On 5 Aug 2002 at 8:02, kharin wrote:
>
> One further thing I wanted to mention: the cult of the suicide bomber.
> Certainly Europeans seem to me to excessively attempt to rationalise
> said practise into the desperate reaction of an oppressed group. The
> description is not entirely inaccurate, but would seem to ignore the
> extent to which the cult of the suicide bomber has spread throughout
> the Arab world.
>
> In fairness, said cult is something that is very difficult to comment
> on. For the most part we tend to admire those who sacrifice their
> lives for a cause; we usually tend to regard this as ennobling (of
> course, attacks on civilians have never been placed in that category,
> but said attacks are hardly specific to Palestine even if prohibited
> by the Geneva convention). I suspect that suicide bombing falls
> between two categories; that of, say, Buddhist monks immolating
> themselves and of fighters dying for a cause (if usually as a
> by-product of a struggle rather than as a specific aim). One of its
> problems is that it is less than fully engaged with the struggle in
> question; the lure of spiritual rewards in the next world and material
> rewards for families in this one makes suicide bombing more of a
> selfish lust for martyrdom than a contribution to any political
> struggle (which might be why suicide bombings seem to have very few
> effects, unless one counts provoking Israeli reprisals).
>
It is indeed a cult, and those who bite into its murderous heaven's gate
pie in the sky are duly canonized by the adherents they leave behind, a
stroking that serves as advertizing and solicitation for the next
susceptible acolyte.
> ----
> This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of
> Virus BBS.
> <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;thread
> id=25956>
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