Satire: Suicide Bomber Falls Down Stairs

Gaby: and who are you?
SB: am the suicide bomber,sir.
Gaby: hmmmmmm...so you are here for the promised houris?
SB: yes sir.
Gaby: suicide is haraam young man.
SB: (stuttering)
Gaby: keep quiet! we are sending you back down.
SB:bbbbbut ..bbbut
Gaby: ...keep quiet! we have no rooms for your likes in heaven. you are being sent back. go spend another lifetime down there as a von-siffer that will be your punishment.

lol, nice one, T

hehehe......Wicked!!

hmmmm...may be u should do one on Israeli soldiers in Gaza and west bank :-).

Israeli soldiers, hmmm, well, if something really really silly comes along, why not? :)

Temporal:

""Gaby: ...keep quiet! we have no rooms for your likes in heaven. you are being sent back. go spend another lifetime down there as a von-siffer that will be your punishment.""

Ha Ha Ha! Hit the spot!!

gabby:who are you?
Nazi: I am a nazi sir.
gabby: so why you did all these Inhuman things?
Nazi: Because my people also treated like that sir.
gabby: don't be stupid, or at least don't spread your stupidity here. Did you harassed only the people who harassed your people?.NO MANY OF THEM ARE INNOCENTS. you are a WORST CRIMINAL NO:2 AGAINST HUMANITY.

Nazi:(shocked and asked) sir, i am no:2 then who is NO:1 sir,
gabby:(he felt very sad, his face turned to red in shame) he answered: VON-PROFEMINISTS. they are crossing you in INHUMANITY.

Suicide Bomber: So...my 72 virgins please?!
Gabriel: Here, they are - leading the suicide bomber to a room full of men!
Suicide Bomber: I see the guys, but where are the virgins??!!
Gabriel: Who said...the virgins mentioned in the Book are only going to be girls!!!
Suicide Bomber: Holy ***#$@%#$@#!

LOL!

Hey all: Can I get someone to tell me the source for this 72 virgins theory? I cant seem to figure out if this is one of those American created urban-legend/propaganda things or has some real basis in Islamic theology.

None of the leaders of the groups using suicide bombing mention the 72 virgins. And neither do any of the "testaments" by bombers.

On the other hand - one reason the bombers DO give is the idea that a "martyr" can secure a place for 70 of his friends/family in paradise. A sort of eternal "group pass" if you will.

Any clarifications?

Anamika

again wikipedia comes through

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houri

:)

bd - surely wikipedia isnt the most reliable source. :-)

I have seen the 72 houri bit churned out ad nauseum (new york times includes) but want something that is a bit more theologically sound. Temp bhai? Jawahara? Sam? Anyone with a knowledge of Islamic texts/traditions?

yeh kis nay awaaz di humaiN?

the 72 virigins is like hitler skating in icecapades;) pity them damn suicide bombers (who get sent back to do a life term as von-siffers .... they do not even get to see the white raisins.... white raisins? yes read on

Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany, argues that the Koran has been misread and mistranslated for centuries. KoranHis work, based on the earliest copies of the Koran, maintains that parts of Islam's holy book are derived from pre-existing Christian Aramaic texts that were misinterpreted by later Islamic scholars who prepared the editions of the Koran commonly read today.

So, for example, the virgins who are supposedly awaiting good Islamic martyrs as their reward in paradise are in reality "white raisins" of crystal clarity rather than fair maidens.

Christoph Luxenberg, however, is a pseudonym, and his scholarly tome The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran had trouble finding a publisher, although it is considered a major new work by several leading scholars in the field. Verlag Das Arabische Buch in Berlin ultimately published the book.

Check this out,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,,631332,00.html

and since its from the guardian, it must be true, lol

both the guardian link:

In Syriac, the word hur is a feminine plural adjective meaning white, with the word "raisin" understood implicitly. Similarly, the immortal, pearl-like ephebes or youths of suras such as LXXVI.19 are really a misreading of a Syriac expression meaning chilled raisins (or drinks) that the just will have the pleasure of tasting in contrast to the boiling drinks promised the unfaithful and damned.

For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white." Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for "houri," which means virgin, but Mr. Luxenberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means "white raisin."

Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as hur, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors.

So, the question naturally arises as to who should get the prize (if not exactly 72 virgins) for simplifying complex texts that are simultaneously an admixture of poetry, symbolism, allegory, politics, history, mythology, parables etc. etc. And written in a language that few of us have expertise in. And written at a time and for a historical context that none of us have experienced nor ever will. And then, who among us can point to a religion that is crystal clear, completely devoid of parables, allegory, symbolism, absurdities (to non-followers at least), mythologies (to non-believers), hagiography etc. etc.

My nomination for the prize (for simplifying unbelievably complex religious texts and controversies), unsurprisingly is: (a drum-roll.. David Letterman style...others can add names, top10 style)

1. Bhai Man Singh

And Anamika, check out this story

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531578,00.html

even the would be suicide bombers joke about the virgins they will get! :)

Yes, t, I would rather have 72 white raisins. Plus it also seems like we're in the the middle of a cool drinking song:

72 raisins in paradise
Pop one in your mouth and you got
71 raisins in paradise
Oh yeah

Jawahara - Lol! :-)

BD - yes thats basically it. They "joke" about it but never mention it in any of their wills and videos.

It seems to me like the 72 virgins have as much to do with suicide bombings as Santa Claus does with Jesus's birth. US propaganda that makes sure no one actually ASKS the difficult questions about why young men are blowing themselves up.

I find one aspect interesting - the virgins are rewards for the lower orders of those admitted to paradise. Given that martyrs are considered "great" in the societies they belong, there is obviously a discrepancy if they are only allowed to the "lower" levels of paradise. Yet another point that has had me wondering about this bullshit on virgins/martyrdom.

A pretty interesting example of media/PR and orientalism combining to form political discourse. Thanks all..

Anamika

you did see the hadith references to the virgins, yes? So it is actually not much of a joke.

Specially not when I am traveling on the London tube today which can be blown up by a spotty man who is looking for his 72 virgins.

And yes, the 72 virgins is a tiny part of the entire philosophical, sociological, political and other bits that go into a suicide bomber's action.

That's where discourse sort of bumps into reality, lol.

and hehehe, here's another satire on this

http://www.brainsnap.com/node/274

Anamika..

The lore of booty that await Jehadi warriors was very much heart and soul of Jehadi Ideology that Islamic invaders used to expand their Islamic empires. Along with pillage and plunder of conquered territories, the women and children of the villages were also treated as war booty to be distributed among Jehadis and mullahs. It motivated hordes of Jehadis to collect band of armies and set out for expeditions into infidel territories - hordes of women awaited their arrival! Those Jehadis who died during the expeditions, well, virgins were promised to them in Heaven! Captured women of plundered villages were used and traded like all other loot and how women of India ended up in harems across Arabia - the dubious distinction of inventing slave trafficking goes to Arabia, not Europeans.

Or perhaps it's 72 Virginians. Yikes!

Anamika, ultimately it doesn't matter if it's raisins, virgins, or whoever...the fact is that people are willing to blow themselves up. And that is frightening.

yo! leave us virginians out of this whole mess, please! :)

talking about virginians, I heard this rumour that Idaho as a state actually does not exist. ss. I mean, nobody ever says they are from Idaho. Nobody admits to have visited there. Only potatoes but then, their claims are to be taken with a grain of salt.

What do you think?

BD - I take the same tubes back and forth to work as do various members of my family so this is really not about diminishing the importance of suicide bombers.

There is one - and what appears to be a pretty heavily contested reference to 72 houris as a reward for being a good Muslim (of a "lower order"). So no I haven't missed the reference - I am just not convinced that it plays much of a part in Islamic theology regarding martyrdom.

Also the hadith does not mention that these are provided especially to martyrs but rather to "good Muslims" - so basically the corner shop owner who prays five times a day, is kind to children and is a good neighbour gets the same reward.

So WHY this post 9/11 linkage to suicide bombers/fidayi/martyrs? Is it to diminish the grievances (for good/bad, real/imagined) that these people have? Or is it meant to de-legitimize them as "irrational," "deluded" etc.

What I find interesting is that when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the same mechanism, it was analysed in political grievance terms by western media/analysts/academics. Even now, Tamil Tigers aren't considered the same way as Islamist suicide bombers.

Moreover, seems all sorts of suicide bombers are conflated into a single entity as long as they are Muslims, which is what got me looking into this 72 virgins deal in the first place. I am simply trying to figure out the mechanisms and politics of imagae formation with this case.

Btw, the best piece on suicide bombers is Jeff Dunham's comedy sketch with Achmed the Dead Terrorist. I am sure there is a clip on youtube. Wait till "Achmed" starts getting his own back. :-)

Kerty - I assume, regarding "slave trafficking", the ancient Greeks were actually Arabs masquerading as southern Europeans?

Or wait, there are references to slave trade in the Old Testament as well - hmmm, guess those ancient Jews were really Arabs, regardless of the goof up with Abraham's sons...

And wait, those Aztecs in Mexico - they had "slave trade" too. Must have been Arab then.

Boy, those ancient Arabs sure got around a lot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zemKN7XZXk4

there's the clip!, brilliantly funny!

and to go back to the issue, you are talking ideology here. The tamil terrorists are separatist terrorists who operate on a different ideological basis. The islamists operate on the religious ideological basis.

The image formulation is quite complex and has been studied quite intensively and quite deeply. I will get some references for you to check.

cheers

bd

For more information on Arab as slave traders and thriving slave trade one need to look into the history of Ghana region and history of Sub-Saharan Caravan route

Also in the 8th and 9th century onwards the slave trade of Slavic people and central asians by Arabs.

In short long before medieval times Arab had institutionalized slave trade and legitimized it under islam.

Here is the solution- vagina dentata for all 72 virgins;)

Anamika..

When we talk about dead civilizations, it is all theoretical and interpretations, rationalizations, nobody can know for sure what went on inside those defunct civilizations.

BD... i've been there, so I guess it does exist. but I could have actually been in another state and someone was just lying to us, I suppose! :)

we were driving somewhere else at the time. the whole state is frightfully flat and boring.

Khalid, U., Olsson, P. (2006). Suicide Bombing: A Psychodynamic View. J. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal., 34:523-530.

Grimland M, Apter A, Kerkhof A., 1: Crisis. 2006;27(3):107-18.Links The phenomenon of suicide bombing: a review of psychological and nonpsychological factors.

The above two will give you an insight about why suicide bombing happens and why do you see the difference between separatist suicide bombing like the tamil tigers and the islamist ones.

Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, Lewis, Jeffrey W., Precision Terror: Suicide Bombing as Control Technology, Volume 19, Issue 2 June 2007 , pages 223 - 245

this article gives you a better picture of why suicide bombing is used, particularly by the islamist terrorists, which as it happens, has a long history behind it. (check out the database here, http://www.tkb.org/)

As for the image formulation, welcome to mythmaking in the world. You didnt even ask whether the hadith was a strong or weak one, lol. So what is written, what people say, what people justify and what people take the mickey out of are different things, lol

ha!@ss, you said "driving somewhere else" see? it actually doesnt exist, there are just random sign posts around the place!

Tamil suicide attackers
Japanese kamikaze pilots
Islamists suicide bombers

On the surface, all these may appear to be driven by very diverse motives, but the "deep grammatical structure" as Chomsky would put it, is pretty much the same. It is the the "defense" of so-called communities against real and imagined enemies. Sometimes "religion" defines this community, other times it happens to be language, nationalism etc. The end result for the victims is no less painful either.

The focus on religion alone when it comes to Islamic suicide bombers is problematic. This phenomenon occurs not in Denmark, Switzerland or Sweden, but in Britain, Spain, Israel etc. The political angle cannot be ignored. Of course religious ideology in the form of virgins, raisins or even Virginians (!) is invoked to mobilize people to do it. But at the end of the day, it is the same macabre, grotesque attempt to "defend" their so-called "community" in a murderous, indefensible manner.

Whether Wahabism is behind it (Islamic suicide bombers) or Wasabi (Japanese Kamikaze pilots) or Tamil nationalism vs. the Sinhalese, the driving force is, at the bottom of it all, the same. Misplaced identification with a "community" that does not quite exist and is probably not worth defending.

Great parody BD! Enjoy your photo-essays and writing!

I guess then all female suicide bombers are lesbians!

CS

What 'community' america or russia were defending when they waged all those direct and proxi conflicts around the world? What was imperial Japan defending? What was Britain doing in India - defending its 'community' in UK? It is all about defending or expanding the hegmony of their statism. Separatist movements wage terrorism so they have have their own statism. Moslems waged terror of partition so they can have their own Islamic state. Tamils wage terror because they want their own state in Sri lanka. The root behind quest for statism can be anything - religion, ideology(capitalism, colonialism, communism, socialism, humanism etc), forms of statism(democracy, monarchy, caliphate, dictatorship, federalism, constitutionalism, dynasty rule etc) ethnicity, race, language, culture, way of life - any insecurity or ambition on their part can lead them to seek militant statism. None of them are not imaginary - they exist in reality. Statism is not imaginary. It exists in reality. It rides on army and police, it has structure, ideology, whole none yards.

Kerty:

The USSR and the US were defending, or so they thought, their visions of international communism and the so-called "free world". Community here is not to be confused necessarily with small-scale, face-to-face communities, as in a village etc. Such communities are necessarily imagined, as no individual Muslim or member of a nation can actually ever get to know each and everyone who he/she imagines belongs to his/her community. Hence the term "imagined community" by Benedict Anderson, to capture this point about nationalism. But just because these are imagined communities, ie. exist at the level of a concept, does not mean that they are not real. Of course they are! Same with other conceptual constructs such as "the middle class", "gender", "ummah" etc. When was the last time you observed "gender" walking by? But just because it is a contruct, does not mean it is not real. Same with "nation", "tamil community", "muslim community " etc.

Ever since settled agriculture and the emergence of the "state", no society has been able to do without it. States, as most other institutions, regulate, govern and make certain modes of existence possible. They also make war, instigate mayhem across and within borders. Two sides of the same coin. The emergence of global institutions and ideologies notwithstanding (eg. the International Court at the Hague, the UN, Geneva Conventions etc., the state is not going to wither away any time soon. Ironically, ideological opponents such as Karl Marx (as communists scream "Smash the State!" and in Marx's words "the state will wither away") and "free-marketeers" such as Adam Smith (the hidden hand concept) von Hayek (guru of the neoliberal), Ann Raynd etc. both assumed and wanted the state to wither away. However, complex societies that are huge and diverse, cannot be governed by panchayats or village assemblies. Indeed, these local level institutions of governance are connected to the larger umbrella state (in the case of India) and in different ways in other societies. To criticise the state for its shortcomings is of course essential. This is what civil society activists, representing the environment, women, gays and lesbians, bonded labourers, etc. etc. do. There is nothing wrong with imagining that the modern nation-state will one day simply wither away and disappear is wishful thinking, because it won't, at least not for a long time. Although the state has been around for generations, the nation-state is a relatively new institution. However globalization may pan put, nation-states are here to stay for quite a while, albeit transformed by the realities of the social forces unleashed by globalization. Since the states are here to stay, the key issue is how regular folks like me and you get to influence its policies in a manner that it's negative tendencies are curtailed and postive ones enhanced. Modern politics (witness the US primaries and count how many millions are needed just to think about running) does not leave much room for regular people due to the very nature of party politics. Civil society allows us to intervene, even if minimally. Just as DC allows me to mouth off, cognizant though I am of the fact that my mouthing off of nonsense, commonsense or plain bullshit has little or no effect! But what to do? Either get my own soap-box or use this digital, global soap-box!

Sorry BD, did not mean to digress from the main topic too much!

Kerty:

Just wanted to type in this definition of "the state" that most political scientists adopt. And yes it does include the police, the army, and other institutions of "legitimate violence" etc. because without these, no modern state!

This definition comes from the German scholar Max Weber, writing at the turn of the century:

"Every state is founded on force. If no social institution existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of state would be eliminated and a condition would emerge that could be designated as anarchy, in the specific sense of this word. Today the reltions between state and violence is an especially intimate one. A STATE IS A HUMAN COMMUNITY THAT SUCCESSFULLY CLAIMS THE MONOPOLY OF THE LEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE WITHIN A GIVEN TERRITORY...Politics for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state."

In essence, in this day and age, any society without a state is unthinkable, if for nothing else, but to stop the dacoits from attacking Man Singh's village, through the use of LEGITIMATE (ie. police/army etc) force, and to stop, in theory at least, the likes of Man Singh from taking the law into their own hands. Sure the state oversteps its authority many times, but the alternative to a state is worse. Witness what happened in Somalia when the state collapsed, and why so many of us worry about societies with "failed states". Like most such institutions, states are neither "good" nor "bad" but they are simultaneously both, depending on how much influence the cartoonist Laxman's ordinary men/women can have on it...

jay and ss:

you guys have offended the presently dormant hillbillies of west virginia;)

ana:

heh (the lower order)..badmash!

on a serious note though...there is a twist and truth in humour too...confining to pakistani suicide bombers...a majority of them emanate from the madaris...and studies have shown them to be orphans or kids from poor families who cannot feed the results of their own 'merrymaking' (if only someone had taught them the meaning of prevention being better than cure;)) and drop off their wards at the madresas...to be fed and educated (read brainwashed)... the teachers there become the father figure for these kids and are susceptible to be brain washed...and here the weak hadiths (tirmidhi et al) come into good 'abuse'...the promised maidens appear better than self-service or goats (ouch!)...

there!

Temporal:

""the promised maidens appear better than self-service or goats (ouch!)...""

Ouch indeed!! (for the luckless goat :)

unless you meant them randy billy goats...ouch for the madaris then!

CS..#38

Good points. That state is a necessary evil in absence of any viable alternatives. One can also make a similar case that religion and 'community' are also necessary evils in absence of viable alternatives. In that case, key issue boils down to - how do we separate things that do not make statism to be benign and in similar vain, how do we separate things from religion and 'community' that do not make them to be 'benign' and beneficial. Can we define religion and 'community' that is benign and beneficial - and limit their expression to those levels? Can we define statism that is benign and beneficial - and limit its power to those levels? Can we generate consensus among people, among ideologists, among religionists, among 'community' activists as to what is desirable level of statism, religious freedom/expression, community role? Are they all willing to accept checks and balances against each other so none of them go beyond their benign mandate. Is that enshrined in the constitution? Do we have political process in place to evolve to such stage? Is this one of those unrealistic sounds-good-on-paper utopias? Because it is. We have major fundamentalist religions that will never accept limit on their expressions/freedoms - in fact they deem themselves inseparable from 'community' and statism that they demand separate status for themselves. We have castes in place that will not yield their group autonomy and freedoms. We have leftist ideologies(socialism, communism, feminism, individualism) that are so wedded to statism, they can not be separated from statism. And Hindus, not to be outdone or left behind, have joined the fray with their claim to statism - Hindu Rastra. So where do we go from here? Is there a political force in India that can bring all sides togather and force them to give up their cherished visions and come to some compromise in the interest of our ideal utopia? So we flog the blogs with our pet issues but none of it matters or make any difference.

T, just a small point about the background of the pakistani militants, check this out, mate :) You might be surprised, I was too. I also used to think it was the madrassah's which were producing these chaps, but no.

http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/2008/01/who-are-pakistans-militants-and-their.html

BD,

True! I also used to think the same, until I saw the profile of most of them...A really good account of this henious phenomenon is to be found here:

Robert A. Pape, _Dying to Win_ (Random House, 2005)

Christoph Reuter, _My Life as a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing_ (Princeton University Press, 2004)

Common sense

Just a word of warning about Pape's book, that has major methodological issues, frankly useless book actually. There was a very good academic book review on it some time ago, can dig it out if you want (mind you, i am a bit jaundiced against him anyway, imagine coming up with an equation for how you can use air power to win a war? - this was in the immediate aftermath of Gulf War 1)

I havent read the second one but it has now gone into my amazon wish list! :)

and waiting for this book to appear :)
The Mind of a Terrorist, Jerrold M. Post,

will be reviewing it soon.

Thanks BD! Look forward to _The Mind of a Terrorist_ when it comes out...and of course, look forward to your review...

meanwhile, I'm "dying" for more photo-essays from you!

bd: Thanks. Have read those but find them a bit limited and limiting. I agree on Pape - a fair bit of bilge. Same goes for Mia Bloom and most of the American/Israeli stuff on the topic.

Part of the problem is the "othering" so its seen somehow exotic or foreign and therefore intrinsically inferior/irrational/delusional etc. (there is a value judgement implicit in the work).

Actually the best - albeit localised (which I think is the only logica way) analysis came from a quote from Hassan Nasrallah who was explaining what motivated suicide bombing.

I am paraphrasing here but this is more or less the explanation he gave: He said to imagine being in an extremely uncomfortable sauna where the temperature is rising and making you uncomfortable. And someone walks up and points to a door. They tell you that behind the door is a cool comfortable room with chamber music and an icy cocktail. And then he asks, would you go through the door?

Btw that interview is in Robert Fisk's Great War for Civilization.

CS: in full form I see. :-)

Temp: i think the point is that there is no one motivation for even the allegedly Islamic suicide bombers. So a Palestinian attacking Israel has different motivations from a Saudi attacking the US or a Jordanian in Iraq or a Pakistani in London.

To qualify it as Islamic may be convenient - it gives people a concrete entity to hate. I mean just look at this site and stuff that gets posted here.

On the other hand, it doesn't help us stop or prevent the attacks so its obviously not a very useful qualification.

Anamika,

Me in full form?? Much chastened though! Should have followed your advice about not moo-lagooing with some people...would have saved me some time and energy...

Robert Fisk's work is really good! Agree about Pape...but Fisk is unimpeachable I think!

CS/anamika... how reliable is zahid hussain?

beady i endorse ana in #49...and i did say #40 was 'confined' to the pakistani edition...

ana:

...it doesn't help us stop or prevent the attacks...


yehi tou ... (delivered with the same emphasis and accent as the lady in office office)

:)

wonder what strategy baron clausewitz or bismarck would have adopted to counter a lunatic willing to gamble away his/her life

robert fisk's magnum opus would have done with a bit less of magnumising, god, that man can go on and on. I mean, there is a limit to the amount of breast beating a man can take! :)

lol

But on the other hand, Nasrallah's explanation notwithstanding, is not complete. For example, I would find that explanation very difficult to fit into the 9/11 chappies, or the chap who drove into the Marine Barracks, or the frequent fellows in Kashmir or in Tamil Nadu/Sri Lanka.

Giving a carrot is far too simplistic (and yes, this 72 virgins is a joke). To ask a person to give up their lives, you need to get much more than just that so yes, i do agree that it is much more complicated.

T

I was also talking about Pakistani terrorists, mate, most of them seem to be coming from educated backgrounds, not from madari's!

Secondly, our man clauswitz or even bismark would not care about suicide bombers. Individuals did not exist at that time, it was purely force. So the fact that somebody could have grabbed a satchel of explosives and rolled under a howitzer would not have occurred nor would they have cared at all. Life was much less precious at that time otherwise it would not have ended with the horrors of regimental killing in WW1.

in that case let's agree to disagree

;)

lol, I wasnt looking for agreement or disagreement, T, i was looking for research as you had mentioned. The paper I quoted researched many pakistani militants and their families, determined their socio-economic basis, their educational levels, etc. I quote:

Only 17 (12 percent) respondents attended a madrassah among whom only 7 percent obtained a certificate (sanad) from the religious school. Generally, attaining such a
certificate requires full-time attendance for at least two years. (The highest certificate requires at least 8 years of madrassah study.) This suggests that overall only about 4
percent of the respondents attended a madrassah full-time.
While 27 percent had no formal education, 22 percent had less than a matriculation (a.k.a. ''matric'' or 10th grade), 22 percent had a matriculation but less than intermediate degree (12th grade), 16 percent had an intermediate degree but less than a degree (14 years, the equivalent of a BA), and 13 percent had some sort of post-secondary education. This suggests that overall, more than half of the respondents were matriculates.
In contrast, among Pakistani males generally, only 32 percent are matric graduates.Compared to these national standards, the respondents in the sample are considerably more educated than the average Pakistani male. This finding undermines the common aphorism that militants come out of environments of ignorance.

SS,

Not sure about zahid husein. do you mean the author? haven't read him...!

bd - I agree that lack of education does not correlate as cleanly with suicide bombings as many (left of centre) analysts would like. And that issues are complex with more than just one "pressure cooker" situations - economic, personal, political, military and religious. In the asence of political language these are often articulated in religious terms (I am not discarding religious fanaticism as a cause, just not the MAIN or ONLY cause).

Interestingly, the first suicide "bombing" in Lebanon was carried out by a Christian woman. I have read various western analyses about her and they all insist that she was deluded, radicalised, didn't "need" to go into battle and so forth. Not one of them is willing to accept that an Arab woman may have had the agency to make up her own mind based on her immediate circumstances.

By the Marine barracks bombing - am assuming you're referring to the truck bomb attack? Surely civil war and occupation qualifies as a "pressure cooker"?

Btw - Fisk's tome may be long but it has more minutae and details than I have found elsewhere. I find him to be more of an obsessively old-style information junkie rather than a breast-beater. But lets agree to disagree on this one.

SS: Zahid Hussein, the Pakistan correspondent for the Times? His analysis is alright but he doesn't really say anything new. But then if we are talking of the same man, he does live in a dictatorship so its expected.

CS: Chastening? No way...I just noted the intensity and coherence of your engagement with the debate. :-)

Thanks Anamika!

I meant, if you notice, I have toned down my language quite a bit!

Hey CS - dont tone down your langauge for me. :-)

Anamika,

This is the logic of "virtual communities"! Folks think that just because there is anonymity, there is no peer pressure, but of course there is!!

And you - with all the common sense - bow to peer pressure? Lol...

Commonsense wrote

>>>>This is the logic of "virtual communities"! Folks think that just because there is anonymity, there is no peer pressure, but of course there is!!<<<<

CS

We know just like the Mullahs it is not your fault it is your faith in your ideology. you are so predictable similar to Mullahs ooops as you claimed "virtual communities"

Allah = Marx
Mohammed = Lenin
Caliph = Stalin, Mao etc
Jihad = Revolution
Islamic terrorists = Comrades
Religion of Peace = ""Religion of Equality""

Yup virtually the same!!!!!!!

Anamika,

To have empathy for others is human, is it not?! Despite my occasional wayward ways and language, that I conveniently blame on the brew...yup, peer pressure for sure kicks in after a while, even though none of us will ever meet! Kela is a bit immune to it, but please don't spill your coffee, I do enjoy his refreshing irreverance!