arpad: (Default)
arpad ([personal profile] arpad) wrote2003-05-09 01:53 pm

More about spiritual coin

I see [suicide terrorism] as a contract between the young person and the terrorist faction to exchange life for identity.

He will die to promote the faction's terrorist objectives. In return, the faction agrees to affirm the volunteer's identity in the community as a warrior martyr

The remaining problem is one of credibility: how may such contract be enforced when one party.... dead? The mechanism that solves this problem is promotion of "living martyr". The bomber records final statement of joy at becoming a martyr in photographs, videos and letters to relatives and from then on is considered to be gloriously dead, only temporarily among the living.

full text is here :
Mark Harrison, Warwick University