THE TRIAL OF THE FIVE suspects charged with the 9/11 attacks—Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi—began in June 2008. The suspects challenged their legal proceedings from the outset. At arraignment, Mohammed boasted, “I’m looking to be [a] martyr for [a] long time” and demanded the death penalty for the entire group (Glaberson 2008a). Some analysts wondered whether his acceptance of the death penalty would free the Bush administration from a lengthy trial, but others worried that a perceived act of martyrdom could strengthen al-Qaeda (Bender and Stockman 2008). Mohammed even threatened to rescind his plea if he was not sentenced to death (Staunton 2008).
His proclamations shocked the court. U.S. Army judge Stephen Henley questioned the competence of all five men to stand trial (El Akkad 2008). Attorneys for bin al-Shibh and al-Hawsawi suspected that Mohammed pressured their clients to seek the death penalty, so they sought additional mental health evaluations to assess their clients’ competencies to stand trial (Finn 2008a). Attorneys for bin al-Shibh also wanted an independent mental health evaluation to assess the presence of a mental disease or defect that precluded cooperation with his defense team, because he took a medication usually prescribed for schizophrenia, though the judge sided with the prosecution in presuming his competency (Finn 2008b). In November 2008, the five men entered joint confessions to avoid trial and receive the death penalty, again resurrecting questions about their mental competencies to stand trial (Glaberson 2008b).
This episode exposes the potential perils of evaluating normal and abnormal behaviors across cultures. In seeking the death penalty, the 9/11 suspects have rejected American medical and legal assumptions that self-death equates with suicide. In the seventeenth century, Puritan New Englanders outlawed suicide as a sin against God, a moral offense that has persisted since psychiatrists began treating suicide in the nineteenth century (Kushner 1991). Psychiatric textbooks still teach suicide as an action connected with sadness. For example, The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry opens its chapter on suicide with this disclaimer: “Every patient suicide is also a tragedy for the clinician and for the suicide survivors” (Simon 2008, 1637). Similarly, Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry explains that current research explores the link between depression and suicide: “Contemporary biological theories about suicide are inextricably linked to studies of depression, because this is the mental condition most often underlying suicide” (Sudak 2005, 2446). The historical links between American Protestantism and psychiatry have produced a culturally distinct form of knowledge that treats the desire for self-death as suicide. By this logic, the 9/11 suspects seeking the death penalty must be suicidal and need mental health evaluations. However, the 9/11 suspects view the death penalty not as a suicidal expression connected to sadness, but as an act of political defiance.
The situation elicits even more confusion if we turn to experts on martyrdom and suicide bombing to interpret the 9/11 suspects. For example, terrorism expert Harvey W. Kushner has stated that suicide bombers are legitimated “by leaders of religious factions within the Islamic community” who have “a contorted view of what is spiritually permissible” (Goode 2001). In contrast, prominent Palestinian psychiatrist Iyad Sarraj has praised suicide bombers: “They are untouchable people—they are prophets, they are saints,” adding, “This is what the culture believes” (Bennet 2005). How do these specialists in the mind, behavior, and criminality draw contradictory conclusions? If Judge Henley were to call both experts to evaluate the 9/11 suspects, would these witnesses make similar or different recommendations? What knowledge base would support their conclusions?
This chapter analyzes the construction of mental health knowledge on martyrdom, self-death, and suicide bombing. The Office of Military Commissions at Guantánamo has constructed the desire for self-death and martyrdom as a medicolegal issue that requires expert opinion from forensic psychiatrists. The knowledge base to understand the actions of the 9/11 suspects will be the mental health scholarship on suicide bombing and martyrdom. Depictions of suicide bombers in mental health scholarship may provide an understanding of the second forensic function of medical systems, the establishment of medical and legal standards that support and evaluate a medicolegal issue. Mental health professionals use standards to sift through evidence, reason through clinical data, and supply a professional opinion. In this chapter, I probe how mental health authors represent suicide bombers. I compare these representations with texts on suicide bombing and martyrdom produced by al-Qaeda, the group most targeted by the American government throughout the War on Terror. We can then detect cultural differences in interpreting self-death as suicide or martyrdom.1
MENTAL HEALTH, PATHOLOGY, AND SECURITY IN THE WAR ON TERROR
My analysis of mental health texts on suicide bombing rests upon recent theories in psychiatry and political sociology. Political scientist Alison Howell has examined “the securitization of medicine and the medicalization of security in contemporary global politics” (2010, 349). She claims that the historical achievement of psychiatry since the nineteenth century has rested on its status “as a tool of public safety by continually seeking out new criminals and other security threats. Thus, in order to exist as an institution of medical knowledge, psychiatry had to undertake two simultaneous codifications; first, it had to codify madness as illness; second, madness had to be codified as a danger” (2010, 351).
The War on Terror globalizes these trends; as the “psy disciplines,”2 they are no longer positioned solely as “technologies for managing social danger confined with national spaces, but also increasingly operate as technologies of national and international security” (2010, 352). Howell applies this viewpoint to the government’s labeling of Guantánamo detainees as “madmen”:
They [the “psy disciplines”] work to authoritatively make intelligible that which seems at first unintelligible: in this case, suicide attempts (and also, by extension “terrorism” and “terrorists”). In response to the reported suicide attempts, the psy disciplines were deployed in two central and distinct ways: first, by the military in order to cast the detainees as disturbed, manipulative, fanatical, and uncooperative madmen, and, second by human rights organizations to cast the detainees as psychologically impaired victims due to the conditions of their detention. While these narratives seem at odds with each other, they both deploy the psy disciplines, and in doing so pathologize (and racialize) the detainees in questionable ways.
(Howell 2007, 34)
The five 9/11 suspects meet Howell’s characterization, since the Guantánamo military commissions system has cast the detainees as “disturbed, manipulative, fanatical, and uncooperative madmen,” necessitating expertise from mental health professionals. Pathologizing detainees leads to “the conditions of possibility for indefinite detention. When the detainees were deemed (incurably) pathological, they become targets for excision from the global body politic” (2007, 44). The process of pathologizing detainees “illustrates the way in which the process of medicalization can originate from disparate sources: the military, humanitarian organizations, and at times even the detainees themselves” (2007, 43). Critical scholarship can uncover how the government’s constructions of suicide bombers as pathological end up justifying indefinite detention for the purposes of national security (2007). Despite her focus on the mental states of Guantánamo detainees, Howell does not mention that medicalization can also proceed directly from mental health professionals who also make academic claims by representing suicide bombers. This chapter analyzes mental health texts to inquire whether we can observe the medicalization and racialization3 of suicide bombers in the War on Terror.
MENTAL HEALTH CONSTRUCTIONS ON SUICIDE BOMBING
This sample of texts comes from a search for all years since 2001 for the terms “suicide bombing,” “suicide bomber,” “homicide bombing,” “homicide bomber,” “suicide terrorism,” and “suicide terrorist.”4 A service of the American Psychological Association, PsycInfo hosts more than 2.5 million international references from psychiatry, psychology, and other mental health disciplines. Several criteria guided this search: (1) articles had to explicitly address suicide bombers in the War on Terror as opposed to other conflicts (such as the civil war in Sri Lanka or the Israeli-Palestinian issue),5 (2) articles had to represent difference, by which I drew upon Fairclough’s definition of “constituting particular ways of being, particular social or personal identities” (2003, 26), and (3) articles had to be written by authors in departments of medicine, psychiatry, or psychology at the time of publication, since the search also produced articles from social scientists not in the “psy disciplines.”6 I have included all English-language articles in peer-reviewed journals. When authors appeared more than once, I analyzed their books, given that full-length monographs are considered the benchmark for scholarship in many fields of psychology. I excluded book reviews, dissertations, letters to the editor, and other formats not typically peer reviewed. I also excluded publications that appeared in the discussion in chapter 4. I reviewed all relevant titles and abstracts of articles for eligibility. I also reviewed articles that did not have abstracts and those whose abstracts did not seem to clearly address suicide bombing or the War on Terror. I retrieved all articles to analyze them for representations of suicide bombers. As before, I am less interested in the ideas of individual authors and more interested in how they reflect recurrent themes.
Suicide Bombing and Psychopathology
Certain mental health authors link suicide bombing to psychopathology. Emad Salib regards suicide bombing as a shared delusion: “Folie à plusieurs (madness of many) arises when many recipients are willing to share such beliefs. Folie partagée (shared madness) might provide some explanation of al-Qa’ida’s bizarre and evil but meticulously calculated and executed suicide-homicide attacks on the USA in September 2001” (2003, 476).
Donatella Marazziti hypothesizes that suicide bombers suffer from multiple pathologies: “Suicide bombers might conceivably be affected by double personality disorder, or, more in general, by complex personality disorders shaped by specific contexts, and rendered common by peculiar historical and social events, or victimization from violence” (2007, 88).
Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova contend that suicide bombing reflects a reaction of society-wide trauma and dissociative responses:
Certainly in Palestine, Chechnya, Pakistan, the former Afghan training camps and elsewhere there has and continues to be [sic] top-down training and indoctrination into Jihadist ideologies, which promotes violence, self sacrifice, terrorism and martyrdom. However it is a mistake to assume that organizations and leadership alone drive this phenomenon. Societies in which there is widespread trauma, dissociative responses, daily humiliations and hardships generally produce a segment of society—often in the better educated and sensitive sector of young people who in other circumstances would have been leaders—who are in search for making meaning out of their situations, and who wish to fight back.
(2005, 134)
Elsewhere, Speckhard has linked trauma from political grievances to female suicide bombers:
There appear to be two primary groups of motivations for suicide terrorism—the first, which emanates out of societies that see themselves rightly or wrongly as under occupation or are in warfare/conflict zones (Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, etc.). In many ways they often have the mentality of insurgents. Their primary motivations are often nationalistic and their personal motivations are trauma and revenge driven. They often rely on dissociation as a defense and because of their frequent traumatic experiences in these conflict zones this defense has often been and is readily activated.
(2008, 1004)
Arie Kruglanski and colleagues conjecture that trauma incites a loss of meaning for the suicide bomber that must be avenged:
Personal traumas, and frustrations, represent a significance loss, motivating the quest for significance restoration. Often, however, it is beyond the power of the individual to restore her or his lost sense of personal significance. It is impossible to bring back to life the loved ones lost to enemy violence. Nor is it easy to undo the deeds that brought one ostracism from one’s community or to convince members of an indigenous majority to accept a minority immigrant as equal. Where the direct restoration of one’s lost sense of personal significance seems impossible, the individual may seek to do so indirectly through alternative means, including an identification with a collective loss (or one’s group’s relative deprivation) that affords a clear path to renewed significance via participation in militancy and terrorism.
(2009, 348)
Jeff Victoroff notes that the neurobiology of suicide bombers veers toward pleasure-seeking pathways:
The biological framework perhaps offers a new direction in multidisciplinary efforts to understand suicide terrorism. Psychological explanations—such as the proposal that individuals act in this way to seek “vast personal importance”—dovetail with biological explanations—such as the fact that social species sometimes enhance their likelihood of genetic success via bold acts that promote reputation. Brains evolved over more than 3.7 billion years to mediate an extraordinary dynamic of conscious and unconscious neural processing that leads, on average, to fitness enhancing behaviors. Impelled by that combustible electrochemistry, a few people will strap on the deadly vest.
(2009, 399–400)
David Lester speculates on “the possible role of traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder in some of the female suicide bombers, the lack of hope for a happy future (sometimes combined with depression and suicidality), and concern about becoming a burden and bringing shame to their families” (2010, 161).
In contrast, others regard suicide bombing as the effect of social processes rather than individual psychopathology. Grimland, Apter, and Kerkhof assert that suicide bombing is “instrumental in the context of war, not in the context of psychopathology” (2006, 107):
Suicide bombing looks like suicide, but in important aspects it is incomparable with suicide. In more aspects it is comparable to killing in a war. Mostly it is part of a political and military strategy. It is a defense against perceived enemies. Religious and nationalist goals are important here. Psychology and psychiatry have little to offer until territorial disputes have been settled.
(2006, 116)
Ellen Townsend sees suicide bombing as terrorism rather than psychopathology: “It is more useful to consider suicide terrorism as a dimension of terrorist behavior” (2007, 46). Similarly, Jerrold Post and colleagues state:
There was a clear consensus among experts on terrorist psychology at the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security that the most important explanatory factors for terrorism were to be found at the collective level, that there were no identifiable individual factors explaining becoming a terrorist, and that there was no unique terrorist mindset. Nevertheless, we are left with the disquieting question of why among large numbers of people exposed to a common environment, only a few become suicide terrorists.
(2009, 25)
Michael King and colleagues write that families sustain support for those who decide to become suicide bombers in Indonesia:
Participants’ endorsement of violent jihad was not predictive of their support for their kin’s involvement in the violent activities of JI [Jema’ah Islamiyah]. Rather, it was their ratings of anti-Western sentiment. These results seem to anchor the legitimacy of terrorism in the idea that the West deserves it.
(King, Noor, and Taylor 2011, 411)
The Racialization of Suicide Bombing to Islam and Muslims
Some writers believe that Muslim or Arab cultures condition suicide bombing. Satoshi Kanazawa (2007) blames the Quran for suicide bombing:
Just as the brain of young Western men today is tricked by porn movies, which did not exist in the ancestral environment, the brain of young Muslim men today is tricked by the Koran, which also did not exist in the ancestral environment. Just as the brain of Western men thinks that they can potentially copulate with the sexually receptive women they see in porn movies, the brain of Muslim men thinks that they could copulate with the 72 virgins in heaven, if they die as martyrs.
(2007, 12–13)
Fathali Moghaddam uses a metaphor to discuss the dangers of “Islamic terrorism”:
Consider a multistory building with a winding staircase at its center. People are located on different floors of the building, but everyone begins on the ground floor, where there are over a billion Muslims. Thought and action on each floor are characterized by particular psychological processes. On the ground floor, the most important psychological processes influencing behavior are psychological interpretations of material conditions, perceptions of fairness, and adequacy of identity. Hundreds of millions of Muslims suffer fraternal deprivation and lack of adequate identity; they feel that they are not being treated fairly and are not receiving adequate material rewards. They feel dissatisfied with the way they are depicted by the international media, and they do not want to become second-class copies of Western ideals. However, on the ground floor, degrees of freedom are large relative to degrees of freedom on the higher floors of the staircase to terrorism, and individual Muslims on the ground floor have a wider range of behavioral options.
(2009, 375)
In contrast, others argue that corrupted interpretations of Islam belie suicide bombing. Antonio Preti views suicide bombing among “Islamic suicide bombers” as a defense of their cultures:
There is no alternative to direct investigation to understand suicide bombers, and unfortunately this is hard to achieve. On a sociological ground present-day Islamic suicide bombers could be understood as desperate men who, when finding themselves in a disintegrating culture, seek integration into paramilitary organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al-Qaeda and define themselves as martyrs to a cause.
(2006, 28)
Ian Palmer warns of its tactic among “radical Islamic groups”: “Suicide attacks are most certainly not an exclusively Islamic phenomena [sic]. However, it cannot be overlooked that this tactic has been enthusiastically employed by radical Islamic groups in Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, Kashmir, Indonesia, Iraq, the Gulf states, East Africa, North America and the United Kingdom” (2007, 292).
Jerrold Post and his colleagues stress that suicide bombing is a modern innovation of some Muslim scholars:
Some Muslim clergy have justified the use of violence against civilian and military targets by issuing fatwas (pronouncements) granting permission to fight outside the original parameters of Islamic jurisprudence. These scholars argue that warfare today is asymmetrical, which necessitates new rules of warfare, with new strategies and approaches to defeating the perceived enemies of Islam.
(Post et al. 2009, 16)
Instead, Post elsewhere tries to reframe jihad away from violence and toward self-purity:
The so-called greater jihad refers to struggle or persistence in leading a life free of evil. The jihad of the heart specifically embodies having a heart free of evil thoughts and desires, whereas the jihad of the tongue refers to giving voice to and leading a pious life according to the words of the Prophet, and the jihad of the deed refers to carrying out deeds to assist the umma[7] to assist Muslims who are suffering. These embody the greater jihad. The lesser jihad, the jihad of the sword, refers to the obligation to take up the sword in defense of the umma—in defense of believing Muslims who have had the sword taken up against them. It is accordingly a defensive jihad.
(Post 2009, 382)
James Liddle and colleagues concur that certain interpretations of Islam lend themselves to suicide bombing: “One who believes there is a moral obligation to kill infidels is likely to have a different attitude toward suicide terrorism than one who does not hold these specific beliefs (even if both subscribe to the same religion)” (Liddle, Machluf, and Shackelford 2010, 344).
Other authors dispute the link of Islam to suicide bombing altogether. Speckhard, quoted earlier, believes that martyrdom, not any religion, underlies suicide bombing: “That the ideologies that promote the use of suicide terrorism as a tactic may exist completely independent of any religion and be utilized in support of human bombing is a crucial point to make, one that is often missed by those who mistakenly lump all suicide terrorism together with so called ‘Islamic-based’ terrorism” (2008, 1025).
Similarly, Kruglanski and colleagues conjecture that suicide bombing channels violence in cultures of shame:
More generally speaking, cultures differ in the importance they assign to honor. So called shame cultures (e.g., the Arab or the Japanese cultures) assign to it considerably greater importance than do so called guilt cultures (the Jewish or the Protestant cultures), hence it seems plausible that members of the former cultures would experience a more profound significance loss upon humiliation than members of the latter cultures.
(Kruglanski et al. 2009, 351)
Sadik Kassim holds that suicide bombing reflects the dynamics of asymmetric warfare:
Suicide terrorism is a multifactorial phenomenon that cannot easily be explained away as an outcome of Islamic religiosity. A multidisciplinary approach to understanding root causes will help in the articulation, formulation, and execution of rational policies aimed at curbing the use of suicide terrorism as a strategy by militarily weak political national movements.
(2008, 207–208)
A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MENTAL HEALTH TEXTS ON SUICIDE BOMBING
Mental health texts on suicide bombing complicate Howell’s conclusions that the “psy disciplines” medicalize and racialize suicide bombing. Debates over suicide bombing as pathology consider the act either as a manifestation of irrational individual behavior or as the cumulative result of prolonged social deprivations. Debates over suicide bombing and Islam display three positions: suicide bombing is approved by Islam in general, by specific “corrupt” sects of Islam, and by societies that valorize martyrdom irrespective of religion. In both debates, the “psy disciplines” act as technologies of international security to comprehend and classify dangers from foreign militant groups to make intelligible that which seems unintelligible.
One form of intelligibility revolves around depicting suicide bombers as “disturbed, manipulative, fanatical, and uncooperative.” Salib (2003) coins the term “folie à plusieurs (madness of many)” from the psychiatric disorder folie à deux, commonly translated in English as “shared psychotic disorder” in which delusional beliefs are transmitted from one party to another. This conscious linguistic construction legitimates the pathologization of suicide bombing through psychiatric vocabularies and concepts. Salib (2003) extends this hypothesis as “folie partagée (shared madness),” which “might provide some explanation of al-Qa’ida’s bizarre and evil but meticulously calculated and executed suicide-homicide attacks.” Folie partagée falls within the same French linguistic construction as folie à deux and folie à plusieurs. Salib equates “shared madness” with “bizarre and evil,” linking madness to danger and the need for security. In considering a different form of pathology, Marazziti (2007) conjectures that suicide bombers “might conceivably be affected by double personality disorder, or, more in general, by complex personality disorders shaped by specific contexts.” Rather than madness, this pathology is personality disorder. The two personalities that constitute “double personality disorder” are not explained, nor is the complexity of “complex personality disorders.”
A third type of pathology appears in the work of Speckhard and Akhmedova (2005), who observe that aside from “top-down training and indoctrination into Jihadist ideologies,” societies in “Palestine, Chechnya, Pakistan, the former Afghan training camps and elsewhere” suffer from “widespread trauma, dissociative responses, daily humiliations and hardships.” The agency of the suicide bomber is denied through terms such as “top-down training” and “indoctrination.” The phrase “widespread trauma and dissociative responses” recalls traumatic stress as a model to explain suicide bombing through pathological behavior. Speckhard (2008) extends this model to female suicide bombers, whose “primary motivations are often nationalistic and their personal motivations are trauma and revenge driven.” Speckhard differentiates “primary” from “personal” motivations unclearly, and she does not explain how female suicide bombers can “rely on dissociation as a defense” from their “frequent traumatic experiences,” since dissociation can lead to impairments in awareness, even though female suicide bombers are “revenge driven,” which would imply full cognitive awareness and executive functioning by acting with intentionality.8
Similarly, Lester (2010) wonders whether “traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder in some of the female suicide bombers” and “the lack of hope for a happy future (sometimes combined with depression and suicidality)” lead to suicide bombing. Trauma, depression, and suicidality all contribute to suicide bombing, which becomes the consequence of sadness rather than martyrdom. Kruglanski and colleagues (2009) invoke trauma differently in that “personal traumas, and frustrations, represent a significance loss, motivating the quest for significance restoration.” The types of personal traumas include “loved ones lost to enemy violence,” “ostracism from one’s community,” and failure “to convince members of an indigenous majority to accept a minority immigrant as equal.” Trauma is portrayed as a series of social injustices. The suicide bomber avenges the “significance loss” with “a clear path to renewed significance via participation in militancy and terrorism.” The passivity of traumatic victimization leads to active recruitment in violence.
Victoroff (2009) departs from regnant psychological explanations to consider neurobiological explanations of “bold acts that promote reputation.” The word “reputation” hints at the narcissistic impulses of the suicide bomber who acts to fulfill personal gratification. The suicide bomber’s “combustible electrochemistry” compels him to “strap on the deadly vest.” The imagery of “combustible electrochemistry” as volatile and flammable inside the brain complements the “deadly vest” outside the body. In different ways—through psychosis, trauma, dissociation, depression, suicidality, and faulty neural electrochemistry—authors from the “psy disciplines” associate suicide bombing with pathology; suicide bombing cannot be a conscious, willful act conducted by healthy individuals.
The side that opposes pathologization understands suicide bombers as a social phenomenon. Grimland, Apter, and Kerkhof (2006) warn others that suicide bombing “looks like suicide, but in important aspects it is incomparable with suicide. In more aspects it is comparable to killing in a war. Mostly it is part of a political and military strategy.” Here, the death of the suicide bomber is a purely instrumental tactic of “killing in a war.” The “political” and the “military” trump the personal aspects of the suicide bomber. Suicide bombing is not pathology, but a danger that requires the defense of society. Townsend (2007) similarly sees suicide bombing as “suicide terrorism,” which becomes “a dimension of terrorist behavior.” Words such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” direct attention to the political rather than the personal nature of the action. Likewise, Post and his colleagues (2009) write about the “clear consensus among experts on terrorist psychology” that “the most important explanatory factors for terrorism were to be found at the collective level” and that “there were no identifiable individual factors explaining becoming a terrorist.” The “clear consensus among experts” declares the authoritative nature of the assertion that “no identifiable individual factors” explain suicide bombing. If pathologization denied the agency of suicide bombers in the previous set of writers, society “at the collective level” denies their agency here. The terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” also direct our notice to the political resonances of suicide bombing.
Comparably, King and colleagues (2011) write how “participants’ endorsement of violent jihad was not predictive of their support for their kin’s involvement in the violent activities of JI [Jema’ah Islamiyah]. Rather, it was their ratings of anti-Western sentiment.” In this line of research, sophisticated statistical modeling and multifactorial analyses discover that the beliefs of families (“kin”) relate to “involvement in the violent activities of JI.” Compared to others, these authors provide a more granular level of social factors related to suicide bombing, but they rely upon families to understand motivations of suicide bombers. Rather than designate suicide bombing as an act of pathology, these authors view attackers as instruments of war and terrorism wrought by social factors; rather than madness, danger becomes the focus.
The focus on danger and terrorism leads some authors to racialize suicide bombing to Islam and Muslims. Palmer (2007) notes that “suicide attacks are most certainly not an exclusively Islamic phenomena” but then notes that it has been “enthusiastically employed by radical Islamic groups.” The disclaimer of suicide attacks as not “exclusively Islamic phenomena” is then offset by a long list of areas in which “radical Islamic groups” operate: “Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, Kashmir, Indonesia, Iraq, the Gulf states, East Africa, North America and the United Kingdom.” Palmer effectively renders suicide bombing to be an “Islamic phenomen[on]” in many areas that Muslims inhabit. Kanazawa (2007) sets up a formula of equivalence between the “brain of young Western men” and “the brain of young Muslim men.” All “Western” men and all “Muslim” men are posited to think homogenously without clear geographic delineations of the “West” or sectarian differences among Muslims. Brains are tricked by “porn movies” for the “Western men” and the “Koran” for “Muslim men,” since the latter “[think] that they could copulate with the 72 virgins in heaven, if they die as martyrs.” Kanazawa reduces the religious status of the Quran to a form of pornography that deceives male readers.
Moghaddam (2009) notes that “a billion Muslims” begin on the “ground floor” at the staircase of terrorism where “hundreds of millions of Muslims suffer fraternal deprivation and lack of adequate identity.” He does not define “fraternal deprivation” or detail how he knows what “hundreds of millions of Muslims” think. He links “fraternal deprivation” and “lack of adequate identity” to “not being treated fairly and not receiving adequate material rewards,” and he does not explain what “adequate material rewards” would consist of. Nonetheless, he says, “they do not want to become second-class copies of Western ideals,” a statement that assumes (1) there is a “West” that contrasts with “Muslims,” (2) ideals can be distributed impermeably among the “West” and “Muslims,” and (3) the act of Muslims assuming “Western ideals” renders them “second-class copies” and imitative rather than original and innovative (Moghaddam 2009). These past three authors all appeal to magnitude—the delineation of “radical Islamic groups” dispersed throughout the world, “the brain of young Muslim men,” the “hundreds of millions of Muslims”—to racialize suicide bombing.
Rather than link suicide bombing to Islam, some authors refine their analyses by examining specific causes. Preti (2006) understands suicide bombing as “desperate men who, when finding themselves in a disintegrating culture, seek integration into paramilitary organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al-Qaeda and define themselves as martyrs to a cause.” Suicide bombing becomes an act of “desperation” rather than volition among men (note: not women) who “find themselves in a disintegrating culture” and seek integration. The construction “find themselves” implies passivity rather than agency, and the supposition is that “a disintegrating culture” rather than political, economic, or nationalist reasons are what animates them. Post (2009) views “some Muslim clergy” as “granting permission to fight outside the original parameters of Islamic jurisprudence.” While some suicide bombers may need “permission” from “some Muslim clergy,” it is not clear that this “permission” determines their actions. Post does not detail “the original parameters of Islamic jurisprudence,” but it is inferred that suicide attacks are not within those parameters. Instead, he distinguishes the “greater jihad,” which “refers to struggle or persistence in leading a life free of evil,” from the “lesser jihad, the jihad of the sword,” which refers to the obligation to take up the sword in defense of the umma—in defense of believing Muslims who have had the sword taken up against them. A “life free of evil” and “taking up the sword” are contrasted without the consideration that some suicide bombers may actually see these two forms of jihad as united, should they need religious justification in the first place.
Lastly in this section, Liddle, Machluf, and Shackelford (2010) note that some may believe “a moral obligation to kill infidels” propels people “toward suicide terrorism.” The word “infidel” calls attention to those who do not believe in Islam, and suicide bombing is cast as “terrorism,” fusing political goals with psychological motives. Among these authors, suicide bombing is constructed not as madness but as a danger inherent to some groups of Muslims.
The final group of authors analyzed here dismisses any link of Islam to suicide bombing. Speckhard (2008) holds that “the use of suicide terrorism as a tactic may exist completely independent of any religion.” This statement disconnects suicide bombing from any cultural, racial, or ethnic identity. Kruglanski and colleagues (2009) distinguish “shame cultures” such as “the Arab or the Japanese cultures” from the “guilt cultures” such as the “Jewish or the Protestant cultures” in that members of shame cultures “experience a profound significance loss upon humiliation.” Kruglanski and his coauthors draw upon the work of anthropologist Ruth Benedict9 to comprehend why humiliation leads to suicide bombing. They do not essentialize suicide bombing to Islam or Muslims, though they refer to ethnicities as examples of “shame cultures” and religions as examples of “guilt cultures.” Kassim (2008) views “suicide terrorism” not as “an outcome of Islamic religiosity” but as “a strategy by militarily weak political national movements.” Kassim calls attention to suicide bombing as a military tactic rather than an action springing from religious beliefs. Among these authors, suicide bombing is not specific to race, religion, or a form of madness.
Mental health texts constitute a veritable discourse on suicide bombing. The sayable among authors in this set of publications: suicide bombing is a manifestation of individual pathology or social processes, both of which negate the willfulness of the individual. Suicide bombing is a form of Islamic terrorism or not a form of Islamic terrorism, arguments that revolve around religion rather than criminology or law enforcement. In either case, authors make underlying assumptions about rationality, that taking one’s life while taking the lives of others is an irrational act. The domain for this discourse: an audience acquainted with psychiatric and psychological vocabularies and concepts around motivations and impulses. Many publications have appeared in specialist journals on terrorism and political violence, expanding the circulation of these ideas to government officials as well as to academics in political science and international relations. The thematic conservation of ideas that links this discourse to other discourses: the terms “Muslim,” “Islam,” “East,” and “West,” as collective terms that are not defined but utilized for contrast and comparison, as we have seen in chapter 4. The cultural memory that links these texts to our contemporary moment: the assumption that suicide bombing can be rendered intelligible as a consequence of ethnic and religious identities. Suicide bombing becomes racialized and contained as a product of the irrational “East” in contrast to European and American liberal democracies that assume nonviolent political participation (Asad 2007). The link between ethnic/religious identity and suicide bombing pathology recalls the link explored in chapter 4 on how psychiatrists constructed racial taxonomies during the period of European imperial expansion. The reactivation of historical themes: previous discourses of progress and modernity present in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries that differentiate the “West” from the more primitive and less evolved “East” are on display here. The appropriation from other types of discourses and disciplines of knowledge: these authors inherit Orientalist attitudes of dividing the world between the “Arab”/“East” and the “West,” using anthropological concepts such as cultures of guilt and shame to explain suicide bombers.
To read these texts with cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology in mind is to discern certain theoretical continuities and discontinuities. Anthropologist Talal Asad (2007) has observed that suicide bombers frustrate analysts because the objects of study, by definition, are unavailable for interviews, requiring broad speculation into motivations. In mental health discourse, these speculations occur around the degree of pathology or religiosity present among suicide bombers. Howell has noticed that the “psy disciplines” medicalize suicide through madness, but mental health discourse also demonstrates explanations based on trauma. The intellectual history of the concept of trauma evidences a distinctly Euro-American genealogy: by the late nineteenth century, researchers increasingly agreed that trauma burdens the nervous system, leading to: (1) “the medicalization of the past” as trauma is produced by memories of a historical event, and (2) “the normalization of pathology” as symptoms represent understandable dysfunctions after the historical event is relived (Young 1995). The trauma model of suicide bombing medicalizes social injustices such as poverty and occupation as well as the normalization of emotions such as humiliation, hatred, and envy. Therefore, trauma represents another form of medicalization.
How can we understand these debates on suicide bombing? A persistent research agenda in cultural psychiatry has sought to expose the cultural bases of mental health knowledge and practice (Kleinman 1977, 1980). As a cultural system, psychiatric classification reflects healing priorities, social values, and professional ideologies at any historical point (Kleinman 1973, 1980). Within the cultural system of American forensic psychiatry, claiming that criminals suffer from mental illness denies the role of autonomy and intent in the commission of a crime (Fabrega 1989b). This cultural perspective highlights the quandary of the Guantánamo court trying the 9/11 suspects. The actions of the 9/11 suspects suggest that they understand the crimes of which they have been accused as well as their legal proceedings, but the court must rest upon American medical and legal presuppositions that only the mentally ill would seek the death penalty. The court seems unwilling to entertain the idea that requests for the death penalty are not grounded in mental pathology. This social fact underscores why social scientists view psychiatric knowledge as reflective of cultural norms and attitudes in any historical period (Gaines 1992; Kirmayer 2007a, 2007b).
Research methods from cultural psychiatry can help us bridge cultural gaps in interpretations of self-death as suicide or martyrdom. Mental health professionals depict suicide bombers differently than explanations advanced by organizations that recruit suicide bombers (Aggarwal 2009b). Ethnographic analyses that examine experience-near concepts within a culture rather than importing perspectives from another culture may uncover differences in values and assumptions around life and death (Fabrega 1989a, Staples and Widger 2012). Therefore, the next section presents texts from al-Qaeda on suicide bombing. These texts can clarify the cultural values of life and death that may be closer to the realities of suicide bombers and can perhaps resolve debates in the mental health discourse.
SUICIDE BOMBING IN THE LITERATURE OF AL-QAEDA
A branch of al-Qaeda known as al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) began publishing Inspire in 2010. AQAP was founded in Yemen in 2006, and it has welcomed repatriated Guantánamo detainees into its fold as it has attempted to balance global jihad with revolution in Yemen (Loidolt 2011). Inspire is similar to AQAP’s online Arabic magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Epic Battles) in using the media to communicate a distinctly militant worldview (Page, Challita, and Harris 2011). Inspire offers a data source to analyze experience-near ethnographic accounts of suicide bombing.
Suicide Bombing Is a Religious Act
AQAP regards suicide bombing as a glorious religious act. This point recurs through repeated use of the word “martyr,” even for those whose attempts are thwarted. Consider its praise of ’Umar al-Faruq, a failed suicide bomber:
With the grace of Allah alone the heroic martyrdom bomber brother ‘Umar al Faruq managed to carry out a special operation on an American Airplane, from the Dutch city Amsterdam to the American city Detroit, and this happened during the Christmas holiday, Friday December 25, 2009. He managed to penetrate all devices, modern advanced technology and security checkpoints in the international airports bravely without fear of death, relying on Allah and defying the great myth of the American and international intelligence, and exposing how fragile they are, bringing their nose to the ground, and making them regret all that they spent on security technology.
(AQAP 2010a, 5)
’Umar al-Faruq is praised despite his failed detonation. Use of the word “brother” to describe him implies kinship. His operation is referred to as “martyrdom,” since he acted “bravely” and “without fear of death” in “relying on Allah.” AQAP (2010a) also decries “the great myth of the American and national intelligence,” using terms such as “fragile” and the imagery of “bringing their nose to the ground” to indicate humiliation. AQAP warns Americans about impending attacks: “We will come to you with slaughter and have prepared men who love death as you love life, and with the permission of Allah we will come to you with something you cannot handle” (AQAP 2010a, 5). AQAP’s (2010a) repeated invocation of “Allah” clearly demonstrates its conception of suicide bombing as a religious act. AQAP (2010a) contrasts its “men who love death” with Americans who “love life,” heightening cultural differences in values of life and death.
An article from Ibrahim al-Banna, a graduate of the prestigious Egyptian seminary Al-Azhar University, explains the religious beliefs needed to embrace death:
Realize that the heroic mujahidin who sacrificed their lives for the sake of Allah on 9/11 have given a great example of sacrifice and defending their religion and people according to what was revealed in our holy book: “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment [at-Taubah: 111].”
(AQAP 2010b, 23)
Al-Banna incites his readers to defend Islam according to the Quran. The words “heroic,” “sacrifice,” and “defense” reinforce themes of martyrdom rather than suicide. The “lives” and “properties” of this world do not compare to those of Paradise, suggesting that suicide bombers act according to a different cultural logic of time and space. Al-Banna views this injunction as “binding” for all Muslims, not those of a particular sect. His invocations of the Torah and the Gospel signify that only Muslims among the Abrahamic religions follow God’s will in committing jihad. AQAP explains that suicide bombing is a noble act: “It is such a high status for a human being to give his life, which is the most valuable thing to him, for the sake of Allah. Allah has purchased their souls and wealth in exchange for paradise” (AQAP 2010c, 27). Suicide bombing brings the individual closer to Allah in an act of sacrifice. The sacrifice comes in the form of a human being who gives his life, “which is the most valuable thing to him.” Al-Banna recognizes the high value accorded to life; this makes sacrifice so holy.
Scriptural exegeses provide the justifications for suicide bombing. Religious scholar ‘Umar Hussain interprets selected verses from the Quran:
Allah says they [martyrs] were “killed” so He approved their apparent death. But Allah says that the actual aspects of death do not apply to them. Thus, even though their bodies are dead their souls are alive. The life of their souls is beyond the mere consciousness that all souls, Muslim or non-Muslim, poses [sic] after death. Allah says they are with their Lord and they are being provided by Him. These two qualities are the forms of pleasure that are granted by Allah to the martyrs. They loved Allah during their life on this earth so their souls were granted the great honor of being in the presence of Allah.
(AQAP 2010b, 60)
This text imparts a distinct cultural understanding of life and death. AQAP (2010b) believes that the soul lives even after the body perishes, since “the actual aspects of death do not apply to them.” The “martyr’s” soul reaches God, who bestows protection and “pleasure.” This conception of life and death differs from the biomedical view of life and death based on human physiology; for AQAP, bodies can be dead, but souls are alive. AQAP establishes meanings of life and death not through biological or medical concepts, but through religion.
Suicide Bombing Is a Willful Rational Act, Not Psychopathology
AQAP writers consistently underscore the types of mental preparation needed for suicide bombing. This theme refutes the idea that suicide bombing manifests a form of irrational psychopathology. In an article on committing jihad with a truck, one unnamed author writes: “After such an attack, we believe it would be very difficult to get away safely and without being recognized. Hence, it should be considered a martyrdom operation. It’s a one-way road. You keep on fighting until you achieve martyrdom. You start out your day in this world, and by the end of it, you are with Allah” (AQAP 2010b, 54).
The author appears to write for an audience preoccupied with survival after an attack. The author refutes this possibility, since “it would very difficult to get away safely and without being recognized” through the image of the “one-way road.” The author recommends cultivation of a mind-set that reminds the attacker of “martyrdom” and persuades readers to “keep on fighting” so that the attacker reaches Allah. The bounds of time and space do not apply for the martyr, who “starts” the day on earth and “ends” the day with “Allah” in Paradise.
Similarly, an article on the fear of death by drone strike outlines the mental preparation of militants. In “What to Expect in Jihad,” Mukhtar Hassan describes how to fortify one’s nerves:
During the blast, you will want to make as much dhikr [remembrance] and du’a [prayer] as possible. Repeat the kalimah [literally “the word,” but taken to mean the phrase “There is no God, but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger”] constantly. If you feel terrified, then think about paradise; close your eyes and imagine yourself in paradise, entering its magnificent gates. Imagine glancing at your beautiful palace where rivers of honey, milk, and wine flow underneath. Think of your hoor [fairies] that are awaiting you as well as meeting the prophets, siddiqin [companions], shuhada’ [martyrs] and salihin [the pure]. Imagine smiling and laughing with our beloved Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu ’alayhi wassallam [peace be upon him]. Imagine seeing Allah and witnessing His pleasure with you. Think of all the good things in Paradise. Constantly ask Allah to accept you as a shahid [martyr].
(AQAP 2010c, 53)
Despite feeling “fear” and “terrified,” the attacker must remain steadfast in devotion to God. The attacker should recall the benefits of the afterlife and the wonders of Paradise. Arabic words with symbolic resonances in Islam permeate the text: “dhikr,” “du’a,” “kalimah,” “hoor,” “siddiqin,” “shuhada’,” “salihin,” and “shahid.” Rather than recoil in terror, the attacker must train through “remembrance” and “prayer.” Images of pleasure—a beautiful palace where rivers of honey, milk, and wine flow underneath—await the “martyr.” Mental health authors treat suicide bombing as an expression of psychopathology, but AQAP’s authors recognize that suicide bombers must fight against the instinctual fear of death in a calculated way.
Suicide Bombing Is Self-Defense, Not Terrorism
The head of AQAP, Abu Basir Nasir al-Wuhayshi, makes the point that suicide bombing is an act of self-defense, not terrorism:
What we want from the West is one thing: To stop aggression and oppression against the Muslim Nation and to withdraw out of its land. This solution was given by all of our leaders and in more than one occasion. The truce was offered by the one who has real authority to take such a decision on behalf of the Muslims, Shaykh Usamah bin Ladin, may Allah preserve him. His offer was refused. Whenever we offer a sound plan, they escalate in their stubbornness so we are left with no option but to defend ourselves and fight the transgressors.
(AQAP 2010a, 15)
Al-Wuhayshi demands that the “West” stop “aggression” and “oppression.” The “West” and “the Muslim Nation” are constructed as single entities without clear geographical definitions. Self-defense is presented as a series of steps after a “solution” given “in more than one occasion” and an offer of “truce.” Bin Laden is presented as the sole authoritative voice for all Muslims, irrespective of sectarian differences. The “West” persists in its “stubbornness,” so AQAP must “defend ourselves.” This action is necessary because “American culture is that of killing other people” (AQAP 2010a, 15) as “they have killed women and children and lied by saying that these were preemptive strikes against al-Qa’idah in order to justify to their people that they have killed the leaders of al-Qa’idah” (AQAP 2010a, 16). The Americans are seen as bloodthirsty people who have no regard for “women and children.”
American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki explains the targeting of civilians:
It is the consensus of the scholars that Muslims should not kill the women and children of the disbelievers intentionally. It is the word “intentionally” that should be explained here because it qualifies the above statement and a lack of understanding this rule is what leads to the confusion that surrounds this issue today. What is meant is that women and children should not be singled out for killing; women and children should not be killed if they fall into captivity and if they can be separated from the combatants in war they should. But in no way does it mean that Islam prohibits the fighting against the disbelievers if their men, women and children are intermingled. This understanding is very dangerous and detrimental to jihad and awareness on this issue is very important. To stop the targeting of disbelievers who are at war with the Muslims just because there are women and children among them leads to constraints on today’s jihad that make it very difficult, and at times, impossible to fight and places the Muslims at a great disadvantage compared to their enemy.
(AQAP 2011, 42)
Anwar al-Awlaki refutes the distinction of civilians and combatants as defined in international law. Instead, he shifts the terms of debate to invoke “the consensus of the scholars” drawn from the Muslim community. The passage explains the word “intentionally” to suggest that Muslims must fight disbelievers despite their presence among women and children. This strategy levels the disproportionate military advantage of the disbelievers. Al-Awlaki warns those who would be swayed by arguments from international law that “Islam prohibits the fighting against the disbelievers if their men, women and children are intermingled.” “Islam” here is also presented as a single entity with AQAP in position to speak for it.
If most mental health professionals see suicide bombing as a negative action defined through the culture of psychology, AQAP sees it as a positive act from the culture of religion. I do not mean to suggest that no suicide bomber from AQAP has ever experienced psychopathology—only a mental examination can determine that, which would be impossible if the bomber were successful. Nonetheless, politics is integral to how both groups construct suicide bombing, differentiated by the cultural meanings attached to the action. Ironically, if certain authors in mental health discourse exhibit medical Orientalism by positing an “East” and “West” to medicalize and racialize suicide bombing, authors from al-Qaeda inherit this nonspecific geographical distinction to make cultural claims of moral Occidentalism in which the “West,” and America in particular, are seen as inherently evil. For AQAP, suicide bombing symbolizes the greatest sacrifice because the bomber knowingly relinquishes life, the most prized possession, in defense of the religious community.
Contrasting discourse from mental health and AQAP on suicide bombing offers an entry point to understand cultural differences. Anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson ask: “If we question a pregiven world of separate and discrete ‘peoples and cultures,’ and see instead a difference-producing set of relations, we turn from a project of juxtaposing preexisting differences to one of exploring the construction of differences in historical process” (1992, 16). How might discourses on suicide bombing reveal historical constructions of difference rather than preexisting differences? Suicide bombing refracts differential constructions of knowledge based on the relationship of the self and mind to either medicine or religion.
For example, the construction of post-Enlightenment biomedical knowledge demonstrates a form of biological materialism focused on this world and centered on the individual. Psychiatry inherits biomedicine’s form/substance distinction from Greek philosophy: biology’s structures and chemistry’s processes constitute the body’s main architecture, to which moral, social, and psychological concerns are seen as secondary scaffolding (Kleinman 1995). Disease is assumed to possess a natural course universal for all people irrespective of the modifying influences of culture and society (Good 1994). Nature exists as prior to and separate from society, culture, and morality (Gordon 1988). This is the first construction of difference in cultural studies of suicide bombing: psychiatrists and psychologists search for pathologies rooted in the nervous system, whereas militants prioritize moral and social concerns of martyrdom over the body. To divorce the suicide bomber from society, culture, or morality is to miss the causes of suicide bombing for which mental health professionals so desperately search. A search for universal explanations of suicide bombing assumes that biology is the substrate to which we all belong rather than accounting for genuine differences in society, culture, or morality. This comes into play as psychiatrists and psychologists try to isolate general risk factors of suicide bombers across militant groups in different countries, even though local social and cultural differences may be more important. It may be more helpful to compare how AQAP’s justifications of suicide bombing resemble or differ from other militant groups rather than to merely note the common use of this tactic.
Moreover, mental health scholarship on suicide bombing displays a process of medicalization. Medicalization has been characterized as “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical terms to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad 1992, 211). Framing a problem that affects the body or mind expands medicine’s jurisdiction and authority with resultant creation of knowledge and practices (Zola 1972). This is the second construction of cultural difference: mental health professionals define suicide bombing in medical terms through psychological concepts, whereas AQAP construes suicide bombing through religious terms and vocabularies. However, this religious framework is heavily politicized, pitting Muslims against Jews and Christians, who substitute for Europeans and Americans. AQAP also promotes distinct interpretations of the Qu’ran and medieval scholars, prioritizing religious texts rather than lived experience. AQAP’s texts should force medical and legal authors to question what they know about suicide bombing. In these texts, the suicide bomber does not believe that life ends with the destruction of the body, and he trains himself to attack despite fear. These themes challenge medical and psychological assumptions that people act to maximize their best interests in the observable empirical world, attesting to the cultural bases of all knowledge. Common to both discourses, however, is the need for explanation. Mental health authors may pathologize suicide bombing and AQAP authors may justify it, but there seems to be an underlying assumption that this act needs to be researched and explained, perhaps because it elevates death over a human instinct for life.
Finally, a disproportionate focus on psychological phenomena may overlook cultural, social, and moral factors. Asad (2007) wonders whether suicide bombing elicits such horror because it reminds citizens of liberal democracies that not all people share the modernist vision of a secular political life in which religion is relegated to personal spirituality. AQAP texts confirm this point as authors use religion to organize social and political activity in pursuit of an international caliphate. Therefore, psychiatrists and psychologists will have difficulties in comprehending al-Qaeda militants within a mental health paradigm. To claim that mental illness afflicts suicide bombers is to deny their accountability and culpability and to perpetuate scientific knowledge that does not match their cultural realities. Given this chasm in cultural values, perhaps the Guantánamo court should call a cleric from AQAP as an expert witness to explain the actions of the 9/11 suspects. His testimony may raise unsettling points that prompt a search for solutions from politics and foreign policy rather than from psychiatry.
