SECULAR TERRORISM

Secular Terrorism



Secular Terrorism

Introduction

Before delving into psychological motivations and profiles of wrongdoers (i.e. suicide bombers), it behooves to ask: who are victims of Islamist terrorism and suicide bombing attacks? Typical illustrations put forward an inter-civilizational clash between Islam and West, main casualties of which are non-Muslim civilians. In certainty, even so, not only are Muslims regularly directed at, they are disproportionately victims of terrorism.

 

Analysis

The very play-act of assault is reliant upon death of perpetrator. Suicide attacks are not new; the condensed historic re-evaluate uncovers this terrorist procedure to be the implement engaged in work by militarily frail conservatively stimulated parties in resistance to tougher foes. Zealots and Sicaris, revolutionary Jewish gatherings of aged Rome, are world's first documented suicide terrorists. Members pursued public operations of assassination from about 4 BCE to 70 ACE; plays of hostility focused at fomenting the admired uprising in resistance to Roman occupiers of Judea. During eleventh and twelfth centuries, Hashshashin (Assassins), the mystical population of Ismaili Muslims, pursued the operation of suicide missions in resistance to chiefs of occupying Sunni Muslim empires and afterwards in resistance to chiefs of occupying Christian Crusaders. Japanese kamikaze pilots equally tackled an directed, arranged, and unrelenting program of suicide attacks in resistance to American soldiers forces as long as World War II. Between July 1944 and August 1945, some 3,843 Japanese pilots granted their dwells descending a least 375 U.S. naval vessels, putting to death 12,300 servicemen, and wounding another 36,400 (Holmes, S. 2005). Not the solitary suicide assault happened between 1945 and 1980.

October 23, 1985 confirmed to be the historic watershed in recent usage of suicide terrorism. It was on this day that suicide motor vehicle explosive invention attacks brought out by Hezbollah commanded to death of 241 American combatants and 58 French forces in habitation of Beirut. The attacks compelled French and American militaries to leave behind their performances in Lebanon. More meaningfully, attacks nurtured terrorist gatherings from Hamas to Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (Tamil Tigers) to al-Qaeda to take on this manner of attack (Argo, N. 2006).

In most comprehensive study to day of the year, political researcher Robert Pape has cataloged and examined every suicide assault from 1980 to 2003 (Gerges, F. 2006). The written knowledge uncover critical insights into motivations of suicide bombers. Of 315 suicide attacks that took position as long as this interval, 301 were brought out as part of an directed political operation of coercion in resistance to republican governments. Specifically, apex three instigators documented by Pape are Tamil Tigers (69 attacks), Hezbollah (36 attacks), and al-Qaeda (21 attacks). Religion was not source source of any of operations examined: precise and strategic objective was to cause leaving of soldiers forces from terrorists' countrywide homeland. Moreover, supported on main demographic written knowledge, Pape encountered that of 384 suicide bombers the cause for attacks as long as this time interval 43% were spiritual where 57% were secular. This movement is epitomized by ideological affiliation of Hezbollah's attackers: of 41 ...