The psychology of Palestinian suicide bombing and Israeli paranoia

(Published at MuslimWakeUp.com on June 14, 2004 and in Bangladesh in the daily New Age on June 21st, 2004.)

Post-9/11, Muslim organizations have spent a lot of effort distancing themselves from the image of the Islamic suicide bomber, proclaiming 'true Islam' to be a peaceful and non-violent religion. But is this the best way to talk about terrorism and extremism to non-Muslims?

By definition, that audience doesn't believe in Islam; so there isn't any such thing as a true Islam from their perspective. It would be more productive for mainstream Muslims to develop a more secular way of talking about, and distinguishing themselves from, the more extreme views of religion espoused by the violent minority. A more psychological approach might be useful in this regard, since it can
provide a secular language which will more effectively communicate with a non-Muslim audience. The adoption of a secular language also helps to highlight the environmental factors which lead to terrorism, and thus prevents it from being associated with Islam in the simplistic religious reductionism which has become commonplace.

The thing that one should bear in mind about suicide bombings is that they are, in fact, suicides. From a psychological healthperspective, suicide is a symptom of a pathological condition such as depression. Bearing this simple fact in mind might change how we view suicide bombing. In fact the psychological point of view tends to oppose the common assumption that suicide bombing is the result of political or religious views. People with pathological psychological conditions are not completely rational, so the logical connection between Islam and suicide bombers disappears in this framework.

Obviously suicide bombers do justify their actions as being politically and religiously motivated. However, as psychologically literate observers, we should not take that rationalization at face value. Any such justification should be qualified by our knowledge that it is the pathology speaking as much as the person in these cases.

When we look at the terrible economic and political conditions under which Palestinians have lived for generations, it is easy to understand why a disproportionately large number of people would become frustrated, pathologically depressed and even suicidal. Hopelessness and anger in the face of Israeli policies which create the realities of settlement and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are what lead to Palestinian suicide bombings. Religion is just one of many
environmental factors which figure in this complex picture.

There has been an attempt in the Western media to re-label suicide bombers as 'homicide bombers', in order to highlight the violent nature of their actions. But this ignores the facts of suicide, which is intrinsically a violent phenomenon; one which always has victims other than the person who kills himself or herself. Usually these victims are members of the suicide bombers own family, who suffer the emotional aftermath of the suicide for many years, and have measurably higher rates of depression and suicide themselves as a result. The suicide bombers victims are of course different in that they die immediately; the violence is direct and immediate rather than indirect and gradual. But this violence is never completely unintentional. Both suicide and suicide bombing express the same underlying anger at those surrounding the suicidal person for having been unable to help alleviate (or in the case of Israeli occupation, for having actively contributed to) the unbearable environment from which death is perceived as the only escape. So regardless of what the Western media says, one cannot overlook the suicidal act involved in suicide bombing. Acknowledging this will always lead to the question of the cause of the suicide, which leads us again to the Israeli occupation.

The fact is that the attention focused on suicide bombing by the Western media largely ignores the brutality and hopelessness of Israeli occupation which causes it. This one-sided journalism oversimplifies the issue and turns it into yet another catchphrase to paint Palestinians as terrorists inspired by a murderous Islamic
religion. This sort of religious reductionism removes responsibility from the Israeli government policies which have created an oppressed, desperate and hopeless Palestinian population, one in which suicide and the violence of suicide bombing are obviously symptoms of a greater, overlooked psychological illness.

Nor is psychological illness only a characteristic of the Palestinian side of the conflict. For its part, Israeli society has also developed its own variety of pathological behavior. Israeli politicians persist in holding on to the occupied Palestinian territories, and consequently refusing to negotiate a just and final
peace based on the 1967 borders and the Geneva accords. Their justification is laden with paranoia that Israel is surrounded by dangerous Arab enemies and cannot give up an inch of territory, much less allow them a foothold next door. But objectively, how rational is this perception of an Israel besieged? Israel is militarily one of the most advanced and powerful countries in the world. This has been
completely obvious since it decisively defeated its Arab neighbors in only six days in 1967. Even aside from Israel's conventional weapons superiority, it has been the only nuclear power in the region for around two decades. Objectively it should see itself as dealing from a position of strength, not vulnerability. This denial of reality does not indicate psychological health on the part of the Israeli public. Rather, the misplaced feeling of vulnerability which persists in spite of an objective reality of overwhelming military power point to an underlying paranoia. It is this paranoia which seems to lead to the Israeli obsession with security, and effectively rationalizes away any and all brutality against the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Such a deep-seated paranoia in Israeli society cannot be explained by suicide bombers, as it has persisted ever since the 1967 war, and suicide bombing is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It seems more likely that the only real explanation of this mass paranoia lies in the psychological trauma which was experienced by the Jewish community during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Oddly enough, it does seem that the Palestinians have in fact become the latest
victims of the Nazi holocaust.

Religion plays a subtle part in this picture. Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions all have a tendency to equate suffering or asceticism with nobility and purity. This is evident from examples ranging from the Hebrew Bible's description of the suffering servant of Isaiah, to the Christian image of the crucified Jesus, and even the persecution faced by Muhammad and the early Muslims in Mecca. When suffering is accepted voluntarily for the sake of others, it may indeed create a heightened sense of morality and sacrifice. However, neither the Jews killed by the Nazis nor the Palestinians killed over the last few decades by Israeli guns, tanks and helicopters (which is always far higher than the number of Israelis killed in the same period)
volunteered for that suffering. Far from ennobling Israelis and Palestinians, all this suffering has simply brutalized them. On the Palestinian side this combines with the experience of hopelessness and oppression to produce suicide bombers. On the Israeli side it produces a paranoid denial of the facts of Israeli military invulnerability which have been true for decades, and continues to hamper efforts at peace through measures like the supposed security wall which actually continues a long-standing Israeli policy of creating 'facts on the ground' through land-grabbing and illegal settlements.

Support Gaza; boycott Israel's corporate allies

JANUARY'S massacre in Gaza by Israeli forces should give us all pause to think. Are we really totally powerless to stop Israeli armed aggression against Palestinian civilians? The answer is, actually, no we are not completely powerless.

South Africa, the original apartheid state, was brought to its knees by an economic boycott against its policies. Yes, Bangladesh is a small country and far from the Middle East; but our imports are bought with the same American dollars that support the Israeli economy, and we should utilise them intelligently.

The economic boycott of South Africa was about more than boycotting South African products; it also targeted multi-nationals that invested in (and thus economically supported) the apartheid state. Bangladesh already disallows direct imports from Israel through its import policy; but Bangladeshi consumers have yet to take action against multi-nationals that have the dubious distinction of directly supporting Zionist land grabbing, or receiving Israeli government awards recognising their investments in Israel.

One company directly supporting Israeli land grabbing is Intel. Exports from Intel's Lachish-Qiryat Gat plant total $1 billion a year. Al-Awda (the Palestine Right to Return Coalition) has pointed out that the Intel plant is built on land Israel confiscated from Iraq al-Manshiya, which was a Palestinian village of 2,000 people. The Palestinians were replaced by the new Jewish settlement of Qiryat-Gat, where Intel then invested and became a big employer.

Alongside Intel, many Western high-tech companies invest heavily in Israel, viewing it as a cheap source of technical talent. Companies like Nokia, Microsoft, and IBM are all big investors in Israel, with large research and development facilities there.

In May 2002, the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce awarded IBM the Ambassador's Award in recognition of its outstanding contribution to the development of the Israeli high-tech industry and to advancing Israeli exports.

It would certainly be better to buy phones and computer hardware made by Asian companies, which do not outsource to Israel. Taiwanese chip manufacturer Via, for example, makes Pentium clone chips comparable to those from Intel; Taiwanese Acer makes PCs, and Korean Samsung makes phones. No one should buy Microsoft software, as free alternatives like OpenOffice and Ubuntu Linux are good replacements.

Companies which receive awards from the Israeli government are particularly suspect. In 1998, the following companies received the Jubilee Award from right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu: Johnson and Johnson (manufacturer of many baby products), Kimberly Clark (makers of Kleenex tissues and Huggies nappies), AOL Time Warner (owner of Time magazine and CNN news), Nestle (owner of Nido milk and Cerelac baby formula brands, as well as the ever-present Nescafe coffee and Kitkat, Quality Street, Smarties, and After Eight chocolates). These are all popular brands in Bangladesh; the question is do they deserve our money?

Coca Cola (which also owns Fanta and Sprite) is another such case. In 1997, the government of Israel honoured Coca-Cola and its 30 years of support at the Israel Trade Award Dinner. Would it really be difficult to switch to some of the other myriad soft drink brands available?

Only the conscience of the Bangladeshi consumer will keep out Israeli goods and punish companies that support Israel. So all of us should become more aware of the activities of the companies from whom we buy. In this way, we can pressure multi-nationals to stop doing business in Israel. They should decide which is the more important market; Bangladesh with its 150 million consumers, or Israel with only 7 million.

In these times of global recession, organising boycotts against Israel and its corporate supporters could actually work. The customer is king; and kings should understand the world and use their influence to improve it.

All data from http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.php

Reforming independent madrasahs in Bangladesh

Periodically, the topic of low-quality education imparted by some private universities becomes a matter of debate. However, there is a much bigger problem of low-quality education in Bangladesh; namely, the thousands of Qawmi madrasahs across the country.

Low-quality private universities generally target students who are not bright enough to get into the state-funded or better private universities; Qawmi madrasahs are serving (or rather dis-serving) a similar low-quality market composed of lakhs of impoverished rural children. The parallels between the two provide an interesting clue as to how to reform the Qawmi madrasahs, which generally seem resistant to change.

Qawmi madrasas are a remnant of Bangladesh's traditional Muslim educational system. Although, post-1971, they have slowly modernised by teaching in the medium of Bangla instead of Urdu, as well as by including some English and mathematics, they still largely follow the medieval-inspired Dars Nizami syllabus.

Since they are set up as locally-supported waqfs (Islamic property trusts, like mosques), they are self-supporting and completely outside the funding and regulation of the government educational system. Students unable to afford admission, textbooks, transport and private tuition required to attend government schools may often find that their only option is a Qawmi madrasah. Unfortunately, one gets what one pays for: a low-quality education composed of rote memorisation of outdated material, with almost no job opportunities.

In the case of private universities, it is clear how to improve the situation; increasing regulation and supervision by the University Grants Commission to improve quality. Furthermore, the private university market is increasingly competitive, and the under-performing universities are forced to improve or close for lack of students.

Unfortunately for the rural poor, there is no government department regulating and improving Qawmi madrasahs. In fact, the slightest hint of government intervention is enough to stir protest among the legally independent Qawmi madrasah administrators. So the only way to force them to improve is by increasing competition in the market for poor rural students.

Market mechanisms are effective regulators if utilised correctly. The presence of a Qawmi madrasah in any location obviously indicates a population of education consumers (students) whose needs are not being supplied by any government school. This may be due to excessive distance or other costs of attending local government schools. In that case, the appropriate market response is to set up a good quality government school nearby, and to target it with larger than normal quantities of student stipends. If the government were to make such moves, Qawmi madrasahs would soon find their student numbers dwindling. Rational parents would send their children to the better government school which offers better job prospects, provided it is accessible and affordable.

Such a change in the rural education market would not eliminate the Qawmi madrasahs; but it would force them to change and improve, just as they adapted to the post-1971 reality of Bangladesh by introducing Bengali.

Whereas now Qawmi madrasahs are not willing to change, if the government made them compete for their students, they would be forced by the market for students to adopt a more modern and higher quality syllabus. Such an initiative needs to be taken by the government sooner, not later.

Reforming government-run madrasahs in Bangladesh

Much has been written about the divide between madrasah education and standard government SSC/HSC education. However, it is worth considering this question from a fresh angle; namely, what is really valued by the public and worth retaining from the traditional madrasah approach? The answer to this question should dictate the means of unifying the various educational systems in Bangladesh.

The most valued part of madrasah education is not hard to find. Bangladesh is overwhelmingly made up of Muslims, among whom the reading of the Qur'an is universally appreciated. Middle class households who can afford it employ a local moulavi saheb to ensure that the children of the family recite the entire Qur'an at some point. Memorisation of the Qur'an is generally acknowledged as a significant act of devotion.

So, obviously, the reading of the Qur'an, which takes place in madrasah education is fulfilling an important public service; it allows poor families which may not be able to afford the services of a private maulana to fulfill their desire to have their children recite, or even memorise, the Qur'an. However, the practice of reciting the Qur'an just by repeating memorised Arabic words has a big limitation; the student understands nothing.

Here is an interesting point; the Pickthall translation of the Qur'an, along with Arabic text, is about 750 pages. That means that any child could easily read it over the course of 10 years in school by reading only 75 pages a year. This should show us the rational way of integrating religious education into SSC; have an optional SSC subject on the contents of the Qur'an in Bangla translation (studied from class 1 to 10).

Additionally, memorising 750 pages should easily be possible in 2 years (it requires memorising only 1 page a day). This then tells us how to integrate madrasah education into HSC; have an optional subject on the Arabic text of the Qur'an (studied during classes 11/12).

If we look at all the other traditional madrasah subjects (Arabic, Hadith, interpretation of the Qur'an/tafsir and Islamic law), it is immediately obvious that these do not have anything like the mass appeal of the Qur'an to the guardians of schoolchildren. No one hires a maulana to get children to read the Hadith. In fact, these subjects are of little use to anyone except a family law magistrate. In that case, they should not be part of basic primary or lower secondary education (class 1-10). They should be options only in class 11 and 12.

Arabic could be particularly useful at HSC level to ensure that the many migrant workers bound for the Middle East have a decent knowledge of the local language of their employer.

But if the SSC and HSC syllabi were revised as mentioned above, all the government-funded Alia madrasahs could be turned into regular schools. All the regular government schools and colleges would also have the option of giving their students a thorough knowledge of the Qur'an, which a considerable number of families are likely to appreciate.

The religious studies teachers who would no longer be required at Alia madrasahs could simply be moved to regular schools and colleges as Qur'an teachers. And almost everyone in Bangladesh would get the same education system; except for the non-government Qawmi madrasahs and English medium schools, which are a separate matter and need to be dealt with differently.

No, I am not Fugstar

Some people seem to be spreading rumours that I am Fugstar. Can't understand why, myself, since we talk about very different things. I suppose the fact that we're both Bangladeshis who have spent some time in the UK and talk in our different ways about Islamic stuff is enough to confuse people who are too lazy to read what we've actually written and decide for themselves.

Blogging at ProgressiveIslam.org

Just a note to say that I'll be blogging at ProgressiveIslam.org from now on.

UK Muslims 'sidelined' in anti-terror policy

I somehow doubt that the Blair government will pay any heed to this voice of reason; it seems pathologically incapable of listening to anyone who links the 7/7 bombings to the Iraq invasion.

The government risks sidelining Muslim voices by ignoring the recommendations of working groups set up in the wake of last year's London terrorist attacks, a Labour MP will warn today.
In a Fabian society speech tonight, Sadiq Khan, a former member of the joint Muslim police and security taskforce set up after the July 7 bombings, will accuse the government of causing a "huge amount of frustration" within Muslim communities over its failure to implement a raft of recommendations put forward by established working groups...
The report, published before Christmas, identified "inherent injustices" in British foreign policy as a contributory factor in triggering "radical impulses" among British Muslims...
Mr Khan said group members felt "let down" as only three out of 64 recommendations had been taken forward to date...

London IslamExpo to coincide with July 7 bombing anniversary

I had seen a flyer for the London Islam Expo somewhere, but hadn't realized that it was going to coincide with the date of the Underground bombing. However, someone has certainly had a good idea:

...organisers plan to make a virtue out of the coincidence and host a commemoration service to which people injured in the bombings and victims' relatives have been invited.

Not much of a joiner, but I might go check this out.

Found: 'Non-contactable' witnesses who could free a Guantánamo detainee

The United States government said it could not find the men that Guantánamo detainee Abdullah Mujahid believes could help set him free. The Guardian found them in three days.

Three cheers for the Guardian!

US Supreme court rejects Bush terror powers

At last some measure of sanity seems to have prevailed.

In compelling the administration to comply with the Geneva convention at its war crimes trials, the court also implicitly outlawed some of the other controversial practices in the war on terror, such as torture and rendition, lawyers for the 460 detainees at Guantánamo said.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story; the US Congress can still pass new legislation allowing Bush to continue his farcical trials by military tribunal. So no one should get too hopeful just yet.

However, the story does have a pithy summary of the facts of Guantanamo which I can't resist quoting:

759 detainees have been held in Guantánamo since the US began using the camp in January 2002. 10 have been charged before US military war crimes tribunals for conspiring with al-Qaida. Officially there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since January 2002. Defence lawyers believe the number to be much higher. 18 inmates are on hunger strike, down from a total of 131. 55% of detainees have not engaged in any hostile act against the US or its allies.
60% are "associated with", 30% are "members of", 8% "fighters for" and 2% have no identified connection to a terrorist group.

This is probably why the Guardian previously reported that 90% (actually 92%: 60%+30%+2% above) of the detainees are likely to be innocent. They have probably been rounded up with no evidence other than guilt by association, which will not hold up in any real court.