to become a suicide bomber. They are no less normal, educated, poor, or religious than anyone else. According to Rohan Gunaratna, “They are like you and me”. Suicide bombers do usually come from broken communities. Usually a person that decides to become a suicide bomber has had something happen in their childhood like a traumatic experience or feeling helpless, that causes them to want revenge later in life. Ariel Merari a psychologist, says that he used to believe that a suicide bomber was just suicidal. When Ariel studied the background of suicide bombers, he found that for most, the risk factor wasn’t suicide. According to Scott Atran, “There is no psychological profile whatsoever for suicide bombers.” When interviewing a failed bomber, many researches said that they were polite and kind and just by looking and talking to them you wouldn’t know that they had attempted to be a suicide bomber. Most suicide bombers feel like they need to be in charge and some just want to feel important. A lot of people wonder what motivates a person to become a suicide bomber. Suicide bombers have personalities that make them more likely to volunteer to be a part of a suicide bombing. Those who volunteer for the bombing attacks are usually educated middle-class people who have strong religious belief... ... middle of paper ... ... volunteer to become a suicide bomber. Religion also plays a big part in ones choice to participate in a suicide bombing. Women, men and children are all capable of becoming a suicide bomber. Suicide bombers are no different than anyone else; anybody could become one. Works Cited CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. "Female Suicide Bombers: Dying to Kill." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. "Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber. By: Bond, Michael, New Scientist, 02624079, 7/17/2010, Vol. 207, Issue 2769." N.p., n.d. Web. "suicide bombing." Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2013 "The Making of a Suicide Bomber. By: Bond, Michael, New Scientist, 02624079, 5/15/2004, Vol. 182, Issue 2447." N.p., n.d. Web. Washington Post. The Washington Post, 15 May 2008. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
Davis, Jayna. The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing. Nashville: WND, 2004. Print.
"The Race To Build A Bomb." National Geographic 208.2 (2005): 102. Middle Search Plus. Web.
What internally drives a terrorist’s motivation varies from subject to subject. While the average American citizen would likely be quick to point terrorists hate the western way of life and what it represents, the issue is far more complex. Simon Cottee’s article “What Motivates Terrorists?” (2015), looks at various levels of motivation. Prior definitions of terrorism looked at the defining cause as possibly psychological abnormalities within in the individual (Cottee, 2015). As studies have evolved, the focus has shifted to the environment in which the terrorist is surrounded. While certainly there is cases in which a person who is mentally unstable could be an ideal target for terrorist propaganda, the number of cases involving mental
The following summary will examine the article Eyewitness testimony in the Lockerbie bombing case by Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist form University of California, Irvine, CA and analyze the elements of social cognition she talks about in her article.
In Brym’s article he discusses what research has shown about the motivations of suicide bombers. Brym and my fellow classmate explained to me how suicide bombers may be motivated by politics, religion, or retaliatory aims (Brym, Kyra Howard). Both Brym and Howard helped me view the issue of suicide bombers in multiple
Speckhard, A. (2013). The Boston Marathon Bombers: the Lethal Cocktail that Turned Troubled Youth to Terrorism. Perspectives On Terrorism, 7(3). Retrieved from http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/268/540
In Robert Pape’s Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism he investigates the three hundred and fifteen suicide terrorist attacks that have occurred from its beginning in 1980 up until 2003. By examining these attacks he explains the three logics behind suicide terrorism, the strategic, the social, and the individual logic. Pape uses Dying to Win as a tool to educate the public on suicide terrorism. He hopes people will begin to understand that it is not irrational, but requires reason and strategy. He brings to light that suicide terrorism is not directly correlated with Islamic fundamentalism, but rather political objectives, trying to put to rest many preconceived notions. By understanding the logic behind suicide terrorism people can work together to prevent it from happening in the future. After reading this book it is clear that suicide terrorism is not random, but does demand some thought in order for it to work.
Emile Durkheim’s theory paints a clear narrative for the type of suicide used by suicide bombers, so the question is - is suicide acceptable under Islamic religion; one answer is how it is illustrated and how you interpret the Qur’an. Radical Islamists have convoluted the traditional Islamic laws of warfare to make suicide bombings reasonable. According to the website TheReligionofPeace.com, “the point of the bomber isn’t suicide – it is to kill infidels in battle. This is not just permitted by Muhammad, but encouraged with liberal promises of earthly rewards in heaven, including food and sex.” Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded guilty to terrorist charges involving a possible suicide mission on the United Sates in 2009. He quoted the Qur’an during his plea to justify his decision, “Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and wealth for the price of Paradise, to fight in the way of Allah, to kill and get killed. It is a promise binding on the truth in the Torah, the Gospel and the Qur’an.” (New York Post) Some Muslims feel suicide bombings are a sin and a recent development of the twentieth century. They claim suicide bombings are not
We have all heard of the bombings of women and children. We ask why anyone would do such a horrible thing to a woman and her child. It is usually due to the belief that they are defending their family and the village from assaults (Tirman). I was under the impression that these human bombers were made to carry out these attacks on soldiers. However, Nicole Argo said that these people actually volunteer this, and with researching this, she found that these people actually are invested in their community. I have associated the war in Iraq and Afghanistan a war on terrorism, but the Muslims have seen it as religious war called jihad. These human bombs have been used since the 1970’s (Argo, 2006).
Lankford also states that in paragraph 4: They are felt like they have been given false hope as they were told that success and wealth comes from hard work. Not really seeing the the true success they thought could be succeed when failing making them turn on other people. I think people should understand these people with these kind of certain mental problem than to study which can help reduce mass killers, “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent and never will be.” ( Swanson ) Meaning a few people are, but it's hard to identify these types of people as Jonathan Metzl said in the last paragraph: “So there’s no psychiatric test that can prevent a mass shooting mass. They are hard to predict.” We, ourselves have to remind one another that we are all humans and not everyone think the same way or the way you predicted them
“Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults” (“Child Soldiers” 1). This quotation by Olara Otunnu explains that children are forced into becoming weapons of war. Children under 18 years old are being recruited into the army because of poverty issues, multiple economic problems, and the qualities of children, however, many organizations are trying to implement ways to stop the human rights violation.
Scott Atran discusses the common misconceptions that people have about suicide terrorism. Those misconceptions are that suicide attackers are all evil, homicidal psychos who are uneducated, live in poverty, and want to achieve anarchy (Atran 5). However contrary to popular belief most of these attackers are neither impoverished, uneducated, or crazy. This kind of misunderstanding hinders and impedes on any chance of finding a solution or realizing that the issue is one that is manageable (Atran 5).
Pape believes that suicide terrorism is focused around democracies and occupation. After conducting his research, Pape discovered that from 1980 to 2001, records of suicide terrorism have had three main reoccurring, necessary properties: timing, nationalist goals, and target selection. Pape (2003) explains that, when it comes to timing, “nearly all suicide attacks occur in organized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or randomly timed incidents” (347). Thus, Pape infers there is strategic reasoning behind this way of terrorizing the masses. He further states campaigns of suicide terrorism focus on gaining oversight of territory terrorists deem as their national homeland.
Even though suicide terrorism has been a part of international politics for a long period of time, there are still many questions that are left unanswered about the tactic. One of the most interesting and obvious questions for suicide terrorism, is simply as to why groups use this as a terrorism tactic. Many believe that this form of terrorism is a result of religious beliefs. However, this is mainly due to the western focus on the Islamic group of terrorists. The Islamic terrorist...
Hoffman, Bruce. "Inside Terrorism." Cerebrum:The Dana Forum on Brain Science 3.3 (1998): 2-3. New York: Columbia Universtity Press. Web. 23 May 2011. .