Discussion of CJ Werlemann’s remarks on Dying to Win by Robert Pape
Published on Islamophilia Watch, 18 April 2014
CJ Werlemann writes: “Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, found that almost without exception [as we shall see, the exceptions are actually many and varied], suicide bombers are members of communities that feel humiliated by an occupying force. In fact, of all suicide bombing campaigns, 95 present were carried out with the objective of driving out an occupying power. This was true in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Kashmir, as well as Israel and the Palestinian territories. That 17 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis seems to underscore Pape’s findings.” [1]
Islam and violence once again
Werlemann’s thesis here boils down to the standard Islamophile claim that religion has nothing to do with Muslims’ acts of violence. This claim serves the purpose of warding off charges that Islam is a violent religion. Secular Westerners seize eagerly on the “non-violent Islam” meme. It is what they passionately want to believe, since it matches their own view of the place that religion occupies in human affairs, while at the same time it exonerates a non-Western culture admired for often defying the same Western ruling elites that left-wing Western secularists themselves denounce [extra credit is given for actual or honorary non-whiteness, or POCitude[2]].
An Indian terrorism expert writes:
This tenacious hold of religion is something that the West has failed to understand. When Muslims behave in a way that cannot be explained in rational terms—at least as understood in the West —they look for economic or social reasons. … Until recently, most Western analysts were inclined to regard Islamic Fundamentalism as an aberration — a departure from the ‘true’ teachings of Islam, which they held was a religion of peace and brotherhood. To a large extent this is still true of academics in the West. Unlike some Indian scholars who sought explanation for it in the scripture of Islam itself, Western analysts tried to explain it in political and economic terms in keeping with their own secular-humanistic orientation.[3]
Werlemann’s methodological aberrations
Werlemann’s article written in 2014 relies on Pape’s book Dying to Win, published nine years before. Werlemann ignores more recent work by the same author, although (or perhaps because) it substantially modifies the initial theory (and presumably also reaches substantially different conclusions).[4]
Dodgy methodology of Dying to Win
Assaf Moghadam (2006) Suicide Terrorism, Occupation, and the Globalization of Martyrdom: A Critique of Dying to Win,
Moghadam criticizes Pape on several issues:
- Pape frivolously claims that Al Qaeda is not a worldwide organization but merely a federation of national movements against occupation by foreign powers. This flatly contradicts OBL’s many speeches in which he declares his cause to be purely religious in nature.
- Furthermore Pape counts attacks on military as “terrorist” which flouts broad consensus that the term should be applied only to attacks on civilians. This is an important distinction generally respected in the discipline of terrorism studies. Indeed, according to the standard definition of terrorism, when Hamas started fighting Israel in the 1980s, it was not a terrorist organization at all, because it initially only attacked Israeli soldiers and police, not civilians. Eventually Hamas began specialising in attacks on civilians and consequently became a strictly terrorist organization.
- Moreover Pape counts a cluster of simultaneous attacks as a single attack, even when widely separated, and thus undercounts attacks. Since Pape´s findings depend crucially on the number of each sort of attack, this methodological insouciance seems to have affected his conclusions significantly.
4. And he excludes attacks made within the context of “ongoing” conflicts at the time he wrote. However those conflicts were many and prolonged, and their inclusion in the count greatly raises the proportion of religiously motivated suicide attacks.
| Suicide bomberette |
- Pape claims that suicide attacks are usually successful and that they force the foe to make concessions. Moghadam proves that these claims are fatuous in the extreme.
Meaning of “occupation”
“Military occupation” is a term possessing an objective meaning defined in international law. Werlemann wishes to persuade us that the objective circumstance of military occupation triggers the objective behaviour of suicide bombing, so that religion is not a factor.
However for Pape it is not occupation as such that counts, but instead the suicide bomber’s perception of being occupied, or that of his “community”. Accordingly the independent variable “occupation” is influenced by a number of socio-political factors like ethnic and religious concepts of territoriality and political-military control.
The subjective nature that Pape ascribes (at least since 2010) to the “occupation” variable can be seen by the following cites from Pape’s second book on the same subject:
[I]n both Iraq and Afghanistan … local communities that did not inherently share the terrorists’ political, social, and military agenda, eventually support[ed] the terrorists organization’s campaign … after local communities began to perceive the Western forces as an occupier … as foreign troops propping up and controlling their national government, changing their local culture, jeopardizing economic well-being, and conducting combat operations with high collateral damage … . But, we have also seen in Iraq that this perception of occupation can be changed … . (Cutting the Fuse p. 333)
For over a decade our enemies have been dying to win. By ending the perception that the United States and its allies are occupiers, we can cut the fuse to the suicide terrorism threat. (Cutting the Fuse p. 335)
- Meaning of “community” and “territory”
It is well known that Islam defines itself as a community, although it is not really a community at all, but merely a collective designation for persons who profess a certain religion (and who are often at each other’s throats). Moreover Islam is a real-estate religion, i.e. it lays claim to territory as if it were a nation or an ethnic group.
Muslims inhabit or control a large share of the world’s surface area and consequently their “core territory” may be extremely large, depending on degree of ideological commitment.
Moreover Islam stubbornly refuses to relinquish lost territory. Consequently Muslims lay claim to far more territory than they actually control, since there are numerous and populous lands that were once ruled by Muslims but no longer are, like India, the Iberian Peninsula, the southern half of Italy, all the islands on the Mediterranean Sea, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, etc.
Islamists aspire to reconquer Spain and Portugal on the grounds that they used to be colonies of Islam, just as Hamas lays claim to lands that Muslims lost in Palestine many decades ago.
How soon will Muslims worldwide start feeling “occupied” by Spain?
And how soon thereafter will suicide bombers start striking at Spanish cities?
- Some examples of suicide bombings
Revealing Muslim concepts of territory and community
5.1 Palestine
In 2005 Hamas renounced Palestinian territorial claims to Palestine and since then has struggled to reconquer Palestine from Israel (a.k.a. “Jewish filth”) with the professed aim of opening the territory up for settlement by Muslims of all nationalities.
For many years both before and after 2005, the Gaza educational system run by Hamas recruited students to become suicide bombers. Once selected, prospective suicide bombers are taken to a special Hamas training facility where they are indoctrinated, brainwashed, persuaded to become martyrs, trained, equipped and dispatched on suicide missions against Israeli targets.
In the model propounded in Dying to Win, the meaning of “core territory” is whatever the local culture and ideologies define it to mean. In the case of Hamas – as with all Islamists — “core territory” is defined as any land that has ever been populated by Muslims. Such a grandiose definition of Muslim “core territory” by itself makes Muslims much more likely to perp suicide bombings than non-Muslims.
5.2 Britain
The 2005 suicide bombings in London were committed by British Muslims of Pakistani descent. The motive for their martyrdom was opposition to Anglo-American military occupation of a Muslim country, namely Iraq.
Here the concepts of “core territory” and “community” have been expanded to encompass large shares of both the world’s population and of its land surface.
- Fact or fiction?
A large community means many candidates for the job of suicide bomber. A large territory increases the likelihood of military occupation of some part of it. Moreover heightened Muslim sensitivity to foreign influence means that Muslims tend to define as “occupation” phenomena that other people might simply shrug off.
All this to say nothing of the ignorance, ideological tunnel vision and propensity to exaggerate and lie consistently exhibited by Islamists. These repellent traits make it likely that motives to attack what they call “Islam’s enemies” are often merely improvised on the spur of the moment by Islamic political organisations or individual zealots and announced to the credulous and illiterate Muslim masses to fire them up for acts of mayhem. An example of this occurred in Islamabad in 1979, when a mob torched the US embassy on the pretext that the US had sponsored a sectarian takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Of course the US had done nothing of the sort.
In Pakistan, Deobandi lynch mobs periodically invade the streets, triggered by unverified rumours of some reviled unbeliever or heretic desecrating a sheet of the Koran or other holy relic. Christian and Hindu neighbourhoods are periodically looted and set on fire. Such mobs of Muslim fanatics occasionally burn unbelievers alive, alone or in groups.[5]
Consequently an important factor to consider when analysing an “occupied” people’s feelings of “humiliation“ is: How many of these grievances are simply horror propaganda churned out by ruthless fanatics and swallowed whole by gullible yokels?
- Islamic expansionism and collateral damage
Hizballah, an armed faction of Lebanon’s Shia sect, was founded in 1982 to resist Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and has perpetrated many suicide bombings. One of its predecessor organisations, the Islamic Jihad Organisation (IJO), likewise perpetrated many suicide and other bombings. Between 1982 and 1984 the IJO bombed the US and French embassies in Beirut and barracks housing French and American troops, killing hundreds.[6] But in 1985 the IJO acknowledged having perpetrated a terror attack far from Lebanon, namely in Spain, by bombing a Madrid restaurant patronised by American military personnel. However the 18 people killed in that attack were all Spaniards, as were 71 of the 82 people injured.[7] Hizballah executed two mass murders in Buenos Aires in the 1990s on orders from Teheran. It has bombarded Israel with rockets and is taking part in the Syrian civil war.
Thus we see that Islamic resistance to foreign occupation easily diversifies into foreign adventurism, as purely defensive popular resistance organisations swiftly transform themselves into worldwide terror networks that even accept terror assignments for a fee.[8] Sidelines beckon: in the course of pursuing Allah’s work, Hizballah has become one of the world principal drug trafficking organisations.
By contrast, for three decades between 1946 and 1975, the Vietnamese Communists fought first French and then American troops in a colossal struggle that killed millions, but never once attempted any armed attack outside of Vietnam and the adjoining countries of Cambodia and Laos.
- Conclusion
In view of these numerous, compelling and mutually reinforcing traits of Islamic ideology, and despite Werlemann’s glib assurances to the contrary, Pape’s initial model of suicide bombing motivation does not in the least exonerate Muslim ideology from responsibility for inducing suicide bombing. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with suicide bombing campaigns and other forms of warfare inspired partly or principally by Muslim ideology.[9]
Accordingly the presence of Muslim minorities in Western countries poses a permanent menace. Some 99% of all suicide bombings worldwide are performed by Muslims 450 of 452 suicide attacks in 2015 were by Muslim extremists, study shows.[1]
Epilogue
Denis Cuspert, a Berlin-born rapper (“Deso Dogg“), converted to Islam, became a jihadi and went to Syria to fight for the al-Qaeda-affiliated ISIS under the nom de guerre Abu Talha al-Almani. According to reports, he was recently killed in a suicide bomb attack committed by Jabhat al Nusra, a different jihadi group. The attack occurred in the province of Deir Essor. 16 terrorist were killed, not including the bomber.[10]
When one rootless jihadi group recruited from a dozen countries uses the suicide bombing weapon against another rootless jihadi group recruited from a dozen countries, there can be no question of “defending one’s homeland”.
Suicide bombing is a cultural artefact like windmills or bread. Had a windmill survey been conducted any time between the 14th and the 19th centuries, it would have yielded the conclusion that 95% of windmills were used for grinding wheat or other grains. However nowadays they also power light bulbs and computers.
Suicide bombing was invented in Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tigers and developed by the Iranian basiji against the Iraqi army in the 1980s. Hizballah learnt the technique from Iran and passed it on to Hamas. There is no reason to assume that suicide bombing remains static as is it passed on from one political movement to the next.
This idea is supported by the fact that Pape’s second book, based on a much broader data set that covers a longer time span than the first, required a more generalised theory. This second theory largely cancelled out the original one, which affirmed that almost all such attacks were motivated by the desire to defend one’s homeland against a perceived occupation.
Islamophiles are loath to relinquish the “defending one’s homeland” theory of suicide bombing. This is of course the reason why they studiously ignore Pape’s second book.
[1] How Hatred of Islam Brings Atheist Leaders and Christian Right Together, by CJ Werleman, AlterNet, April 11, 2014 http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-atheists-are-complicit-atrocities-and-oppression-palestinian-people
[2] POC = Persons Of Colour (under no circumstances to be confused with “coloured folks”)
[3] N.S. Rajaram, “Pakistan’s Mein Kampf,” Perspectives on Islam and Pakistan,” URL: http://members.tripod.com/pakjihad/pesrspectives_on_islam.htm#Concept>, accessed 09 September 2005.
[4] Dying to Win was published in 2005. In 2010 Pape published a second book on the same subject called Cutting the Fuse , incorporating additional research and supported by a much larger data base of suicide attacks. In it he revised his original methodology, “developing a new social logic of transnational suicide terrorists, identifying the key factors that explain the ebb and flow within suicide terrorist campaigns”[4]. So instead of Pape’s original monocausal model, in which the incidence of suicide bombing depended only on “feeling occupied”, things became much more complicated. Specifically, the claims Werlemann implies regarding the motives of the 9/11 perps now have no leg to stand on.
[5] The lynch mob nation, by Murtaza Haider, Dawn, 13 March 2013
http://www.dawn.com/news/792335/the-lynch-mob-nation
[6] Islamic Jihad Organisation, Wikipedia
[7] Spanish bomb blast blamed on Jihad. Madrid restaurant explosion blamed on Muslim group, by Jane Walker, The Guardian, 15 April 1985
[8] Thus the Iranian government is generally thought to have paid the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to commit the Lockerbie air bombing, as revenge for the US downing an Iranian civilian passenger jet. Supposedly the White House could not afford to aggravate Iran at that juncture, so Libya was bribed into playing along and obligingly supplied the fall guys for the Lockerbie trial. The Scottish judges saw through the fraud, acquitted one defendant and were on the point of acquitting the other but were pressured into convicting him against their better judgement.
[9] I have not read Cutting the Fuse, so I cannot judge the extent to which this book modifies Pape’s original findings.
[10] Deutscher Islamist in Syrien angeblich getötet, Die Zeit online, April 2014
http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-04/syrien-buergerkrieg-cuspert-islamist-tot
Posted 17th April 2014 by Zenobia van Dongen
[1]
http://www.timesofisrael.com/450-of-452-suicide-attacks-in-2015-were-by-muslim-extremists-study-shows/
Despite The Times of Israel’s inauspicious name, it is a newspaper that aspires to be objective and apolitical, and with some success.
High Infidelity 