![\"A](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/Suicide_Bomb_Vest.png\")
<\/a>Contrary to common assumptions, suicide bombing has no intrinsic connection to Islam, nor even to religion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Bill Hamblin and I published the column below in the Deseret News<\/em> on 11 July 2015:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The so-called \u201cNew Atheists\u201d differ from previous generations of vocal unbelievers (e.g., Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew) by not merely repudiating the existence of God but aggressively denying the moral legitimacy and cultural value of religious faith. They\u2019re fond of citing the great 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal: \u201cMen never do evil so completely and cheerfully,\u201d he said, \u201cas when they do it from religious conviction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And nothing has played so well into the hands of the New Atheists in this regard than the violence associated over the past couple of decades with fundamentalist Islam. It\u2019s believers in God, partisans of the New Atheism observe, who strap bombs to their backs and fly airplanes into buildings.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor good people to do evil things,\u201d the outspokenly atheistic Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has famously said, \u201cthat takes religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, matters aren\u2019t quite so simple as some imagine. Pascal himself, for instance, was a very devoted Christian, and Weinberg shared his 1979 Nobel Prize with Mohammad Abdus Salam, a devout Anglo-Pakistani Muslim who quoted the Quran in his acceptance speech.<\/span><\/p>\n But the fundamental problem with blaming religion for suicide bombings may surprise many readers: The data simply don\u2019t support the charge. Not by a long shot.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2005, Robert Pape of the University of Chicago published a vitally important book titled \u201cDying to Win<\/a>: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.\u201d It\u2019s based upon meticulous analysis of every suicide attack occurring anywhere in the world between 1980, when modern suicide terrorism began, and 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n Pape\u2019s case is factually rich and rigorously argued. \u201cThe data show,\u201d he concludes, \u201cthat there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world\u2019s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He continues: \u201cRather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Even in the Middle East, at least half of the suicide attacks between 1980 and 2003 had little, if any, link to Islamic fundamentalism; indeed, many such attacks were undertaken by Communists, secular nationalists and even Christians. The motivations were this-worldly, tied to national liberation. Those who carried them out weren\u2019t impelled by poverty, alienation, psychological dysfunction, hopelessness or a pathological desire for death. On the contrary, by a very wide margin, suicide attackers turn out to have been relatively prosperous, exceptionally well-integrated within their communities, healthy and in no conventional way suicidal. Their acts were oddly altruistic and idealistic, however depraved others outside their community might judge them to be.<\/span><\/p>\n Why have we so misunderstood what\u2019s going on? For one thing, we\u2019ve paid disproportionate attention, in a sense, to suicide attacks in the Middle East; after all, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka target that nation\u2019s Sinhalese Buddhist<\/a> majority, not us. The West has no vital interests there, and little representation, and we seldom hear reports about Sri Lanka on the nightly news. So our sample is skewed. Moreover, although they\u2019ve spoken openly, we\u2019ve paid curiously little attention to what suicide attackers have actually said about their motives and goals.<\/span><\/p>\n The fundamental point of Robert Pape\u2019s argument is strikingly congruent with the entirely distinct case made by Graham Fuller in his brilliant 2010 book\u00a0\u201cA World Without Islam<\/a>.\u201d We\u2019ve summarized that 2010 book in a previous column: Fuller observes that today\u2019s divisions between the (Islamic) East and the (Christian) West regularly trace the same geographical and other lines that divided East from West long before the rise of Islam in the seventh century (see\u00a0\u201cIs Islam a primary cause of international violence?<\/a>\u201d published Sept. 6, 2014).<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, what we typically understand to be a fundamentally religious conflict in the Middle East may, at its root, have relatively little to do with religion. And that, if true, has major ramifications for \u2014 among many other things \u2014 the way in which the United States and the West should conduct their foreign policy in and about the region.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt isn\u2019t what we don\u2019t know that gives us trouble,\u201d Will Rogers once quipped, \u201cit\u2019s what we know that ain\u2019t so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Newport Beach, California<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 Bill Hamblin and I published the column below in the Deseret News on 11 July 2015: \u00a0 The so-called \u201cNew Atheists\u201d differ from previous generations of vocal unbelievers (e.g., Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew) by not merely repudiating the existence of God but aggressively denying the moral legitimacy and cultural value of religious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n