Dying to Win by Robert A. Pape is written to understand the “why” that terrorists have for their actions and why the do it to the people they choose to attack. Pape gathers his data from a range of years between 1980 and 2003. There were numerous large terrorist attacks in these times including the attack of the World Trade Centers in the United States in 2001. This attack is widely known as one of the most devastating attacks in the history of terrorism. Robert Pape believes that suicide terrorism is motivated by the attempt to persuade democratic states into pulling out their military troops from the countries that the attackers inhabit. The involvement of the Islamic religion is not from Islam itself but the different interpretations people …show more content…
Suicide terrorism is often martyred instead of seen as a violent criminalistics thing to do. Pape explains that “although isolated incidents do occur, the overwhelming majority of suicide terrorist attacks take place as part of organized, coherent campaigns in which individual after individual, or team after team, voluntarily kill themselves as a means to kill the maximum number of people in the target society in order to compel that state to end a foreign occupation of their homeland” (80-81). After such terrible attacks, one would believe that these groups would be isolated and set apart from their society, but they actually rely on their society to keep them going. The support by the community helps replenish their members to keep going in their campaign (81). The community plays many other rolls, such as avoiding detection and keeping suicide terrorists in high standing opinion so that people will be driven to join the cause (81-82). Pape also discusses the importance of religion in the social logic of suicide terrorism. Religion is either a present factor or not a factor at all in terrorism but it never widens or narrows during the terrorism campaign (127). Lebanon, Punjab, Sri Lanka, and Turkey are all examples of suicidal terrorism campaign that are differently influenced by religion (128). Today Islamic terrorism is probably the most widely known form of terrorism in regards to religion. In these four cases, however, Islam is not evident in any of them. Christianity, Hinduism, Sunni, Buddhism, Judaism are all religions that were drivers of these attacks. Pape organized each case around three main issues. The first is the nature and extent of the foreign occupation. The second is the extent of community support for self-sacrifice to end the occupation. The final issue is how terrorist and other community leaders exploited the existence of a religious difference to mobilize
“Terrorism's particularly heinous but highly attractive means to achieve political objectives or even radically restructure political foundations is manifest within societies in all reaches of the world. While the practical application of terrorist methodologies comes across as a relatively straightforward craft, the conceptual and ideological understanding, and subsequent evaluation of its socio-political influence, implementation, and psychological impacts present difficult questions, and in some cases conceivably insurmountable obstacles” (Romaniuk 2014, para
Over the past decades suicide terrorism has confirmed its effective tactic and it is seem to be developing and growing movement. Terrorism is designed to cause panic within people, communities and countries but also to gain the publicity through media. Suicide terrorism, more than other forms of terrorist activities is presenting determination and dedication both of dying by individual terrorist as well as the desire to kill innocent people. Suicide terrorism is an attractive tool for terrorist activities with guarantee media publicity with the international dimension. The aim of the attacks is to draw attention of governments, international organisations and
According to Morgenstern (n.d.) in a publication about the history of suicide terror attacks are reviewed. The article sites facts from early terrorist attacks in 1983 as well as of detailed attacks in recent years. The author provides insight to the recruitment and training methods used by terror groups based on case studies and classified information from Israeli police. Their findings conclude that religion
In his article, Pape starts with a definition of suicide terrorism alongside other types of terrorism, namely demonstrative terrorism and destructive terrorism, and gives a brief overview of the purpose and benefits of each method. Pape continues by explaining his reasoning for believing the use of suicide terrorism to be rational, focusing on the timing, target selection and pursuit of nationalist goals employed by terrorist groups using suicide terrorism. Pape uses examples such as the Hamas attacks against Israel in 1994 and 1995 to coerce Israel into withdrawing from the Gaza strip and certain West Bank towns respectively. Pape further attributes the rise in suicide terrorism to the level of success it has experienced, citing 6 of 11
Religious terrorism occurs when the use of terrorism is systematized by an ideology and fanatical interpretation of a religious text. Terrorist group functioning in the absence of this pretext create junk. Religious terrorism functions on the basic of five essential principles. These are: means justify the end, holy war, blind obedience, absolute truth claims and the ideal times . Kimball explains that ‘truth claims’ are essential point in a religion “at which divergent interpretations arise. Extreme interpretations of ‘truth claims’ provoke the ideology upon which religious terrorism is based. However the “authentic religious truth claims are never as inflexible and exclusive as zealous adherents insist. The staunch ‘truth claims’ professed
Suicide terrorism works well against a free population who dislike its use. When it comes to using the tactics against democratic country, there is a massive probability that terrorist goals will be met than when tactics are being used against non-democratic country (...). In many foreign cultures there is grow of the nationalist groups which are following the radical views therefore these believes and also the examples if the suicide bombers are needed for the terrorist groups to gain more recruits (...).
Acts of terrorism are becoming increasingly common in today's society. From the frequent suicide bombings in Israel, the recent violence in the Russian village of Beslan, to the attacks on the world trade centers on September the eleventh of 2001 that so violently shook the world; terrorism is rarely far from our minds. Terrorist groups have a variety of aims, acts of revenge, politics, but by far the most common, and arguably most disturbing reason for these actions is religion.
The position of Islam on the issue of terrorism, whether Islam at all approves or endorses this kind of action (), and if the Islamic doctrine draws its roots from the sources of violence is a question that experts in the teachings of Islam, can clearly and indisputably respond to (). Although Western analysts define terrorism as the use of force against random, civilian targets, with the intention of intimidating and provoking a general fear among the people, in order to achieve certain political goals (), terrorism is also seen as a threat, violence and violent behaviour or struggle aimed at those causing fear.
Terrorism, within modern society, has become a common strategy employed by various radical groups throughout the world. The utilization of terroristic tactics originated in Russia during the 19th century as a response to an autocratic Russian system that was believed to be well overdue for refinement. During this time, terrorism remained within its place of origin and was a carefully directed phenomenon. Thus, most acts of terror were aimed at specified targets who were chosen systematically, ensuring the message being conveyed was clear and no harm occurred to civilians. With the progression of society, terrorism has evolved into a more horrific strategy. Evolving from a once directed phenomenon to an increasingly unsystematic style of attack, that can occur anywhere at anytime. This change has caused many to believe that terrorism itself is a mindless act that serves no purpose other than to instill fear within society. This assumption is partially correct, but contrary to popular belief the use of terrorism by radical groups does serve a purpose. By instilling fear within society through violent acts, terrorists attempt to usher change. This is because “Terrorism is based on the idea that the kind of change desired can be achieved only with violence” . With this belief, many radical organizations choose to utilize terrorism as a tool to cause change, as they believe it is the only way to bring about change. Another effect of this belief is radical groups are
Suicide Terrorism has become the primary tool for terrorist in devastating cities and instilling fear in communities. The terror attacks can either be focused towards people, government or a certain infrastructure. There are several tactics of performing these acts of suicide terrorism; strapping explosives to ones bodies and/or steering some sort of transportation into a place of gathering. Understanding the mind of suicide terrorist can be very difficult. Their motivation to be a suicide bomber may never be truly understood. Understanding the thought processes of terrorist can help one to better comprehend the behaviors of a suicide bomber. It is considered to be the easiest and most lethal act of violence to quickly cause the greatest amount
Three main factors inspire terrorism: politics, religion, and socioeconomics. Because of differences in political ideologies, certain extremists resort to violence in an effort to get their point across. Although this solution to solving political differences causes incredible distress and violence, extremists in the political world still support and encourage political terrorism. Japanese gas attacks and suicide bombings both exemplify religion as a motive for terrorism, as Amy Zalman explains in her article on the causes of terrorism: “The Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo perpetrated two deadly sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in 1994 and '95. In the Middle East, numerous suicide attacks since the 1980s have been celebrated as the work of Islamic martyrs” (Zalman).
Suicide terrorism has become so commonplace that it is easy to overlook how relatively new and suddenly popular the phenomenon is. Between the end of World War II and the Iranian revolution, there were no suicide attacks in the world. Yet only months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini solidified power and formed the Pasdaran and Basij, suicide attacks began to appear in conflicts involving Shiites (Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war) and then took root among Palestinian Sunni groups.3 It eventually became the preferred tactic of Islamist terror organizations. Khomeini selected specific passages from the Qur’an and hadith (canonical collections of Muhammad’s alleged sayings and actions) to craft his suicidal version of radical Islam.
Terrorism is used around the world to create fear and influence the public on political views (Siegel, 489). There are four views of terrorism including the psychological view, socialization view, ideological view, and the alienation view. A religious terrorist would most likely fit under the ideological view. In this view the terrorist feels the need to change a wrong opinion and believes that, because they are sacrificing themselves for something they believe so strongly in, it justifies the damage and harm done to innocent people (Siegel, 490). They use terror to create fear in anyone who opposes them and attract followers to their religion. In short, terrorism is widely used for political
Culturally, the Islamic world lacks fluidity and harmony between various sects which often calls for militant and harsh actions. Additionally, the expansion of globalization rooted in economics allowed for terrorism to spread across continents and to conduct attacks such as in 2001. Finally, religion appears as a hub and manual for numerous terrorist organizations. With numerous religions promise rewards for the afterlife, many terrorists follow these instructions with the aim of subduing as many non-believers as possible, even if it requires a personal suicide (Lamy 269). With three major sections of globalization providing a path and a goal for the rise of terrorism, the United States reacted drastically and allowed a general consensus of fear to drive political actions.
This essay will discuss how effective the terrorism has been in achieving its political objectives and will base its arguments on Political Terrorism by Schmid AP and Alberts J 1988 case study and supported by the 9/11 attack by Webster 2011 and the Siege operation by Cathy 2013. In unpacking the topic, key areas such as history and defining terrorist, the effectiveness of terrorism, its political objectives and quantify why civilians has been the target. The cases used were chosen to support the body of the essay as they highlight effectiveness of terrorism with a whole range of terrorism attacks and history around the world indicating the method used, the group involved and the objective of such attacks. The historical background of the word terrorism is that it originates from ‘terrorisme’ a French word that actually came from a Latin verb ‘terreo’ which means frightened. The word terror is expressed in Rome as an unsettling stage of emergency. It was when the Jacobins lost power that terror turned to be an abuse word in this expression (Rajiv, D 2013). This term of abuse has been on the world stage entwined with a complexity of unfinished definition. It has shifted the focus of state governments around the world to its national security department for expansion and development where the Middle East countries,