this way was a tactic driven by desperation: Japan only
started to use Kamikaze suicide bombers towards the end of
1944 (and for Japan, World War II began nearly a decade
earlier, with their invasion of China in July 1937).^295 But in
that long war the Japanese Kamikaze attacks only lasted a
year or so, and only came at the end. During World War II,
our politicians and journalists didn’t go round telling us that
the Japanese were mostly peaceful and the Kamikaze
bombers were a bunch of extremists. In the end, the leaders
in the West decided that the only way to get this enemy to
surrender was to use a nuclear bomb to rain destruction
down upon them (and even then, the culture which gave us
the Kamikaze killers did not surrender until a second city
was destroyed by a nuclear bomb). Since the end of World
War II the world has undergone hundreds if not
thousands of Islamic Kamikaze missions. Even the man
who assassinated American Senator Robert Kennedy in
1968 was a Muslim, and he demanded the death penalty (as
a jihadi, he would have believed that dying for Islam would
guarantee him entry to Paradise).^296 Fifty years after Robert
Kennedyʼs assassination, and the public in the West are no
closer to having the true cause of Islamic terrorism
explained to them.
When we try to think of others, even in Asia, who are
prepared to kill themselves for political goals, we may recall
a few Buddhist monks who set fire to themselves in order to
bring about change.^297 But these Buddhists didn’t use their
suicide to kill others, as do Kamikaze bombers and Muslim
terrorists. We need to appreciate that the Islamic view of the