Host: The pace of Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli civilians was slowed dramatically be Israel’s incursion into the West Bank. The goal of Israel’s military action was to uproot the terrorist infrastructure that recruits and arms the bombers. But even as the terrorist assembly line has been disrupted, the cult of the suicide murderers appears to be growing. The phenomenon threatens not only Israel, but Palestinian society as well. As President George W. Bush said, “When an eighteen-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying.” Mr. Bush has challenged Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to confront terrorism in word and deed. Will Arafat stop the cult of suicide bombing? I’ll ask my guests, Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House; Karim Bromund, director of interreligious affairs at the Islamic Supreme Council; and Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Welcome, thanks for joining us today. Adrian Karatnycky, is the cult of suicide bombing growing in Palestine?
Karatnycky: There was this immense upsurge and I do think that the idea of using this form of action has been given a lot of sanction by some Islamic clerics and by many within the secular, political establishment of the Palestinian community, and more broadly by clerical leaders primarily within the Arabic world. And that, I think, is likely to mean that there will be more people who are willing -- and more children and young people and young women who are willing -- to take this kind of a path. It’s an extremely irresponsible kind of a condition that has emerged and one that has not been dampened by the religious leadership which it properly should be since in all of the understandings that many people who are learned in Islam will tell you, it is extremely contradictory to the basic Islamic traditions.
Host: Karim Bromund, the growing support for suicide bombing in Palestinian society, is that primarily the result of Islamic clerics there giving it an imprimatur of some sort?
Bromund: I think the growth of suicide bombing is not due to clerics or any influence of Islam, but it’s due to the situation, due to a psychological and social problem that needs to be addressed. People are depressed and have no hope for their future. They want to be able to do something with their lives. And so this is something that’s from their psychology rather than from their religion.
Karatnycky: I would agree in part that obviously the internal conditions are creating an environment where this may be an acceptable form of activity, but really the disturbing thing is that within the last year or so, many of the leading clerics within the world Islamic community have begun finding justifications for this type of action in scripture, in religious documentation. And I think that that is in some sense feeding and lowering the natural resistance that people might have toward taking part in this kind of a dead-end form of terrorism.
Host: Do you want to respond Karim?
Bromund: It’s true that there are extremists who are saying [this] and taking the scriptures out of context and they are making this interpretation. However, we don’t find in any of the traditions any precedent that shows that you can, based on the Koran or based on the Hadif of the Prophet saying that you can go and blow yourself up and blow up innocent civilians. There is nothing in the traditions of the Koran, as you said. So there is this tendency among extremist groups to cause problems.
Karatnycky: There is, but it’s also regrettably being reinforced by some leading clerics in Egypt and particularly a leading cleric in Qatar who has a very influential global following through a web site where interpretations, fatwahs are being issued that give impetus to this really, I think, self-destructive form of activity. And that is something that has changed among those leaders. A few years ago they were not supporting this form of action.
Host: Let me get Marshall Wittmann into the discussion. Marshall, what is the infrastructure for the terrorist suicide bombers in Palestinian areas at this point?
Wittmann: What’s striking to me is, I was listening to this debate over here -- discussion. And yes I think it’s getting justification in religious circles but primarily suicide bombing is a political tool used by secular authorities. What’s striking in this latest wave of suicide bombing is it is now being undertaken by explicitly secular organizations such as the Al-Aqsa Brigades which is related particularly to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. So we can not necessarily say that it is only a religious tool. It is certainly being stoked by religious extremists, but it is also a secular tool. This is very important because what the Israelis are going after on the West Bank is a political infrastructure that is related to organizations such as Hamas that does have a religious overtone, but also to secular organizations that are directly related to the Palestinian Authority.
Host: Let me ask you Adrian, how are suicide bombers recruited in the first place?
Karatnycky: Well I think that there is a kind of an infrastructure within the Palestinian Authority where these organizations are not disrupted despite the claims of the Palestinian Authority that efforts are made to interdict their activities. They maintain long periods of preparation and inculcation. And yes, many of them start from secular impulses and Marshall is absolutely right. And many of them have, primarily political motives. This is not a religious movement. But they are trying to use all sorts of psychological techniques: the phenomenon of the sort of the sense of constraint within the Palestinian territories, the limits to freedom that do exist there under these difficult circumstances, economic misery. But also they’re trying to use religious justification to lower the threshold of natural, I would say, psychological resistance that every human being feels in terms of giving up his own life. And the combination, when applied to particularly impressionable people, very young people who are just beginning their political maturity, that do not have all the sort of developed psychological and political mechanisms to make fully independent choices about their lives, that creates this spiral of tragedy. It’s extremely irresponsible not simply for the terrorism against innocent civilians which is also contrary to ethical standards that are contained in Islam but extremely irresponsible as a manipulation of these young people.
Host: Karim?
Bromund: Yes, I have to agree that the origin is obviously from a secular origin, from a political origin in that the clerics are being used as puppets almost of these political interests. And the religion is being used as a psychological tool. Because if anyone looking at the religion to find a justification, unless they have blinders on -- they don’t understand the meaning -- then they know that to work from the political cause for a religious fatwah, to work from this side, if you are offended or if you are hurt and oppressed the first reaction in Islam is not to fight. The first reaction is to make peace, to be patient, to pray, to make negotiations and this should all be done with an authority and it should be done in a civilized manner. This is what Islam teaches. And if fighting is necessary, then it is necessary to go to fight as armies, in an organized fashion, in a civilized fashion.
Host: Marshall Wittmann, we’ve talked a little bit about the role that some clerics have played the building of suicide bombers. What role have schools played in the Palestinian Authority?
Wittman: This is a very interesting question because it’s not just the suicide bombers themselves that are the problem, it is the infrastructure that harbors them, that in a sense gives birth to these suicide bombers. And what we’re saying is that within the Palestinian Authority a hatred, an abject hatred for Israelis, for Jews is taught at a very early age. And this type of hatred that eventually leads to these young people becoming recruits is something that’s part and parcel of a lot of the educational programs within the Palestinian Authority. If I could add one point, and I think this is a very important one, now, if you look at a situation like Kosovo, in Europe in the struggles there, where a Muslim population -- was being brutally repressed -- as a matter of fact the West intervened on behalf of that Muslim population, there were no such thing as suicide bombers. This is a product of a political infrastructure that is helped by the Palestinian Authority that is using explicitly this as a weapon, as a tool. And it’s quite tragic because it does not apply to all Muslims and it does not apply to the worst situations that Muslims find themselves. Indeed, within Arab countries themselves, Muslims are often mistreated and abused and oppressed. But we don’t see the suicide bomber as a phenomenon as we do in the West Bank and Israel.
Karatnycky: I just want to underscore that this is not a phenomenon and no viewer should think it is a phenomenon that is constrained, confined to Islam. Because [for example] we have a major phenomenon of suicide bombings conducted by the Liberation Tigers in the Tamil region [of Sri Lanka]. They’re called Black Tigers and one third of the three hundred or so suicide bombers over the last year have been women. This is a major tactic [and] is used in a completely different and other secular movement. And I think we see this phenomenon, there are dozens of movements that have used this. They are primarily political movements that operate across different cultures and they will exploit religious beliefs and they will exploit any set of political or religious beliefs in order to recruit larger numbers of people who are willing to engage in this kind of an act, which really is an act that defies ethical as well as internal instinctual impulses of human beings.
Host: Let me read to you a little bit from an article that was in the Washington Post this week. “With the increasing violence of the current uprising and with religious and secular political groups competing for predominance among Palestinians, suicide bombing has become mainstream.” Do you think that there is a competition, as this article has said, between secular and religious groups in the Palestinian areas that has contributed to the growth of suicide bombings? Karatnycky: I wouldn’t call them religious groups. They’re what would be called radical Islamist groups. Many of them are led by people who have no formal and high-level training in Islamic tradition and who simply appropriate, as did Osama bin Laden for himself, the ability to interpret scripture, which is completely contrary to the Islamic tradition. And these political interlopers hijack religious ideas and religious language and very, I would say, exotic and poorly grounded interpretations of that doctrine as part of that effort. But, yes, there is a conflict between those who are using religious symbolism, the radical Islamists, the revolutionary Islamists like Hezbollah and Hamas and the more secular leadership and both are converging at the point of suicide bombing. And both are now exploiting in effect, religious symbols in what is essentially a political struggle between two types of movements in Palestinian society.
Host: Karim Bromund, how does the growth of this phenomenon of suicide bombing -- and the fact that there are some clerics and people presenting themselves as religious authorities saying that the Koran supports this -- how does this affect the culture of Islam in the Palestinian areas? How does it affect the religious culture?
Bromund: I think it creates a huge confusion that can only be corrected by having the mainstream voice being spoken more loudly, and by people the Palestinians hopefully will choose to follow the mainstream way their leaders will choose to stick to the traditions of the Koran, where the prophet said in a war don’t even harm a woman, or don’t even harm a tree when you’re fighting -- let alone women and children.
Karatnycky: One point that I want to emphasize is that Islamic clerics have been targeted by these political extremists, these Islamist political extremists in many countries. In Egypt, for example, representatives of the Sufi order have been killed in their Mosques by the scores, not in suicide attacks, but in just terrorist attacks and what would be moderate voices are often subjected to the same kind of terrorism that Israeli society is being subjected to. So this is a massive phenomenon that is hurting the development of moderate Islam and its self-confidence within these societies. These are kind of bullying tactics.
Host: Marshall Wittmann, let me read to you from Dr. Adel Sadeq who’s the chairman of the Arab Psychiatrists Association, head of the department of Psychiatry at ‘Eim Shams University in Cairo. He said in a recent interview that “When a martyr dies the martyr’s death he attains the height of bliss. As a professional psychiatrist, I say that the height of bliss comes with the end of the countdown, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one and when you press the button to blow yourself up, when the martyr reaches one and then, boom! He explodes, and senses himself flying because he knows for certain that he is not dead.” Is this an indication that support culturally for suicide bombing in the region is not confined to particular extremist groups or people who are trying to present themselves as voices of Islamic authority of one sort or another, but it’s something broader than that?
Wittman: Well it’s almost a bizarre death cult more than anything else and it’s quite striking how the so-called martyrs have gotten support within the mainstream of some political society within the Muslim world. And this again underscores the fact that this is not a religious tool, this is a political tool of people in power. And most striking about this is that it is a death cult. It celebrates death in order to achieve political aims. And ultimately, it will not achieve it’s political aims because of the fact that civilized society will not ultimately accept this type of political approach. However, there are a lot of enablers. It’s not just the suicide bombers themselves, it is the people who give them succor such as the statement you just read, such as telethons that are raising money for the families of martyrs, almost as an inducement for suicide bombing.
Host: And where was that telethon?
Wittmann: It happened in Saudi Arabia. And again one has to wonder that these young people, many of whom are children are being used as little child sacrifices for political aims. And this is the great tragedy and that’s why it’s so important that moderate voices and reasonable voices within Islam come to the forefront, because they, as Adrian points out, are the ultimate enemies. Israel is not going to allow these suicide bombers to succeed. But what they are doing is pushing out the moderate, reasonable voices within the Muslim world, within the Arab world. And that, perhaps, is their ultimate target.
Host: Adrian, Marshall mentions that children are now involved in suicide bombing. How has this progressed with women becoming suicide bombers and now children as young as fourteen setting themselves off as suicide bombers?
Karatnycky: Well again this is not a phenomenon that is confined to the Palestinians or to Islam. The use of child soldiers is a widespread problem around the world. I think it shows a real lack of ethical standards within this leadership that has thrown aside all sorts of religious standards, moral standards and ethical standards. And I think over time this kind of a psychosis, as it were, political psychosis that has emerged amid segments of the Palestinian political elite will be reinterpreted and judged harshly by future generations. But the one thing I have to say is that globally, the movement of this form of revolutionary Islamism -- not of Islam which is the belief -- but of this attempt to use Islam for radical political ends, is in decline. I mean, we’ve seen these types of regimes fail in their efforts in places like Algeria. We’ve seen them fail in places like Afghanistan. We’ve seen them fail trying to take over decades ago in places like Egypt. We’ve seen in Sudan a turn-around where that government has confined one of those most radical leaders and put him under house arrest. So in many of these places they tried to, by sending their fighters to fight alongside the Chechens, the Bosnians, in place after place they’ve tried to create a beach head. And there are many experts who are looking and sort of saying that this resort to terrorism, this resort to these very harsh tactics of struggle is a sign that they are failing in the broader political struggle. So in some sense we can take heart, although tragic and terrible as the events are in a place like Palestine, that these are the signs of the dead end that this ideology is facing and we may see the day in the coming decade where this ideology becomes completely marginalized.
Host: Karim, there was a report in the New York Times about four Palestinian children, ages fourteen and fifteen, who strapped themselves with explosives and tried to infiltrate an Israeli settlement and were killed in the process. Their parents and family were obviously very upset about this, but as the reporters came in, the parents were taking down from the boy’s rooms the posters of so-called martyrs that Hamas and other groups publish in the Palestinian areas. They were taking these posters down and they were complaining bitterly about the affect that this kind of propaganda for suicide terrorism had had on their own children. Do you think that that response by these parents, may be gaining some ground in Palestinian areas as a sense of having gone too far?
Bromund: We can only hope so, because, people are realizing that Islam, it’s been hijacked, as has been said, and that the only way to get back to the straight course is to realize that women and children should not be used as soldiers. Women and children are not combatants who can be killed and especially if they are just living peacefully and not attacking you. There is no justification. There is no justification for anybody who’s using their common sense and using their conscience and this is the primary guide toward Islam. And this is the primary guide which we’re hoping will only become all too obvious to everyone involved.
Host: I’d like to thank my guests for joining me today. Adrian Karatnycky of Freedom House, Karim Bromund of the Islamic Supreme Council and Marshall Wittmann of the Hudson Institute. For On the Line, I’m Eric Felten.
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