and its general support for dictatorships, or Indian control of Kashmir. To be
sure, the jihadiagenda is often nihilistic. Terrorist acts are heinous and despicable
and more often than not, terrorism does not achieve its goals. Terrorism is
used as a weapon against a militarily superior power to attain political goals,
typically eliminating domination, and oppression. But for those with strong
religious convictions, who have been angered, denigrated and rendered pow-
erless, who are without voice or other means of political redress, it becomes
quite easy to frame political conflict in the religious terms of virtue vs infidel,
and find scriptural justifications for the use of violence.
To be sure, between the Bible and Quran, there are many justifications for
smiting the enemy, just as there are entreaties for peace, justice, compassion,
and even charity to the stranger. The belief that terrorists/insurgents are seek-
ing heaven and the services of 72 virgins as the incentive for martyrdom
operations, represents a form of Orientalism that ignores the political injus-
tice that engenders terrorism – many terrorist are not religious, or have only
recently become so. What must be noted, Huntington (1996) notwithstand-
ing, is that the goal of the jihadisis not religious war but rather overcoming
what is regarded as unjust forms of foreign or domestic domination that
leaves expressive violence as the only way to deal with the structural vio-
lence that results from domination. As Fanon (1963) put it, violence turns the
violence of the colonizer upon the colonized and back to the colonizer. Such
violence is cathartic.
But further, in a number of cases, we have seen the role of shaheeden, mar-
tyrdom operations (suicide bombings as a strategy). This is not unique to
Islam. Many Japanese, practicing Shinto, committed kamikaze (suicide) mis-
sions in WWII. The use of suicide bombers was initiated by the Tamil Tigers,
a secular Marxist group that used suicide bombings long before the tactic
was used by Muslim jihadis. Moreover, the hadith (sayings and actions of the
Prophet) specifically prohibit suicide. Life or death is determined by Allah.
Thus these operations are not seen as suicide missions but acts of martyrdom.
Yet there are certain reasons why Islamisms are conducive to martyrdom.^44
Let us first note that the basis for jihad and in turn shahadeen operations is
not due to Islam per se, but the consequences of Islam’s earlier decline and
subsequent barriers to modernity from both within and without. Facing dom-
324 • Lauren Langman
(^44) Of course not all martyrs have been Muslim.