Two Types of Suicide Terrorism: “Political” and "Trascendenta

GASPAR MAIRAL

The recent history of suicide terrorism shows two periods of time with different groups, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs, PKK, Tamil Tigers and Chechenia Separatist between 1982 and 2005 and Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram between 1998 until now. This article explores the correlation between these two epochs and two types of suicide terrorism which combine politics and religion. Nevertheless, the nature of this combination differs so that we should call "political" the suicide terrorism which predominated between 1982 and 2005 and "transcendental" between 1998 until now. This article presents some hypothesis to improve our understanding of a suicide terrorist's motivation.

When we think of suicide terrorism, we tend to remember the images of particular attacks. However, statistics on suicide terrorism are largely unknown. Thus, when the idea of suicide terrorism comes to our minds, we vividly recall the falling of the Twin Towers in New York. Most of us were able to watch the crash of the two aircrafts on screen, and today these images are a significant element in our collective imagination to symbolize the suicide terrorist attack. In contrast, a careful and detailed compilation of data about all suicide terrorist attacks has no meaning for public opinion. Our collective memory is made up of shared information and experience, and the view of the two aircrafts crashing into the skyscrapers has a very dramatic strength and ability as a memory condenser. The analysis of suicide terrorist attacks[1] (STA) belongs to experts who usually work with cold numbers. However, if we examine and interpret these statistics, we can come to appreciate some meanings that can take us beyond the surface of a pure quantitative analysis. My purpose is to begin this article with numbers and to eventually arrive at deeper meanings.

Suicide terrorism started in 1982 in Lebanon. Still active there and in other parts of the world, it has been responsible for 44.323 mortal victims in 4.357 attacks. Its lethality, or the average number of deaths per attack, is 10,7. In comparison with the number of mortal victims in recent and current wars such as Iraq's or Syria's, this number is not exceptional. However, if we apply another kind of comparative analysis, we reach a very different conclusion. The proportion between the material and human resources used to carry out one of these suicide actions and the resulting consequences in terms of human lives and material damages reveals STA to be a devastating weapon. The awful nature of suicide terrorism is characterized by the small amount of material and human resources needed to cause enormous damage. The lethality of the STA is thus extraordinary.

This article draws a line to separate two periods of STA activity. In 1998, Al-Qaeda began its STA campaign against the United States by attacking the American embassy in Nairobi, a campaign with a terrible culmination on September 2001 in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. 2001 is a landmark to separate two epochs resulting from the appearance of Al-Qaeda. The total number of deaths by STA between 1982 and 2001 was 3.116, but it reached a total of 37.279 between 2001 and 2015. If we focus on the numbers, it is quite clear that there are two epochs in the historical development of suicide terrorism: one from 1982 to 2001 and another from 2001 to the present. This division considers only the numerical aspect of this question; but my purpose is to proceed towards the cultural dimension.

The first epoch was dominated by organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs in Palestine and Israel, the Kurdish PKK in Turkey, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and the Chechen separatists in Russia. All these organizations (except the Tamil Tigers who identified as a Marxist-Leninist group) were connected, though in different ways, with the Islamic religion. We can affirm, though with some caution, that for various reasons these organizations do not practice STA today. Both Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups, having a common enemy in the state of Israel, have developed new actions such as the launching of rockets and missiles into Israeli territory. Today they are engaged in war and guerrilla warfare. The Tamil Tigers were defeated by the Sri Lankan army in 2009 and the Kurdish PKK abandoned suicide terrorism in 2001.[2] Finally, the Chechen separatists are growing weaker and their actions are sporadic. We can recognize then that by 2005, more or less, all the groups that carried out suicide terrorism prior to the appearance of Al-Qaeda have ceased to practice it, though this situation is not irreversible. From 2001 until the present there has been an enormous escalation of STA under the aegis of organizations such as Al-Qaeda, AQI in Iraq, ISIS or Boko Haram in many countries all around the world. Following this initial classification, this article will give it content in order to create two specific typologies for suicide terrorism: the "political" and the "transcendental".

Suicide Terrorism, Religion and Politics

Suicide terrorism possesses, with just a few exceptions, a religious dimension that is related to a rigorist and very radical conception of Islam. Because the terrorists claim to be fighters for the "jihad" or "holy war," this kind of terrorism is presented as a religious and violent action. Nonetheless, there is another opinion[3] maintaining that a political cause or motivation underlies this religious surface. So above all the STA should be considered in its political dimension, with its religious configuration a secondary or even a superficial feature. "Religion" and "politics" seem to be the two parts of a controversial discussion about suicide terrorism. Is it religion or politics? This is a very significant question.

Political analysis gives great importance to the separation of religion and politics since it expresses a crucial historical process such as the secularization of modern societies. There is a tendency to contemplate both dimensions of social life as two different objects of study - even when they are not separated in the actor's conscience and behaviour - in order to accomplish the analytical dissection of an entity that is often experienced as a whole. This is quite usual in those societies where Islam is the majority religion or among those believers who practice its most rigorist version. They feel that religion and politics are not divided worlds but a whole of actions and beliefs. So we should look for another perspective able to manage the analytical categories of religion and politics, but also include them in a comprehensive view.

In 2005, the Palestinian filmmaker Any Abu-Assad made Paradise Now. It is a very good film but also very interesting material to approach the knowledge of suicide terrorism. It tells a story of two suicide terrorists living in the city of Nablus in the occupied Palestinian territories. Developing during the days prior to the planned suicide attacks, the story shows us very well the procedure that Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs typically follow before their STAs. The title itself shows a religious motivation: the entrance to paradise thanks to martyrdom. However, a later development in the story offers other meanings that turn out to be more political and personal.

But first, we see these two young Palestinians, with an assault rifle at hand, reading a farewell proclamation, both political and religious, while a member of the group videotapes the scene. Afterwards, they are prepared for the action with various activities including a total and ritual cleansing and shaving of their bodies and a shared prayer. Finally, the group gathers around the two suicide terrorists, wearing new garments, and shares a farewell dinner together. Another scene shows how the bombs are fixed to the two young men's bodies and connected to an electronic mechanism.

At the same time, this film contains a story about a young Palestinian girl whose father died in action fighting against Israel's occupation. He has become a hero and an example for the Palestinian population. She and one of the suicide terrorists have an affective relationship and they engage in some conversations about politics and terrorist activism. Thanks to these dialogues we know that the young suicide terrorist's father was killed by the Palestinian resistance for being an informer for the Israel army, allowing us to imagine how this circumstance has stigmatized him since then. One of the two terrorists chooses not to carry out his attack while the other activates his bomb within an Israeli bus occupied by both soldiers and civilians. It is the informer's son who carries out the terrorist attack.

The film suggests clearly the concept of redemption, more a Christian than an Islamic religious idea. On the other hand, the redemption, originally a religious conception, has historically been used as a political resource to promote action and leadership. The redeeming of peoples, nations, and territories has been the main inspiration for many political movements. Here, the terrorist attack and the terrorist's death are a way to redeem a father who was considered a traitor to his people. Politics and religion are present here, but we should contemplate their presence not by separating them but by asking ourselves how they combine.

Another good example is Robert Pape's Dying to win,[4] where he describes an STA's personal and familial context. On the first of June 2001, Saeed Hotari, a member of Hamas, killed 21 people in a suicide attack at the main entrance to a disco in Tel Aviv. One month later, his father organized a party to celebrate this attack. As family, friends and neighbours congregated around a suicide terrorist's portrait, some of them wrote on a stone wall: «21 and counting ». In an interview with Hassan Hotari, the father, he declared:

I am very happy and proud of what my son did and, frankly, am a bit jealous. I wish I had done [the bombing]. My son has fulfilled the Prophet's wishes. He has become a hero! Tell me, what more what more could a father ask? ... I hope I have many sons to carry out the same act.[5]

Nevertheless, when interviewed again two years later, he regretted his son's death; but he justified his action with a very political discourse:

Before they ask me how my son could do something like that, they should ask what conditions were that led to do it. Why do people kill themselves? Are they fond of death? Is it a fashion? Since 1948, the Jews have taken more and more of our land. My son wasn't a radical person, he was radicalized by the anger, by the humiliation. Look before your eyes. We are living in a jail. I would be a liar to say I feel sorry for the people who are oppressing us day by day.[6]

After his initial fervour, this man's discourse has lost much of its religious focus, replaced by a political emphasis. Instead of religion, what we find is a political narration that describes a historical context of oppression. According to his father's evaluation, this suicide terrorist was determined by his community and the political circumstances that dominate it.

Politics and religion are both acting in these examples, but what interests me here is to appreciate their combination. Suicide terrorism has a main actor - the individual with the bomb - and a context made up of socio-cultural, political, economic, geo-strategic, military, religious, historical, and many other circumstances, which can be examined to find some logical explanation for the action. But the deep meaning of the terrorist's behaviour is darker and sometimes impenetrable. Why are these people, "good boys" as they are often described by their neighbours, ready to die for killing? That is the question.

Saeed Hotari's case is a good example of the type of suicide terrorism that I am calling "political"; but this term does not exclude religion as a very significant component. My argument is that the predominant inspiration for this attack is found in politics but combined with religion, so much that it would be incomprehensible without its religious determination. This kind of terrorist - Saeed Hotari, for example, or the young Palestinian in Paradise Now - obtains a new identity thanks to his/her action since he/she becomes a hero or heroine; this is the most important piece in the discourse of Saeed Hotari's father. The new condition of hero or heroine is related to the political circumstances of a permanent struggle against Israel's occupation. The suicide terrorist who has died in action will be famous for some time and remembered with portraits on the walls and videos with his/her final proclamation sold on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza. This period of celebrity represents a distinction from other types of suicide terrorists who are absolutely anonymous both before and after the attacks. I find here a relevant feature to establish a comparison and a difference between two types of terrorism. Let us return to the numbers to discover this significant distinction.

The period for "political" suicide terrorism extends from 1982, with the first STA by Hezbollah in Lebanon, to 2005 when this type of suicide terrorism practically ceased. There is another period, which started with Al-Qaeda's attack against the United States on 11th September 2001, and is still active. I have reviewed the Suicide Attack Database from the University of Chicago looking for any available information about each suicide terrorist. This database includes variables such as gender, religion, occupation, and education. Because religion is clearly the most significant variable to tell us something personal about the individuals who committed the attacks, I have compared the proportion of cases in which the religion has been identified. We should bear in mind that this identification is not made according to the action context - which could easily presuppose Islam as the religion followed by most of the suicide terrorists - but based on specific data referring to the people who attacked. Between 1982 and 2005 religion was identified in 22% of all suicide terrorists, whereas just 0,02% was recognized by their religion between 2005 and 2015. It is true that 22% is a low proportion, but we must also consider the difficulty of identifying a body after a big explosion. So we have to estimate very low percentages, though the difference between 0,02% and 22% is in any case very significant. The tendency towards anonymity emerges as a strong characteristic for the second type of STA which I will call "transcendental". This type of STA demands a careful and complete study.

Millenarianism

On Friday 20th March 2015, the faithful were preaching at two mosques in Sana (Yemen) when four suicide terrorists committed an awful killing. The first attack was carried out in the mosque of Badr, where one terrorist blew up an explosive belt when he was stopped by the security forces at the entrance. A second terrorist took advantage of the confusion to enter the mosque, detonating his belt in the middle of the crowd. At just the same time in Al-Hashhush, the other mosque, two more terrorists attacked with the same method. One was carrying a bomb inside his falsely plastered leg, which he also detonated as he was being checked. The second terrorist got into the mosque and set off another bomb as the prayer was ending. There were 142 people killed and 300 more wounded. It is worth estimating the historical and political context of this attack.

These two mosques belonged to the Houti minority,[7] who follow Shia Islam. There is now a civil war in Yemen after the Houti rebellion against President Mansur Hadi, who is supported by Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaeda is deeply-rooted in Yemen, but this attack was organized by the Islamic State (ISIS) and it was its first action in Yemen. After the attack, ISIS claimed responsibility and made this statement:

And just so to know to all the polytheistic Houtis that the Islamic State soldiers will not rest and be quiet until they have eradicated them all and make fail their assault and abort the Safavid project in Yemen, with Allah' s strength and power.[8]

ISIS has increased the traditional enmity between the Sunni and the Shiites who are predominant in Iran. For ISIS, the Shiites are outside of Islam; they consider them infidels and polytheistic. The Safavid dynasty to which they refer ruled Iran from 1501, creating a powerful empire until 1722. Why is a terrorist organization today using references taken from such an ancient time? Polytheism is a concept useful to refer to antique worships. On the other hand, to describe the Shiite population in Yemen with a reference to the Safavid empire seems anachronistic, but the ISIS' discourse is full of melancholy.

At the beginning of twelfth century, the Arabs' power was declining under the increasing influence of the Turks ruled by the Seljuk dynasty. Afterwards, in the thirteenth century, the Mongolians conquered and destroyed the Caliphate later replaced by a new Turkish dynasty, the Ottomans, who founded an empire that lasted until the twentieth century. A nominal Caliphate was still maintained by the Ottomans until 1926, when Kemal Ataturk abolished it. Both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have established as the principal objective for the jihad the restoration of a unique rule, the Caliphate, for the whole Islamic community within its original historical area. Nevertheless, Al-Qaeda, under Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, has never occupied a territory in which to proclaim the Caliphate, while ISIS now controls portions of Iraq and Syria, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS' leader, has been proclaimed Caliph for all Moslems. The most important goal for these jihadist groups is the return of the entire original Caliphate created for the prophet Mohammed's succession. This is their fantastic dream, but meanwhile they have proclaimed the Caliphate in some occupied territories in Iraq and Syria. In fact, ISIS' leader has adopted the name of the first historical Caliph, Abu-Bakr, who was Mohammed's father-in-law. Al-Qaeda has never adopted such a proclamation.

The jihadist millenarian discourse is like a collective dream in which the boundaries and distances of historical time disappear. The historical time of contemporary jihadists is not the time of modernity, even though its followers make use of the latest technology. This paradox is being used by ISIS as a powerful propagandist resource. Let us take the example of the execution of hostages, which ISIS recorded with modern technology and high quality professional production. The paradox here is to show "medieval" executions with modern means in such a way that Western public opinion will be puzzled. This collective feeling causes a sense of horror before a spectacle that is considered outside of civilization. The idea, of course, is to create fear. The application of an old method for executions, like cutting the prisoner's throat, is exposed in a very realistic way, stressing the most cruel and bloody details. The purpose is to demonstrate that the jihad's time is beyond any chronology, out of time, and that the jihadists are part of a myth. Therefore, we should move our analysis to times and events which, being very old for a modern chronology, belong to this mythical way of thinking that characterizes ISIS. "Anachronistic" means out of any chronology, and so in order to study this second type of suicide terrorist we should approach this way of thinking.

Hassan ibn Sabah and Alamut's Assassins

In the eleventh century, the Arabs were ruled from Cairo by the Fatimid Caliphs who followed Islam's Shia branch. When the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir died in 1094, his two sons, al-Mustansir and Nizar, set against each other. At that time a group of Shiites called "ismailits", led by Hasan-ibn Sabah in Iran, supported Nizar against al-Mustansir. These "nizaris" found refuge in various fortresses and above all in Alamut, an almost inaccessible castle located in the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran. They maintained for years a fierce resistance against the Selyuk Turks and the Egyptian Mamelukes until their final defeat by the Mongolians who destroyed Alamut in 1256.

Their founder and first leader, Hassan ibn Sabah, later known as the "Old Man of the Mountain", organized a sect of assassins driven by an extreme interpretation of Islam. He trained his fanatical followers to kill dignitaries of the Seljuk empire with daggers, offering them the reward of paradise after their martyrdom. This kind of action is not so old if we remember Ahmad Shah Masud's assassination on 9 September 2001, just two days before 11 September. The Tajik Masud, known as the "Lion of Panjshir", was at that time the leader of the Northern Alliance, an armed group fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan. That day, an Al-Qaeda terrorist, introduced to Masud as a journalist who was going to interview him, detonated a bomb that he was carrying inside his tape recorder. Both Masud and the terrorist died. The two actions are similar except for the weapon, a bomb instead of a dagger. The use of modern technology does not change the meaning of the two attacks.

We can travel backward and forward in history and find this type of assassination again. The Latin word "sicarius," meaning "who kills with a dagger," was the word used to refer to a terrorist group acting at the time of a Jewish rebellion against the Romans in 66 A.D. These hitmen were related to the Zealots, a radical Jewish sect, and they killed prominent leaders of Judea who collaborated with the Romans. Today the word "sicario" means "hitman" in Spanish. Hassan-ibn Sabah ordered the killing of the grand vizier of the Seljuk Turks, Nizam al-Mulk, in 1092; the Homs' emir, Janahad Daulah, was assassinated in 1103, while Apamea's emir, Khalaf ibn Mula'ib, was eliminated in 1106. Even the Christian king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, was a victim of Alamut's assassins in 1192. The name used at that time to refer to this sect was "hashashins"; this term seems to be the origin of the word "assassin" in English and other languages. A first knowledge of the sect arrived in Europe quite early and was described in chronicles, letters, and reports at the time of the Crusades. In 1175, William of Tyre wrote a chronicle for the emperor Frederic I "Barbarossa" in which he mentioned the "Heyssessini" as, he said, they were called in their vernacular. A more extensive description can be found in The Voyages of Marco Polo (1298), where he includes a detailed account of Alamut and the activities of the Old Man of the Mountain's assassins. Marco Polo even mentions an encounter with Hassan Ibn-Sabah - which is not possible, since Ibn-Sabah had died in 1124. Marco Polo surely knew the story of Alamut and decided to incorporate it into his narration.

Later on, with the emergence of orientalism as an academic discipline, the first historical study on Alamut and the Assassins' sect appeared thanks to the work of Josef von Hammer, an Austrian orientalist who in 1818 published The History of the Assassins Order in German. Today Bernard Lewis' The Assassins. A Radical Sect in Islam, published for the first time in 1967, is the most significant historical reference for this topic. Even today, the story of these assassins has inspired films and video games such as The Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed. However, if we wish to find some deep understanding and knowledge of these assassins, we had best forget these recent products and go back to good literature.

Vladimir Bartol was a Slovenian writer who published Alamut in 1938. This novel was written on the background of Italian Fascism and German Nazism and it suggested a comparison between Alamut's Old Man of the Mountain and Hitler or Mussolini - giving sense today to the interpretation of contemporary jihadism as a new totalitarianism. A fictionalized narrative has the virtue of trespassing the limits demanded by a documented testimony - always inexcusable on the other hand - and takes us to explore deeply all the facts connected to suicide terrorism. This is what we need if we want to understand STAs today. We are set before a fictionalized world in which we find credible words, characters, and testimonies created by a modern novelist who imagines what could have happened. This narrative permits us to elaborate hypotheses about what is possible or even probable today.

We go first to a passage in this novel in which Hassan-Ibn Sabah, "the Old Man of the Mountain", tells Miriam, a young woman who keeps company with him in Alamut, of the encounter that he had years ago with his old friend Omar in Nisaphur. This is a philosophical and theological dialogue which already suggests the theoretical basis of the version of Islam that he would later put into practice in Alamut.

We talked about the possibility of knowledge. He said, 'Ultimate knowledge is impossible, because our senses lie to us. But they're the only mediators between the things that surround us and our thoughts, our intellect.' 'That's exactly what Democritus and Protagoras claim,' I agreed. 'That's why people condemned them as atheists and praised Plato to high heavens, because he fed them fairy tales.' 'The masses have always been like that,' Omar continued. 'They're afraid of uncertainty, which is why they prefer a lie that promises something tangible to even the most exalted truth if it doesn't give them anything to hold on to. There's nothing you can do about it. Whoever wants to be a prophet to the masses has to treat them like children and feed them fairy tales and falsehoods (...)' 'Why do you think Mohammed would have let thousands die for his teaching if he knew they were based on a fairy tale?' 'Probably,' he answered, 'because he knew that otherwise they would have slaughtered each other even for baser reasons. He wanted to create a kingdom of happiness on earth for them. To do that he invented his dialogues with the archangel Gabriel, otherwise they wouldn't have believed him. He promised them heavenly delights after death, and in so doing made them brave and invincible.'[9]

Hassan Ibn Sabah's reaction to this confession is quite sceptical since, as he believes, his epoch, the eleventh century actually, could not be compared with the time of the first Islamic preaching and expansion in the seventh century. So he replies in this manner:

I thought for a while and then told him, 'It seems to me that there's no longer anyone who would joyfully go to his death just for the promise of getting into heaven.' 'Nations age too,' he replied. 'The thought of paradise has atrophied in people and isn't a source of joy anymore like it used to be. People only keep believing in it because they're too lazy to seize onto anything new.' 'So do you think,' I asked him, 'that a prophet preaching paradise to win over the masses today would fail?' Omar laughed. 'No question. Because the same torch doesn´t burn twice and a wilted tulip won't bloom again. People are contented with their little comforts. If you don´t have the key to open the gates to paradise before their eyes, you might as well give up any thought of becoming a prophet.'[10]

Omar's reasoning is cynical in reaffirming his radical materialism. At the end of his discourse and when he thinks that he is exerting his cynicism in the best way, he unwittingly gives Hassan ibn Sabah the key: "the key which opens paradise to them alive". At this point a crucial moment in the development of the story emerges: Hassan ibn Sabah's revelation, interpreting his friend Omar's words in a way that he had never imagined.

I grabbed at my head as though I were thunderstruck. Omar had jokingly articulated a thought that began spreading through my soul like wildfire. Yes, people wanted fairy tales and fabrications and they were fond of blindness they blundered through. Omar sat drinking wine. But at that moment a powerful and immutable plan was born in me, the likes of which the world had never seen. To test human blindness to its utmost limits! To use it to attain absolute power and independence from the whole world! To embody the fairy tale! To turn it into such reality that our remotest descendants would talk about it. To conduct a great experiment on man![11]

Bartol's story turns back to the present, when Miriam and ibn Sabah are talking about the inspiration that caused him to come to Alamut and establish the sect of the assassins. She asks a question and ibn Sabah answers:

"What did I do then?" he repeated after her. "I looked for a chance to make the fairy tale come true. I came here, to Alamut. The fairy tale has come to life, paradise has been created and awaits its first visitors."[12]

If we go back to Omar and ibn Sabah's conversation, is not difficult to discover a political background. Vladimir Bartol introduced political issues that are quite familiar to us: the conquest of absolute power, the control of masses and their ideological manipulation. These are some of the components that give us the best description of twentieth century totalitarianisms. But if Bartol's narrative should be considered in his time as something allegoric, it is not so allegoric today when radical Islamic organizations are preaching and practising jihad to impose a Caliphate with massive assassinations. The political interpretation of Bartol's novel has the virtue of warning us about the totalitarian project that is embedded in Al Qaeda and the ISIS agenda. We now have a good example in how ISIS rules the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. However, this political interpretation, which removes all layers of power to lay it bare, is not enough to understand what suicide terrorism is. Obviously, the jihadist terrorist is manipulated by some leaders, but there is a whole world of representations boiling inside his/her head. So we need to explain not only those plans which the leaders, today's Old Men of the Mountain, have designed, but also to understand the deepest motivations that cause young people to kill themselves for assassinations.

- "To make the fairy tale come true" - says an elated Old Man of the Mountain. Let us focus our attention on this phrase, as it contains a world of intentions. Ibn Sabah's project goes beyond the usual preaching of a doctrine inspired by a faith, something unreal, but based on a myth, an example, a leadership or a prophecy among other properties. These are just "fables" for Omar and Ibn Sabah. But if we transform the truth that is attributed to this doctrine into an actual experience to replace these "fables", it becomes a "real" reality. Hassan ibn Sabah intended to create a material reality to be the truth of a belief. This could be a first hypothesis to interpret the behaviour of today's suicide terrorists. They have been induced to live a reality that contains the truth they would like to possess; that truth is none other than paradise. Hasan ibn Sabah shouts: "to carry out a great experiment with men!". Here again, we find a new connection with modern totalitarianism, which also proposed to create the "superman" or the "new man". Ibn Sabah chose Alamut to fulfil this experiment.

Both the Islamic and the Christian faiths promise a paradise for all believers who have observed their commandments. The Yanna is the Islamic paradise. The word Yanna or paradise means "garden"; if we compare this imaginative representation of the Islamic paradise as a wonderful garden with the Christian "heaven", we notice at once a significant difference. The garden has a worldly entity and the heaven is nothing but an abstraction. The Yanna is a garden where streams run eternally and there are spouses to meet and love forever. The Christian heaven offers a permanent vision of God and an eternal happiness without material needs, while the Islamic paradise is concrete and material and offers an extraordinary abundance of all things that were highly desirable in real life. This is the characterization which Omar, ibn Sabah's friend, uses to reaffirm his materialistic ideas about religion. "If you do not have the key to open the paradise to them in real life" - Omar tells ibn Sabah - "it would be better that you abandon any hope to become a prophet". This was the idea that Ibn Sabah adopted to create Alamut and his sect of assassins.

Turning now to Vladimir Bartol's novel, we can see how ibn Sabah created a paradise on earth.

That's precisely what I expect from both you and Miriam. Listen closely. The first thing we need is for the gardens to take on the appearance of something otherworldly. In other words, for them to give simple and unlearned visitors the impression of paradise. Not by day, of course, because their location and the surroundings would give too much away. I mean by night. That's why we need, first and foremost, powerful illumination. This would show off every detail of the gardens in a special light, and everything outside of them would be lost in impenetrable darkness.[13]

The followers, inexpert young men, would be attracted to Alamut to make them believe that they have arrived to the paradise as described in the sacred book, a wonderful garden in which young virgins would offer them all kinds of delights. This is exactly what happened to a young man called Ibn Tahir who, having enjoyed all possible delights, was ordered to kill the grand vizier of the Seljuk Turks, the old ibn Sabah's schoolmate, Nizan al-Mulk. Bartol gives a detailed account of this assassination. This young man is welcomed by Nizan, whom he tells that he is carrying a letter from Omar, his old master. Ibn Tahir comes into the tent where the grand vizier is at that moment; but let us allow Vladimir Bartol himself to describe the scene.

He held the letter out toward the old man, while calmly drawing the sharpened writing instrument out of it. He did this so naturally that none of those present was aware of the action.

The vizier unsealed the envelope and unfolded the letter.

"What is my learned friend up to in Bagdad?" he asked.

Ibn Tahir suddenly leaned forward and shoved the dagger into his throat beneath the chin. The vizier was so startled that for the first few moments he didn't feel any pain. He just opened his eyes up wide. Then he scanned the only line of the letter one more time and grasped everything. He called for help.[14]

When Nizan realizes where the assassin had come from - since the letter said: "Till we met in hell. Ibn Sabbah" - he does not permit this young man to be tortured and then he talks to him.

"Why did you want to kill me?"

Ibn Tahir tried to stand up straight. But his voice was weak when he spoke.

"I was carrying out Sayyiduna's order."

"But didn't you know that death will await you?"

"Yes, I knew."

"And you weren't afraid?"

"For a feday, death in the course of fulfilling his duty means happiness."

"What madness!" the vizier moaned.

(...)

"So you say you were in paradise?"

"I saw it with my own eyes, felt it with my own hands."

"And you'll go back there when you die?"

"Yes, death will take me back there."[15]

After a slow agony, Nizan al-Mulk, the Sultan Alp Arslan Shah's great vizier, dies. This is the account of Nizan's assassination, as it is narrated in Vladimir Bartol's novel, and the first to be carried out by the sect of the assassins. It corresponds quite accurately to a historical event that took place in 1092, when a member of the Nizari sect killed the Persian great vizier.

Bartol's narration is a fiction which has certainly a historical base, though the words and the characters, some historical but others fictional, come from the imagination of a Slovenian author writing just before 1938. The plot is composed to promote a fictional interest in the reader, and there is no doubt that it is accurate. In any case, literature plays with all the possibilities the reality can offer; it is not subjected only to what it was but also to what it could have been. Anthropologists can also work into this dimension, the fictional, as we can find there a great variety of human characters who think and behave according to cultural models. This novel shows a specific comprehension of the Islamic paradise and it connects people, placed within a historical context - which we know - with historical events - which broadly we also know - so that we can observe how these people activate some cultural models about paradise, death, life, delight, pain, belief, power, and so on.

If we draw some of these cultural models from the story, we can use them as interpretative categories for those events that are happening today and that we find so difficult to understand. Today's suicide terrorist is not exactly like Alamut's assassins, but both have committed quite similar actions under the commands of religious leaders whom they follow with blind faith. We should explore the meaning of paradise for these young Alamut assassins in relation to life and death. It is a way of comparing ideas that according to historical standards would be separated by centuries - although for the modern jihadist's mentality, more mythical than historical, both are part of a nostalgic conceptualization of time. Here we can find the value of Bartol's Alamut:while it does not explain today's suicide terrorist, it gives us some interpretative categories that can help us to build a good hypothesis to approach the suicide terrorist's behaviour.

Suicide or Rite of Passage?

Behind this description of the events, as they are narrated in Alamut, there is not an intention to state that the Islamic doctrine about paradise promotes suicide or inspires a desire to blow oneself up in order to enter it. Instead, the argument suggests that Islam's sacred book was used as a source to create a fable in order to manipulate these young men's consciousness. This fable exploited the earthly quality that characterizes the Koran's description of paradise to construct a false one, a marvellous garden turned into a theatrical stage, representing a passage of the sacred book and thus making the young adepts believe that they were already enjoying it. The farce was finally effective.

A believer expects to have a new life after death, but he does not know what this new life will be like. In any case, death means the end of life as he has known it. But to have "known" a paradise before death is a very efficacious experience, even being a farce, to believe that one will own what exists in life but is unattainable for most human beings: the abundance of all goods, the enjoyment of all kind of delights, the indescribable beauty of a garden or the crystalline water running all the time. After this episode, it is possible to believe that death is really a gate that opens to a true life. Under this belief, Alamut's assassins were convinced to undertake a heroic action. They did not feel that they were facing up to the uncertainty of a promise, though being divine, but they were sure that they would live a much better existence. They were not expecting death but the passage to an authentic life. From this perspective we are facing more a rite of passage than a suicide. This is of course a hypothesis that has two components; one takes us to a ritual and the other to a cosmology. Now I will explore both of them for the purpose of developing my arguments about the type of suicide terrorism that I have denominated "transcendental."

The awareness of trespassing social states such as age or marital status is quite common in many cultures, together with the realization of ceremonies and rituals to symbolically express this transition. Anthropology has always studied these cultural expressions, calling them "rites of passage". Arnold Van Gennep was the first to use this term in 1909. For Van Gennep, a rite of passage was composed of three stages: separation, latency, and aggregation. It is quite difficult to describe these stages in the case of suicide terrorists for we cannot, of course, follow them to take account of their actions; but we know some details about the preparation and execution of some attacks, including the New York attacks on 11th September 2001.

The final period of preparations started after the return of Mohammed Atta, the terrorist group leader, from a journey to Spain. Fifteen Saudis arrived in the United States to compose the majority of the terrorist group. According to Osama Bin Laden's statement recorded after the attack and widely seen on the Internet, these men knew only that they were going on a suicide mission after landing. Hence this terrorist operation had a first stage of separation which began when these terrorists landed in the United States and were told of their destiny. As the suicide terrorists gathered on the night before 11th September, they were given the last instructions written by Mohammed Atta. He asked them to shave their bodies, to read some passages in the Koran, and to be happy because "they were on their way to the eternal paradise". Here we have latency or, as Victor Turner calls it, the "liminal period",[16] corresponding to a critical, ambiguous, and potentially dangerous time with the greatest and deepest symbolic and ritual content. Certainly, as we know thanks to some testimonies, this is the stage in which some terrorists withdraw. To shave and clean the whole body, to share a meal, to read the Koran, to pray, etc. are usual activities that take place during this "liminal" stage. The third stage of aggregation starts with the attack's execution, including the action of approaching the target, preparing the explosives, vehicle, or weapon, and finally culminating with the explosion and the terrorists' death together with their victims.

The aggregation has a profound meaning inasmuch as it is the entrance to paradise, a final state which is, according to Atta, "eternal". We can go back to the Palestinian film Paradise Now wherethe story that is told follows almost exactly these three stages that we identify in a rite of passage. First, the two young Palestinian terrorists are separated from their families to be told that they have been selected for a suicide mission. Then they are taken to an abandoned factory where they will spend the time before the attack accompanied only by their fellows. This is the time betwixt and between, or a liminal period in which the more ritual actions take place. This film ends just a second before the terrorist, who is determined to culminate his action, detonates his explosive vest. His aggregation, to paradise according to his belief, is now effective. He has died for other people to be killed.

The transcendental suicide terrorist, a hypothesis

Two types of suicide terrorism have been identified, the "political" and the "transcendental", as ritualistic, although it is only in the latter where we can find a deep transcendental experience. Naturally we also find political objectives and contexts, even more so in Islamic societies where politics and religion often constitute a single entity. It is true that Al-Qaeda, the Iraqi resistance, the Taliban, or recently ISIS are political organizations acting in different geostrategic scenarios and with an increasing ability to influence current events decisively. The contextual dimension of this transcendental suicide terrorism is quite well known and we have data, analysis, and all kinds of assessments about it. Nevertheless, our knowledge about the meaning of the suicide terrorists' behaviour is scarce, and we do not completely understand their impulses, purposes, and motivations. Questions like "why?" or even more, "what for?" become essential.

The case of the aforementioned Hamas militant, who killed 21 Israelis and whose father explained two years later how his son was able to commit such a criminal action, is a good example. He describes explicitly and abundantly the political circumstances that motivated his son's behaviour. But what really matters now is: "what for?" A "why" question takes us to causality and to a series of facts that are interpreted by the person who is telling them. Here, the context is Israel's occupation of Palestine. However, a "what for" question goes to the meaning, a more difficult terrain where we can only interpret on our own the behaviour of some individuals about whom we know nothing. But this is the only way to arrive at the core of thinking and feeling that shelters in the terrorist mind. In the case of "political" suicide terrorism, the contexts give us abundant information that can be used to interpret the action. But in the case of "transcendental" suicide terrorism, the contexts tell us much less. We must go to the very fact and make comparisons to find some keys to interpretation. I have used History and Literature; now I will do the same with Anthropology.

Anthropology offers many examples of communities or societies that have been practicing experiences of transcendentalism for a long time. Thanks to these experiences, the individuals are immersed in states of hallucination which they interpret as a separation from the self and everyday life to live an imaginary sensorial dimension. The use of drugs, such as mescal or peyote, has been quite frequent among the Amerindian cultures. Islam has a mystical tradition with a very intense spirituality, Sufism, whose aim is to reach maximum closeness to God. Similar to the Christian mysticism, as we can find in Juan de la Cruz or Teresa de Jesús - who proposed a spiritual way towards God thanks to meditation and asceticism - the Islamic mystic has the Dervish. Founded in the thirteenth century, the so-called Mevlevi order or the Dervishes has its centre in the Turkish city of Konya. Participants play a dance-meditation called "sema" in which the dancers spin interminably around themselves with open arms in order to symbolize their spiritual ascension towards truth, at the same time that they liberate themselves from their egos. The flutes and drums play while these dancers, always men, spin and spin for an extended period, eventually entering a mystical trance.

The example of these cosmologies, quite abundant in the anthropological literature, proves that the world dimensional conception can be very variable among different cultures. A "here" and a "now" cannot be enough to order and describe the world, and other dimensions such as more "heres" and "nows" are necessary. One of the most fascinating examples corresponds to the Australian Aboriginals' cosmology as studied by the Australian anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner (1905-1981) in his book The Dreaming and other Essays. Stanner argues that the Aboriginal cosmology is based in a conception, which he translated with difficulty as the "dream time" or "the Dreaming".

A central meaning of The Dreaming is that of a sacred, heroic time long ago when man and nature came to be as they are; but neither "time" nor "history" as we understand them is involved in this meaning. I have never been able to discover any Aboriginal word for time as an abstract concept. And the sense of "history" is wholly alien here. We shall not understand The Dreaming fully except as a complex of meanings (...) Although, as I have said, The Dreaming conjures up the notion of sacred, heroic time of the indefinitely remote past, such a time is also, in a sense, still part of the present. One cannot "fix" The Dreaming in time: it aws, and is, everywhere. We should be very wrong to read into it the idea of a Golden Age, or a Garden of Eden, though it was an Age of Heroes, when the ancestors did marvellous things that men can no longer do.[17]

Looking at this brief interpretation, which I have introduced in Stanner's own words, we could conclude, though too quickly, that The Dreaming is a myth. But it is not that, as, according to Stanner, the Australian Aboriginals feel that The Dreaming can be present in both the things and the actions.

A blackfellow may call his totem, or the place from which his spirit came, his Dreaming. He may also explain the existence of a custom, or law of life, as causally due to The Dreaming(...) It may be because it is by the act of dreaming, as reality and symbol, that the Aboriginal mind makes contact - thinks it makes contact - with whatever mystery it is that connects The Dreaming and the Here-and-Now.[18]

The Aboriginal's Dreaming would be something like a meta-dimension that he can always reach. With an etic perspective, we can only say that The Dreaming is physically impossible; but with an emic one we may confirm its cognitive efficiency, since it has been useful to the Aboriginals for many generations.

It is beside the point to argue that this transcendental suicide terrorism could be interpreted, in relation to the suicide terrorist's behaviour, as something similar to The Dreaming that is described and analysed by W.E.H. Stanner. Nevertheless, this example illustrates the existence of a wide variety of cosmologies whose dimensionality, in space and time for example, is very strange for a scientific based mentality. However, it is useful for some people to understand their world. Hence my argument comes to propose that the suicide terrorist from Al-Qaeda or ISIS could be inspired by a cosmology whose dimensionality differs notably from our comprehension of life and death. This cosmology conceives of life as an unreal dream opposed to a true life, represented by a paradise that one can enter through a rite of passage like the STA. So the suicide attack does not mean death, for the terrorist of course, but his/her awakening to a true life thanks to the killing of one or more enemies. In these terms and from the suicide terrorists' point of view, they are not committing suicide, and they do not believe in their own deaths because they assume that they are gaining access to the true and real life. This could be a tentative, approximate, and provisional hypothesis.

A final point should be argued here about the characterization of these "transcendental" suicide terrorist attacks as "martyrdoms". Are these men and women really martyrs? Or do they feel as such? The condition of martyrs is closely related to the example given to a community of believers and hence requires some kind of publicity and extended knowledge of their personality and actions. However, it seems that this is not the case for the "transcendental" suicide terrorist, whose personal entity usually remains unknown. Emile Durkheim makes a distinction between "egoistical" and "altruist" suicide in The Suicide, a classical work on suicide from a sociological perspective. If we had to apply one of these two features to the "transcendental" suicide terrorist attack, the "egoistical" suits better. However, this description does not fit very well with the nature of martyrdom, which is highly altruistic. Consequently, a terrorist suicide is not a martyrdom when it lacks a campaign to exalt its executors as was the case in Palestine. The hypothesis about the transcendental inspiration of Al Qaeda or ISIS suicide terrorism suggests that the activists do not see their action as a sacrifice but more as a benefit. We could therefore interpret their behaviour as egoistic.

This article focuses on two questions: what is a suicide terrorist? and what might he/she be? To explain or interpret his/her action is so difficult that I have had to move on very slippery ground, even to speculate. However, what kind of interpretative resources should we use when the direct and personal data are so scarce and dark? We ask questions about reasons and explanations, which lead us to analyse geostrategic scenarios, economic systems, and political structures together with ideologies, religion, and culture. We wonder about the causalities that correspond to these types of suicide terrorism in order to construct explanatory frames. But we also ought to ask "what for?," and this question must focus on the suicide terrorist's mentality. So, what is the meaning of an STA? and consequently, what are the suicide terrorist's particular world, life experiences, ideas, beliefs, intentions, and feelings? In any case if it is necessary to know the mechanism for deactivating a bomb, it is also necessary to know the suicide terrorist's deepest motivations to deactivate it if it is possible.

Notes

[1] All the data I use come from the "Suicide Attack Database" belonging to the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) at the University of Chicago. I also follow the CPOST definition of a suicide attack as "an attack in which an attacker kills himself or herself in a deliberate attempt to kill others."

[2] In August 2015 the PKK reactivated suicide terrorism after a Turkish air attack against Kurdish "peshmergas" in Northern Iraq.

[3] Robert Pape´s Dying to Win,published in 2006, is a good example of this point of view.

[4] Pape, Robert A.- 2006 Dying to win. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House. P. 233

[5] Pape, Robert.-(2006) P. 233.

[6] Pape, Robert.-(2006) P. 233.

[7] Yemen has a population of 18 million, of whom 11 million are Sunnites and 7 million Shiites.

[8] El Mundo (Spain) 22nd March 2015.

[9] Bartol, V.- 2011 Alamut. Berkely: North Atlantic Books. P. 127

[10] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 127

[11] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 128

[12] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 128

[13] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 144

[14] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 289

[15] Bartol, V.- 2011. P. 292-293

[16] Turner, Victor.- The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual.

[17] Stanner.-

[18] Stanner.-

References

Durkheim, Emile.- 2006 On Suicide London: Penguin Classics

Améry, Jean.- 1999 On Suicide. A Disclosure in Voluntary Death. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Assaf Moghadan.- 2006 "Suicide Terrrorism, Occupation, and the Globalization of Martyrdom: A Critique of Dying to Win". Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 29:8, 707-729. Routledge

Bartol, Vladimir.- Alamut

Bloom, Mia.- Dying to Kill. The Allure of Suicide Terrorism.

Gennep, Arnold van.- 2010 The Rites of Passage. Oxford: Routledge

Lewis, Bernard.- 2003 Assassins: a Radical Sect in Islam. New York: Basic Books

Maalouf, Amin.- Samarkand

Stanner W.E.H. The Dreaming and other Essays

Pape, Robert A.- Dying to Win. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

Reuter, C. My Life is a weapon. A mode your text here...