Précis ofThe Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers

Abstract

For years, scholars have claimed that suicide terrorists are not suicidal, but rather psychologically normal individuals inspired to sacrifice their lives for an ideological cause, due to a range of social and situational factors. I agree that suicide terrorists are shaped by their contexts, as we all are. However, I argue that these scholars went too far. In The Myth of Martyrdom: What Really Drives Suicide Bombers, Rampage Shooters, and Other Self-Destructive Killers, I take the opposing view, based on my in-depth analyses of suicide attackers from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America; attackers who were male, female, young, old, Islamic, and Christian; attackers who carried out the most deadly and the least deadly strikes. I present evidence that in terms of their behavior and psychology, suicide terrorists are much like others who commit conventional suicides, murder-suicides, or unconventional suicides where mental health problems, personal crises, coercion, fear of an approaching enemy, or hidden self-destructive urges play a major role. I also identify critical differences between suicide terrorists and those who have genuinely sacrificed their lives for a greater good. By better understanding suicide terrorists, experts in the behavioral and brain sciences may be able to pioneer exciting new breakthroughs in security countermeasures and suicide prevention. And even more ambitiously, by examining these profound extremes of the human condition, perhaps we can more accurately grasp the power of the human survival instinct among those who are actually psychologically healthy.

The Rise and Spread of Suicide Bombing

“…One recent claim concerning an individual psychological motivation for suicide bombing comes from Lankford (2011Lankford ( , 2014. He argues that suicide bombers demonstrate psychological tendencies associated with suicide, although difficulties in finding enough evidence to actually psychologically evaluate suicide bombers post hoc makes drawing inferences difficult.…”

Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction

“…83 Many offenders, however, who manage to shoot to death four or more victims are not psychotic or hallucinatory; consequently, they often have not had significant interaction with either the mental health or law enforcement community. 84 Nonetheless, following mass shootings, policymakers often propose providing increased funding to bolster a federally maintained computer file in the National Instant Criminal History Background Check System, in which the FBI maintains records on persons who are considered "mentally defective," or too "mentally incompetent" or "mentally unstable" to be trusted with firearms.…”

Terrorism as Gravitational Attraction

“…81À97). More recently, Lankford (2013) proposes that most jihadi suicide terrorists are actually suicidal and that jihadi ideology allows them to present their destructive tendencies as serving a noble cause. Others remain skeptical, however, and believe that Lankford's evidence is "questionable at best" (Horgan, 2014b, p. 32).…”