How do you defeat an ememy who is ready to kill themselves to kill you? How can you win that kind of war when one side, which is Israel, considers the lives of everyone precious, each Israeli, part of a larger family (Klal Yisrael), and the other side, fanatics, indoctrinated with hate and eager to die killing Jews in Israel, in America, in Iraq; anywhere. They are taught as one of them testified, "To be born to die, and our lives are merely a transition to death and eternal life in Paradise. Death is a good thing, not the bad, horrific and ugly thing that we were made to believe." So to stop them you MUST kill them; you CANNOT negotiate with them - and you will be condemned by a world which will not understand their fanaticism. The rest of the world will face the same enemy if Israel loses this first battle in a new World War.
Hank Roth
The following are excerpts from Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martyrology by Raphael Israeli and published by Frank Cass (2003).
Fida'i, Shahid and Islamikaze
Raphael Israeli
In order to cultivate their self-image as the alternative to the existing order, these Islamikaze-prone revolutionaries not only boast their slogans of 'Islam is the Solution!', 'Islam is the Alternative!' and 'Islam is the Truth!', but they also delegitimize the regimes under which they live, and the enemies against whom they are pitted, be they godless communists, the corrupt and corrupting West, aggressive America and Israel, and the like. Rhetorical violence against opponents, enemies or rivals sets the stage for their ultimate elimination. And if they cannot be annihilated by face-to-face confrontation due to their (temporary) superiority in weaponry and technology, then self-sacrifice by way of Islamikaze may be the answer. Once again, it is not the desire of these people to commit 'suicide' that propels them, but the burning and uncontrollable eagerness to destroy the enemy even if it costs them their lives.
To induce a young Muslim to become an Islamikaze his operators must first emasculate the natural fear of death that is innate in any human being. They may fascinate their naive and adept novice by comparing the promised hereafter, where the would-be martyr is free of concern and pursues a rewarding and eternal material life depicted in lively colour and enveloped in lust and debauchery, with the hardships of his real life, which is full of pitfalls, frustrations and uncertainties, and fleeting in any case. He may be tempted to take a shortcut to Heaven to save himself the vagaries of his actual and temporary stay on earth. In April 1995, a poignant story was published in an Israeli newspaper concerning a young 15-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza, whose quest to blow himself up among Israeli civilians had been foiled. He said during his police interrogation, 'We are born to die, and our lives are merely a transition to death and eternal life in Paradise… Death is a good thing, not the bad, horrific and ugly thing that we were made to believe.'
Hard to grasp? Indeed! In this rather infrequent case of aborted self-immolation during an act of terrorism, it was possible to obtain post factum the statement of the would-be perpetrator. But, as a rule, due to the impracticality of clinical evaluation prior to the act of 'suicide bombing', much less subsequent to it, one is left with little or no basis for the reconstruction of the personality of the martyr or his biography before the act. Even in cases of 'failed' 'suicide bombings', or when the bombing succeeded but the perpetrator escaped death (which in itself invalidates that terminology in the first place), it is perhaps impossible to reconstruct his mindset prior to the act, because his survival, which may have been miraculous or due to some technical quirk, does not diminish one iota from either his self-perception as a hero who has succeeded even though he survived, or who tried at great risk to attain his goal but was foiled by outside forces beyond his control, or from the way others perceive him, not as a martyr if he did not die, but as a hero worthy of emulation.
Conversely, the fact that he narrowly escaped death may make him view the world differently, realize that life is worthwhile hanging on to, and revise his instilled attitude towards death. Who knows? If one could draw up personal profiles of would-be bombers after their recruitment, then perhaps their shared character traits, family backgrounds and socio-economic environments might hint at their predisposition to commit this sort of voluntary martyrdom. But again, since this is not suicide in the conventional sense, no individual can be tested for his intention to kill himself when he had, perhaps, never intended to do so in the first place, or before he in fact did it in the real world and for totally different purposes than suicide. According to conventional wisdom based on collected data to date, it would seem that people most likely to join these missions, or equally dangerous cults or revolutionary groups, share some basic characteristics which, in themselves, do not necessarily indicate psychiatric illness:
- They are young and therefore have few life responsibilities: career, business, family, material possessions. In the real world, however, there are many exceptions to this rule: Palestinian terrorists in Israel, as well as many involved in al-Qa'ida and the 11 September horror, had families, careers and fortunes to lose, foremost of them Bin-Laden himself (who so far has not shown any propensity to perform an act of martyrdom but lives very dangerously nevertheless), who has more than one wife and a couple of dozen children, but chooses to live in caves and run for his life under constant persecution. Or perhaps he took all those risks when he did not take seriously US determination to hunt him down? Or perhaps his faith and dedication to the cause of Islam is simply more important to him than money, easy life and family? Who is to know?
- Many of the would-be martyrs were not particularly successful in their lives: in study, work or interpersonal relations; or they have been relatively shunned by their families/friends/ environments to the point of feeling isolated. Again, we have seen perpetrators among the Palestinians who had a good standard of living, or were employed and enjoyed their family lives, but their call for martyrdom decided their faith. We also know from the 11 September massacre that some of the 19 perpetrators, specifically those who studied engineering and took pilot courses in preparation for their mission, could not be said to have belonged to the poor, to have lacked the requisite qualities to succeed in their careers, or to have failed in their family lives. Consequently, no one can explain why they elected to die.
- The perpetrators of such acts were usually assumed to be characterized by poor self-esteem. But when we watched those talented young people who planned and executed their attack with such a breath-taking precision against New York and Washington on 11 September, afer long years of patient self-training for the mission, we could not be convinced that they suffered from a low self-esteem. If anything, the contrary was in evidence.
According to this conventional wisdom, people of this sort might have well sought and found an alternative social organization, marginal, persecuted, risky and problematic as it might be, in order to be recognized and accepted, enhanced and appreciated. Their association with the Islamikaze would give them the opportunity to expand their own ego, and the newly acquired comradeship would sustain their self-esteem and self-importance. It is said that these types might be depressed and in search of easy solutions to their problems. Unsuccessful, perhaps self-despising, they would find solace in becoming martyrs, thus almost instantly and mythically transforming frustration into glory, failure into victory, and self-deprecation into public adoration. Perhaps this explanation holds for a certain percentage of these youths, perhaps others are duped as were their fida'i predecessors. Perhaps still others are romantics or idealists (whatever that might mean). There is no doubt, however, that in the post-September 11 era, we realize that an entire spectrum of personalities is involved. But from the strategic point of view, the crucial issue is that a highly structured organization is shaping, moulding and using these individuals for its own ambitions and sinister goals.
What is more, while adherents of cults in general find solace for their individual selves in their life and death, the Islamikaze fulfil a societal-family ideal, by preparing the grounds in Paradise for their entire family to follow: something that makes their act bearable, not to say desirable, for their loved and loving ones. Their role as pioneers before their kin makes them precious in the eyes of their public, which views them and their surviving families with awe and admiration: something which can hardly be said about cult or regular suicide victims. Moreover, if one is to summarize the popular songs about these martyrs, which are distributed post-mortem on video, tapes and in brochures and posters; the host of orally transmitted stories of their heroism and self-sacrifice; and the repeated replay on stage of the saga of their martyrdom, much reminiscent of the Shi'ite ta'zia, one cannot help noticing the enormous differences between these two kinds of self-inflicted death.
Indeed, in the world of the Islamikaze, the hereafter is lauded not as an escape, but as a desirable fulfilment. Paradise is unexpectedly depicted in exciting, plastic, worldly and pleasurable terms, not in some vague spiritual entity worthy of mystics or saints of other traditions. Sex and wine, the two foremost taboos in traditional Islamic society, are exalted in the Islamikaze popular literature as accessible and permissible in unlimited quantities, because in the hereafter, everything is in abundant and limitless supply and the restrictions of the worldly Shari'a law do not apply. More puzzling is the fact that the public which extols the martyrs stands as an approving, envious and adoring audience in the face of the violation of their worldly Shari'a limitation, not as a traumatized or disgusted public, as in the case of cult-instigated massacres or plain suicide.
The construct 'suicide bomber' has been used by Western media and the political community and, as such, it has had deleterious consequences: minimizing, trivializing and distorting a highly significant phenomenon. 'Suicide bomber' implies a disposition towards madness, yet it has not emanated from psychologically responsible sources. Turning to an Islamic frame of reference for a definition, and perhaps a diagnosis would, then, appear imperative if we are to comprehend the underlying motive for this sort of unparalleled mode of self-sacrifice. (As mentioned in Chapter 1) -when questioned by a reporter about 'suicide bombing', Absallah Shami, a respected leader of the Islamic Jihad group in Gaza, replied that as long as they did not have access to the same military hardware as their enemy, 'suicide bombing' was the most effective weapon they had. Consequently, he saw it as a legitimate method of operation.
The sheikh is then claiming that only dearth of weapons, or military impotence in general in the face of well-armed and powerful powers-that-be, had caused his movement to use humans instead. He does not idealize or justify 'suicide bombing' as a goal in itself. Moreover, while in conventional suicide the victim wishes to inflict the greatest possible damage on himself in order to make his task 'successful', here there is a reverse prescription to reduce the perpetrators' losses (and presumably to increase the enemy's). However, when loss there is, the perpetrator/victim is assured of life in the hereafter. To reduce the losses also implies that the operators of such acts do engage in 'economic' calculations inasmuch as they strive to decrease the numbers of would-be martyrs for each operation, not in order to increase its efficacy, but in order to diminish the toll of their own casualties, possibly to save them for more operations of this sort. Had death in itself been the ideal, even in the context of eliminating the enemy, then a maximum number of participants in the operation, not the necessary minimum, would have been envisaged. This is similar to the kamikaze, our control group where death for the Emperor, as much as it was idealized and irrational, was still tempered by the rational imperative to manage the available resources economically in order to put them to optimal use.
The build-up of the Islamikaze's ideological commitment is made incrementally of the following three elements: identifying the enemy; strengthening the value of jihad in particular and doctrinal conviction in general against the identified enemy; and then instigating the Islamikaze to show personal valour and self-sacrifice for the attainment of the prescribed goal.
The would-be martyrs belong to three concentric circles of identity which coincide with the three societal circles in which they operate: their public at large; their inner circle of like-minded activists; and the innermost nucleus of those ready for the ultimate sacrifice:
- Exactly as the kamikaze won the support of, and found sympathy among, the wartime Japanese public, so do the Islamikaze in their Islamic environment. Both publics, (as covered more extensively in Chapter 1) were focused on their enmity and hostility towards their sworn enemy, thereby constituting the water from which these guerilla martyrs sought sustenance. The clear identification of that enemy which they shared with their public, and the equally clear recognition by the martyrs that when they act the public will stand behind them, and will revere them if they should fail and much more so if they die in battle, are the foundations for building the first element of the Islamikaze worldview, high motivation and readiness to perish for the cause.
- Islamikaze and kamikaze alike belonged to radical, battle-hardened, battle-defiant and highly indoctrinated groups which vowed to serve the cause with unlimited devotion: the Muslim fundamentalists and the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces respectively. For the Muslims, jihad, their tool of fighting for the Path of Allah, as actively interpreted and propagated by their fundamentalist religious leaders, is the rallying point and the chosen path, and death in it promises in itself martyrdom and access to Paradise.
Above and beyond the commitment of Muslim radicals to jihad, there is a chosen nobility, the best of the best, who prepare themselves for the superior form of sacrifice: the Islamikaze. Unlike the common jihad fighters who fight in unison, usually as part of the armed forces of an Islamic state and under the religious sanction of its Islamic hierarchy, and seek comfort and courage in each other, the Islamikaze, like the kamikaze, train alone for their mission and prepare themselves in glorious self-isolation and self-purification for their task. Hence the requirement of the ultimate degree of audacity, devotion, piety, consciousness, and the capacity to discard any thought or deed which might interfere with those ultimate qualities.
It is this transition from common jihad fighter to Islamikaze that needs clarification. Let us listen to a widely circulated tape extolling the Islamikaze:
I Come on brother, join jihad
Carry your machine-gun from early morning
And come brother, join jihad. Choose one of the two:
Either victory and a life of delight
Or death and a life with a Paradise girl.
(Refrain)
Oh brother! Your country calls upon you!
Stand up and come to liberate her.
Oh, Aqsa Mosque, we are all mourning
Your desecration by those cursed by Allah [the Jews].
II But when the Muslims take notice,
You will bloom again like jasmine.
Oh brother! We have already endured humiliation
Look at Sabra and Mia Mia.
Manhood and zeal are lost
Unless you pick up your machine-gun and join jihad.
The feeling of 'we have reached the ebb', 'we have nothing to lose' is exactly the impetus for exposing oneself to a certain death, either by self-immolation at the heart of the enemy, or in daring battle without chance of survival. For while 'here' there is only humiliation and suffering, 'there' the promise is great, and still greater is the temptation to take a short-cut and get there as early as possible in one's life. Beyond this, one can detect in the song all three elements of the Islamikaze make-up: delegitimation of the enemy (the desecrators of al-Aqsa, who are cursed by Allah); the call for jihad, which binds all Muslim fighters, more so the fundamentalists who are not waiting for the established community or regime to launch it; and the final step of luring the predisposed to do so, to their death without fear and with great rewards awaiting the strong of heart. Here is another popular song of this sort:
The solution is inherent in your faith, your Islam, your weapons
Oh brother! Persist in your way, with determination and resolve
How sweet to the ear is the voice calling for jihad!
You better sing these lyrics of audacity
While handling the arrows in your quiver.
We shall crush the bastions of injustice
And turn them into ashes.
Then we shall brandish the banner of faith
With pride and fortitude.
We have come to you, the landscape of our country,
Ready to defy death and to cleanse the impurities
Of the Zionist enemies.
The link between self-sacrifice and daring in battle, and the hereafter, had been established by a passage from the Qur'an, where the Prophet, who was instigating his followers not to fear battle, lauded the next world, which is 'incomparably better than this one'. This link is further elaborated in the tradition related to the Angels Munkir and Nakir, who reportedly interrogate every recently deceased Muslim by making him traverse the purifying fire of Heaven before he is admitted to Paradise. Reputedly, martyrs will have saved themselves from the torments of that horrible interrogation, both upon their arrival to Heaven, since they are directly admitted to Paradise, and on the Day of Resurrection, when all humans will resubmit to that frightening trial. A Hadith, citing the Prophet, specifies that the shahid:
…will be pardoned [for his sins] by Allah, will take his place in Paradise, will be dressed with the Cloth of Faith, will marry beautiful-eyed young women, will be spared the torments of the tomb, will not submit to the Day of Judgement, and will have one of the world's best precious stones adorn his crown.
After admission into Paradise, the martyrs are blissfully rewarded by acquiring a higher position than all the other dwellers, which enables them to partake of the eternal pleasures and delights that the place has to offer. The Holy Qur'an abounds with exciting descriptions of the Garden of Eden, where the climate is temperate-not a trifle for Arabs originating from the deserts of Arabia-and where they can indulge in drink from silver cups, dressed in expensive silk, adorned with silver jewels amidst gardens where wine flows like rivers. This dream-like living is certainly mind-boggling inasmuch as it provides a never waning source of happiness and bliss, as compared with worldly suffering, uncertainty and deprivation. It was the Prophet himself who urged jihad fighters to distinguish themselves in battle, in view of what was awaiting them in the quickly attainable hereafter. The position of the martyr in Heaven is extolled, for his dwelling surpass all the others, as it is located close to Allah's throne.
Many Hadith elaborate on those magnificient descriptions, like the one painting Paradise in terms of a divine blinking light, branches of fragrant trees, flowing rivers, tall palaces, an abundance of fruit, luxurious clothes and exquisite women, which make for eternal, glorious, peaceful and plentiful living.
This mind-boggling mode of life, that is no doubt irresistible to the prospective martyr, also has a spiritual side. The shahid is considered a mediator for others to gain admission to Paradise, for after his death he can 'lobby' for others before the highest in Heaven. This striving on behalf of others, known in Islam as shafa'a, which for the most part has been reserved as a prerogative of the Prophet himself in Muslim tradition, was expanded to the martyr by scholars like Abu Talib, the Meccan, and the famous scholar and mystic, al-Ghazali.
It is precisely this combination of sublime living and superior spiritual power which makes martyrdom a very sought-after and enviable status in normative Islam, let alone among the fundamentalist militants, whose sensitivity and proclivity to these promises makes them so popular and adulated, and role models to follow. If this needs to be stressed once again, this is what elevates the Islamikaze above and beyond regular fighters, and certainly distinguishes them from plain suicidal types or murderers in the eyes of non-Muslim societies. Under these cultural circumstances, martyrdom reads not as a hasty murderous act by a deranged individual who could not find his place in society, but as a supreme act by a worthy and chosen individual, who attains in one stroke what the living, even the most pious among them, cannot achieve by a lifetime of good deeds and saintly practices.
As Fat'hi Shqaqi, the secretary general of the jihad group, explained in a press interview regarding 'suicide bombing', in which he essentially repeated all the elements already discussed above:
Our battle with the enemy inside Palestine is to open to all possible jihad methods and likelihoods, including martyrdom operations… The enemy thought that by signing the Oslo Accords he had closed the Palestinian file and was about to liquidate it, a fact which demands from us a special effort to foil the plot. Hence the importance of martyrdom operations at this stage… As to Iranian support, it consists in the main of help to the families of the martyrs and the prisoners… Other than that, the Iranian support is just political and moral.
The young people who started Islamic Jihad in Palestine in the early 1980s were young people from primary and secondary schools… I was one of the young people who felt extreme bitterness and sorrow following the 1967 defeat… It shook us because it threw us into a bottomless pit… During that time, I and others…lost all our balance… We could not do anything then other than cling to Allah as a means of getting out of the impasse and restoring our psychological balance… The idea of Islamic Jihad emerged later and matured during our studies in Egypt in the 1970s.
…As to Sayyid Qut'b, his influence on our generation is beyond dispute… The Islamic Jihad movement also works for the unification of the Arab and Islamic efforts towards Palestine while at the same time preaching Islam and its creed, laws, culture and discipline, and the revival of its cultural message to the nation and to mankind alike, and work for its emergence and triumph… These objectives fall within the framework of our realization of the growing link and dialogue between the confrontation with Zionism and imperialism, and the revival of the nation, for it would not be possible for us to accomplish the Islamic revival plan without the question of the liberation of Palestine being the nucleus of such a plan and the ground of its basic battle.
…Israel is an imperialist entity…founded on expansionism… It is also an imperialist base and an ally and partner of the West, and helps to facilitate the West's penetration into the Arab and Islamic fold, to dominate it and loot its wealth… It is true that the material balance of power is not in our favor… But this should not prevent us from striking a balance of terror with the enemy. Here lies the significance of the martyrdom operations which prove that the unjust balances of power are not eternal…and that we possess the option of fighting rather than surrendering… Change is undoubtedly coming, for it is a divine law and way. So it is better that change should find us steadfast in our positions, rather than on our knees bearing the document of capitulation before the Zionist entity and NATO.
The above quotes, from Islamic sources or from those directly involved in Islamikaze activities, certainly provide the Islamic rationale for their acts. What is missing is the formal religious-legal sanction lending a stamp of approval to these thoughts, and to the Islamikaze's daring operations in which many innocent victims fall. Such approvals have been pronounced by several scholars of the Holy Law under the form of fatwa (a religiously binding verdict). The next chapter will provide a wide selection of some of those spiritual sponsors of Islamikaze, but here it suffices to cite one of them, Yussef al-Qardawi, who published a 2,000-word dissertation headed by the unequivocal judgement that 'Martyrdom Operations in Occupied Palestine Represent one of the Greatest Forms of Jihad for the Sake of Allah'.
The link that was missing for the Islamikaze to launch their acts, namely the fatwa, was necessitated by the fact that Islam usually proscribes suicide, as explained above, since the soul given by Allah cannot be taken away by the unilateral act of a mortal Believer. Qardawi recognizes the Qur'anic injunction, 'Make not your own hand contribute to your destruction.' He also acknowledges the consensus among most Muslim jurists to the effect that near-suicidal attacks by one man against a large number of the enemy are allowed when the perpetrator believes he has a good chance of staying alive, or if he believes he can inflict a substantial loss on the enemy, although his own death is certain. And he concludes:
Calling these operations suicidal is an erroneous and misleading description. They are sacrificial and heroic, and as martyrdom operations they are totally detached from the concept of suicide. A suicide takes his own life, but this one in question kills himself for the sake of his religion and nation. A suicidal is a person who despaired of himself and of Allah, but this mujtahid is full of faith in Allah's mercy and beneficience.
Israeli society is a military society [hence the permission to strike at it]. Its men and women are soldiers in its army and can be summoned up for service at any moment. If a child or an old person is killed in these operations, this is not intentional but accidental. The necessities of warfare permit [normally] forbidden actions.
…All we ask is that these martyrdom operations be carried out after careful consideration. It is best if they are undertaken through the collective intellectual effort [ijtihad] of reliable Muslims. If they decide that there is benefit in going ahead, they should do so and place their trust in Allah.
Misc Notes
- Complete footnotes available in the book, for sake of brevity, are not cited here.
- (From the author's notes): In Islamic folk representation of Paradise, which is often supported by popular religious sheikhs and citations from Islamic sources, the martyr may freely mingle with the virgins of Paradise (huriya), some say as many as 72 of them each, and after each sexual intercourse the girls miraculously regain their virginity in order to afford the martyr a continuous virginal pleasure. So it goes for alcohol, the other major taboo in Islamic society, since Shari'a does not apply in Heaven.
Quotes are in compliance with the Fair Use Doctrine for
educational and discussion purposes per
Title 17 U.S.C. Section
107, Copyright Law.
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Today is Friday November 21, 2008
Hank Roth (on the Internet since 1982)
While I don't use a standard blog (weblog software) mostly because I've been doing this too long - having been there with Ike when the precursor to the Internet, Arpanet got started and every step of the way since, I can't get into all the many fads over the years (now it is social networking), but I have been an observer and participant in events which shape the world since my time with NSA and with Army Security and as a voice security cryptologist in the White House for the President, and the War Room at the Pentagon for the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff plus two wars. You could say this site is one of the better kept secrets [grin] on the InterNUT. You are invited back as often as you would like to see what I and others, I trust, may be saying.
-- Hank Roth