Sam Harris here enunciates common-sense truths that seem to elude most of the learned analysts these days, whether out of cowardice and fear or a keen eye for the profit margins. “To Profile or Not to Profile? A Debate between Sam Harris and Bruce Schneier” at Sam Harris’s site, May 25 (thanks to Hugo):
And I am not proposing a mere correlation between extremist
Islam and suicidal terrorism. I am claiming that the relationship is
causal. There are many ways to see this, and not too many ways to
credibly deny it (though Robert Pape keeps at it by skewing his data with the Tamil Tigers).The first sign of a religious cause comes from what the terrorists
say of themselves: al Qaeda and its sympathizers have not been shy about
discussing their motives in public. The second indication is what they
say when they think no one is listening. As you know, we now have a
trove of private communications among jihadists. The fine points of
theology are never far from their thoughts and regularly constrain their
actions. The 19 hijackers were under surveillance by German police for
months before September 11, 2001 (read Perfect Soldiers). Islam was all that these men appeared to care about.And we should recall how other people behave when subjected to
military occupation or political abuse. Where are the Tibetan Buddhist
suicide bombers? They have the suicide part down, because they are now
practicing a campaign of self-immolation“”which, being the
incendiary equivalent of a hunger strike, is about as far from suicide
bombing as can be conceived. And where is that long list of Palestinian Christian
suicide bombers you”ve been keeping in your desk? Now would be a good
time to produce it. As you know, Palestinian Christians suffer the same
Israeli occupation. How many have blown themselves up on a bus in Tel
Aviv? One? Two? Where, for that matter, are the Pakistani, Iraqi, or
Egyptian suicide bombers killing for the glory of Christ? These
Christian communities are regularly attacked by suicidal jihadists””why
don’t they respond with the same sort of violence? This is practically a
science experiment: We”ve got the same people, speaking the same
language, living in the same places, eating the same food””and one group
forms a death cult of aspiring martyrs and the other does not.As I”ve written elsewhere, it isn’t impossible to conceive of Tibetan
Buddhists practicing suicide bombing or of Middle Eastern Christians
practicing terrorism at the same rate as their Muslim neighbors, but
Islam offers a doctrine of jihad and martyrdom that makes such behavior
perfectly understandable. And, again, it is the reason that jihadists themselves give for their actions.