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Il terrorismo suicida: Una chiave per comprenderne le ragioni
C'è davvero una grande differenza tra un soldato in guerra e un terrorista suicida? Quale tipo di violenza è considerata "legittima" e perché? Con un'analisi originale e provocatoria di uno dei fenomeni più complessi del mondo contemporaneo, Asad esamina il terrorismo suicida da punti di vista inediti, pungolando il lettore a prendere distanza da risposte preconfezionate al terrorismo, alla guerra e agli attacchi suicidi. L'autore Talal Asad è professore di Antropologia al Graduate Center of the City University di New York.
118 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Talal Asad
19 books227 followersTalal Asad (born 1932) is an anthropologist at the City University of New York.
Asad has made important theoretical contributions to Post-Colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and Ritual studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of Secularism. Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such. By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed."
Asad has made important theoretical contributions to Post-Colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and Ritual studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of Secularism. Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such. By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
September 23, 2018
This is less a book strictly about the phenomenon of suicide bombing than a critique of the modern liberal state and its relationship to violence and religion. Civilized modern nation states have developed a highly advanced capacity to justify and rationalize their own violence, using a mixture of justifications and emotional conceits to render acts of mass murder, torture and the wholesale destruction of other societies as somehow morally defensible. It is the art of "rendering inhuman acts humane" that liberals have perfected and continue to employ in service of their communities. At the same time, they have retained a capacity for horror at the smaller acts of murder committed by their ostensible barbarian nemeses, particularly the act of suicide bombing.
It strikes me that for a society in which worship of the Self has slowly become the default ideology, the willful destruction of the self (along with the murder of others) entailed in suicide bombing suggests more than a bit of blasphemy. Asad argues that since the suicide bomber escapes the framework of crime, punishment and redemption that is core to post-Christian society and suggests a break with the mental interiority that liberalism is supposed to create in a person, it generates the unique horror in Westerners that it does, particularly when Westerners are the targets of the violence.
In the end modern liberal violence, which includes in itself the justification for the suicidal use of nuclear weapons, boils down to the defense of the community against outsiders at all costs and potentially any price, as well as an inculcated hatred and dehumanization of the Other in order to make such violence possible. In that regard the mechanics of liberal violence are not so different from that which makes suicide bombing possible - a suspension of the "normal rules" governing violence, whether radical Islamic or liberal, that is actually permanent given that conflict is permanent. As Asad suggests, the "practical" extremism of suicide bombing may even be said to belong to the liberal tradition, given that traditional religious traditions specifically impose rules that forbid the transgressing of laws, even in the name of defending ones community in an emergency.
This is a tightly argued book that is academic in tone, but contains many provocative insights.
It strikes me that for a society in which worship of the Self has slowly become the default ideology, the willful destruction of the self (along with the murder of others) entailed in suicide bombing suggests more than a bit of blasphemy. Asad argues that since the suicide bomber escapes the framework of crime, punishment and redemption that is core to post-Christian society and suggests a break with the mental interiority that liberalism is supposed to create in a person, it generates the unique horror in Westerners that it does, particularly when Westerners are the targets of the violence.
In the end modern liberal violence, which includes in itself the justification for the suicidal use of nuclear weapons, boils down to the defense of the community against outsiders at all costs and potentially any price, as well as an inculcated hatred and dehumanization of the Other in order to make such violence possible. In that regard the mechanics of liberal violence are not so different from that which makes suicide bombing possible - a suspension of the "normal rules" governing violence, whether radical Islamic or liberal, that is actually permanent given that conflict is permanent. As Asad suggests, the "practical" extremism of suicide bombing may even be said to belong to the liberal tradition, given that traditional religious traditions specifically impose rules that forbid the transgressing of laws, even in the name of defending ones community in an emergency.
This is a tightly argued book that is academic in tone, but contains many provocative insights.
February 5, 2010
I made the mistake of not writing my review immediately after finishing the book and this makes my words a bit hazy. But let me see what I can do about this.
Two general impressions: this is a very serious book that will require my rereading it; and, Asad's erudition is not accompanied by an agile clarity in language.
Primarily through Michael Walzer, Asad contrasts just war theory with how liberal write about suicide terrorists. Asad draws out the similarities between official actions of soldiers and suicide bombers and concludes:
"it is not cruelty that matters in the distinction between terrorists and armies at war, still less that threat each poses to entire ways of life, but their civilizational status. What is really at stake is not a clash of civilizations...but the fight of civilization against the uncivilized. In that fight, all civilized rules may be set aside. Captain Colby observes of war with savage enemies: "If a few 'non-combatants'...are killed, the loss of life is probably far less than might have been sustained in prolonged operations of a more polite character. The inhuman act thus becomes actually humane, for it shortens the conflict and prevents the shedding of more excessive quantities of blood." Clearly, Colby thinks the savage is incapable of such acts of humanity, and he is probably right. But what is especially intriguing is the ingenuity of liberal discourse in rendering inhuman acts humane. This is certainly something that savage discourse cannot achieve." (37-8)
There are two wars: one with guns and one with words. Civilized liberals win both. But, Asad is interested in how far liberals will twist meanings to get themselves to believe that civilization's killing is justifiable, ethical, acceptable, and theoretically plausible. Asad's point is to get us to note the contortions necessary in this double victory.
The liberal argument says Asad is as follows: "that some humans have to be treated violently in order that humanity can be redeemed" (63). Sven Lindqvist says something similar when he argues that progress presupposes genocide. Following Warren Montag we could call liberalism a kind of necro-philosophy. Killing for the sake of a greater good, says Asad, is not limited to the motivation of suicide bombers, it is also at the heart of liberalism. If so, what then explains the horror of liberals towards suicide bombers? This is what Asad tries to explore.
Another long quote:
"In the suicide bomber's act, perhaps what horrifies is not just dying and killing (or killing by dying) but the violent appearance of something that is normally disregarded in secular modernity: the limitless pursuit of freedom, the illusion of an uncoerced interiority that can withstand the forces of institutional disciplines. Liberalism, of course, disapproves of the violent exercise of freedom outside the frame of the law. But the law itself is founded by and continuously depends on coercive violence. If modern war seeks to found or to defend a free political community with its own law, can one say that suicide terrorism (like a suicidal nuclear strike) belongs in this sense to liberalism? The question may, I think, be more significant than our comforting attempts at distinguishing the good conscience of just warriors from the evil acts of terrorists." (91-2)
My translation: Liberals fear the horror that they know all too well; their horror at suicide bombing is the return of liberalism's repressed.
Quote:
"In the long perspective of human history, massacres are not new. But there is something special about the fact that the West, having set up international law, then finds reasons why it cannot be followed in particular circumstances. I find this more disturbing than the sordid violence of individual terrorists." 94
And:
"Today, cruelty is an indispensable technique for maintaining a particular kind of international order, an order in which the lives of some people are less valuable than the lives of others and therefore their deaths less disturbing." 94
And here are the last two sentences in this book:
"Good arguments (and bad) are available to anyone who wants to justify the conduct of insurgents or soldiers, of armies on the battlefield or of torturers in state detention centers. Because in our secular world all these forms of violent conduct are thought ultimately to secure a kind of collective immortality -- what some scholars call civil religion and others pseudoreligion." 96
My translation: Liberalism will not admit that its attempts to secularize itself and to severe the ties from its own Christian origins, leave liberalism looking less secular and more like a religion that cannot come to terms with itself. Soldiers and suicide bombers die and kill for the same reason, because they believe their sacrifice is necessary and that their sacrifice will bring them a kind of immortality.
This is a powerful and challenging book that must be read more than once. It is easily the most sophisticated thing I have read on suicide bombers. The companion piece for it would be Ghasan Hage's article, "Sometime we are all Enthusiasm."
Two general impressions: this is a very serious book that will require my rereading it; and, Asad's erudition is not accompanied by an agile clarity in language.
Primarily through Michael Walzer, Asad contrasts just war theory with how liberal write about suicide terrorists. Asad draws out the similarities between official actions of soldiers and suicide bombers and concludes:
"it is not cruelty that matters in the distinction between terrorists and armies at war, still less that threat each poses to entire ways of life, but their civilizational status. What is really at stake is not a clash of civilizations...but the fight of civilization against the uncivilized. In that fight, all civilized rules may be set aside. Captain Colby observes of war with savage enemies: "If a few 'non-combatants'...are killed, the loss of life is probably far less than might have been sustained in prolonged operations of a more polite character. The inhuman act thus becomes actually humane, for it shortens the conflict and prevents the shedding of more excessive quantities of blood." Clearly, Colby thinks the savage is incapable of such acts of humanity, and he is probably right. But what is especially intriguing is the ingenuity of liberal discourse in rendering inhuman acts humane. This is certainly something that savage discourse cannot achieve." (37-8)
There are two wars: one with guns and one with words. Civilized liberals win both. But, Asad is interested in how far liberals will twist meanings to get themselves to believe that civilization's killing is justifiable, ethical, acceptable, and theoretically plausible. Asad's point is to get us to note the contortions necessary in this double victory.
The liberal argument says Asad is as follows: "that some humans have to be treated violently in order that humanity can be redeemed" (63). Sven Lindqvist says something similar when he argues that progress presupposes genocide. Following Warren Montag we could call liberalism a kind of necro-philosophy. Killing for the sake of a greater good, says Asad, is not limited to the motivation of suicide bombers, it is also at the heart of liberalism. If so, what then explains the horror of liberals towards suicide bombers? This is what Asad tries to explore.
Another long quote:
"In the suicide bomber's act, perhaps what horrifies is not just dying and killing (or killing by dying) but the violent appearance of something that is normally disregarded in secular modernity: the limitless pursuit of freedom, the illusion of an uncoerced interiority that can withstand the forces of institutional disciplines. Liberalism, of course, disapproves of the violent exercise of freedom outside the frame of the law. But the law itself is founded by and continuously depends on coercive violence. If modern war seeks to found or to defend a free political community with its own law, can one say that suicide terrorism (like a suicidal nuclear strike) belongs in this sense to liberalism? The question may, I think, be more significant than our comforting attempts at distinguishing the good conscience of just warriors from the evil acts of terrorists." (91-2)
My translation: Liberals fear the horror that they know all too well; their horror at suicide bombing is the return of liberalism's repressed.
Quote:
"In the long perspective of human history, massacres are not new. But there is something special about the fact that the West, having set up international law, then finds reasons why it cannot be followed in particular circumstances. I find this more disturbing than the sordid violence of individual terrorists." 94
And:
"Today, cruelty is an indispensable technique for maintaining a particular kind of international order, an order in which the lives of some people are less valuable than the lives of others and therefore their deaths less disturbing." 94
And here are the last two sentences in this book:
"Good arguments (and bad) are available to anyone who wants to justify the conduct of insurgents or soldiers, of armies on the battlefield or of torturers in state detention centers. Because in our secular world all these forms of violent conduct are thought ultimately to secure a kind of collective immortality -- what some scholars call civil religion and others pseudoreligion." 96
My translation: Liberalism will not admit that its attempts to secularize itself and to severe the ties from its own Christian origins, leave liberalism looking less secular and more like a religion that cannot come to terms with itself. Soldiers and suicide bombers die and kill for the same reason, because they believe their sacrifice is necessary and that their sacrifice will bring them a kind of immortality.
This is a powerful and challenging book that must be read more than once. It is easily the most sophisticated thing I have read on suicide bombers. The companion piece for it would be Ghasan Hage's article, "Sometime we are all Enthusiasm."
January 22, 2016
The secular horror at suicide bombing but fascination for "just war" has, I believe, never been problematized before Talal Asad. This whole book is based on Asad's thesis that secular morality has a Judaeo-Christian pedigree. "Horror" is a turbulent state of being triggered by the loss of identity. Suicide bombing, in destroying the attacker and the victims' bodies(thus rendering them unrecognizable), in dissolving the sacrosanct line between crime-punishment and loss-restitution, dismantles man's sense of identity, and triggers the horror that we see in Western discourse on Suicide Bombing.
As well as being interested in why suicide bombing is more horrible than nationalistic "just wars" which are systematically homicidal and destructive(such as invasion of Afghanistan-Iraq, Vietnam war), Asad also discusses at length why he thinks the Western attribution of Jihadist emotions to suicide bombings is wrong. He makes an interesting observation that the Palestinian concept of "Shahadah"(martyrdom) doesn't mean willfully killing yourself in war. Anyone who has been gratuitously killed in war can be deemed a "Shaheed"(martyr). This attribution also finds support in Islamic scriptures. In making this observation, Asad based his discussion solely on the context of brutish Israeli occupation and frail Palestinian resistance. What do you do when the odds are so stacked against you that you can't win the war? You dismantle yourself and take the enemy with you, striking horror in their hearts.
But suicide bombing is not restricted to the Middle East and former colonies alone. In South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, Islamic militants take civilians hostage in the full knowledge that they won't survive the State response. This is a kind of suicide attack as well, with vastly different motives than one who is helplessly fighting a superior occupying army. No study of terrorism is complete without the extensive study of terrorism in conservative South Asian Muslim countries where youth have not been alienated by an Islamophobic State(in contrast, the State is avowedly partisan towards Islam) apparatus, where privileged children of elite bureacucrats-politicians-businessmen and army personnel desert the high life and fight to establish what they perceive to be an Islamic Caliphate. A study of Islamic terrorism must also expound how the various Islamic discourses(like any other theological discourses) construct an infidel "Other" and impel its practitioners to assimilate or annihilate this "Other". In other words, Edward Said's study of "Orientalism" should also be applied to theological discourses.
And this is where an otherwise excellent book by Talal Asad is glaringly lacking.
As well as being interested in why suicide bombing is more horrible than nationalistic "just wars" which are systematically homicidal and destructive(such as invasion of Afghanistan-Iraq, Vietnam war), Asad also discusses at length why he thinks the Western attribution of Jihadist emotions to suicide bombings is wrong. He makes an interesting observation that the Palestinian concept of "Shahadah"(martyrdom) doesn't mean willfully killing yourself in war. Anyone who has been gratuitously killed in war can be deemed a "Shaheed"(martyr). This attribution also finds support in Islamic scriptures. In making this observation, Asad based his discussion solely on the context of brutish Israeli occupation and frail Palestinian resistance. What do you do when the odds are so stacked against you that you can't win the war? You dismantle yourself and take the enemy with you, striking horror in their hearts.
But suicide bombing is not restricted to the Middle East and former colonies alone. In South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, Islamic militants take civilians hostage in the full knowledge that they won't survive the State response. This is a kind of suicide attack as well, with vastly different motives than one who is helplessly fighting a superior occupying army. No study of terrorism is complete without the extensive study of terrorism in conservative South Asian Muslim countries where youth have not been alienated by an Islamophobic State(in contrast, the State is avowedly partisan towards Islam) apparatus, where privileged children of elite bureacucrats-politicians-businessmen and army personnel desert the high life and fight to establish what they perceive to be an Islamic Caliphate. A study of Islamic terrorism must also expound how the various Islamic discourses(like any other theological discourses) construct an infidel "Other" and impel its practitioners to assimilate or annihilate this "Other". In other words, Edward Said's study of "Orientalism" should also be applied to theological discourses.
And this is where an otherwise excellent book by Talal Asad is glaringly lacking.
Read
June 16, 2013A touchy topic, a forceful analysis. It's not an apology for suicide bombing by any means-- rather, it's an analysis of what they are, why they happen, and why they horrify us Western media consumers more than other forms of violence. It forces the Western reader to ask some rather rough questions, and in an era where we are told again and again that "anything goes" in the social sciences and humanities, it's refreshing to hear that there are still big social ideas and big issues that we're not addressing. Books like these that deserve to be read by a wider audience.
October 13, 2023
A really phenomenal work. Asad takes on a difficult topic with conceptual and analytic precision. At the heart of Asad’s analysis of religious suicide bombing is the recognition that however much we try to distinguish between “morally good” and “morally evil” ways of killing, our attempts are beset with contradictions and those contradictions are at the heart of modern subjectivity. To be clear, Asad is absolutely precise that this is not a defense of suicide bombing. However, it absolutely is a recognition that Western liberal attempts to chalk their wars up as “just” and so called terrorist actions as “horrific/unjust” simply don’t add up.
A few of the highlights-
-Asad demolishes the ridiculous thesis that terrorism can be chalked up to a “clash of civilizations” motivated simply by religious fundamentalism. As Asad shows through precise historical analysis- there has never been, and there are still no, self contained societies to which fixed civilizations values correspond. There has always been, and still is, an interpenetration of economic, political, and ideological powers between the Middle East and Europe.
-The abstract language of just war simply does not match the reality of state practices. Whether it’s Abu Gharib torture, Dresden Fire Bombing, Colonial slaughter of the “uncivilized,” the direct killing of civilians in Hiroshima, Western liberal democracies have always operated by a logic that is indistinguishable conceptually from so called terrorists. Both are able to appeal to concepts of necessity, defense of ways of life, etc.
-the Western “secular” democratic nation state unleashes hitherto unseen technological ability to kill and destroy. What Asad so powerfully shows is that what makes this unique is the nation states ability to intertwine life and death, cruelty and compassion. Drawing on a genealogy of medieval Christian theology, Asad convincingly argues that the modern nation state still draws upon the cult of sacrifice, blood, and death (think of the value of dying for your country, or the outrage at NFL players kneeling during the anthem). So there is this bizarre contradiction where the modern nation state claims to be a progressive secular force of freedom, humanitarian values, democracy, etc. and yet still finds ways to justify massive levels of killing, terror, assassination, torture, and constant disregard of international law.
It was by happenstance that I started reading this with a group of good friends right before the current conflict in Israel/Palestine, but man it couldn’t be more relevant as we see the ongoing barbarism of Israel towards Palestinian civilians, the disregard of international law, and the manufacturing of consent in media nationally and internationally.
A few of the highlights-
-Asad demolishes the ridiculous thesis that terrorism can be chalked up to a “clash of civilizations” motivated simply by religious fundamentalism. As Asad shows through precise historical analysis- there has never been, and there are still no, self contained societies to which fixed civilizations values correspond. There has always been, and still is, an interpenetration of economic, political, and ideological powers between the Middle East and Europe.
-The abstract language of just war simply does not match the reality of state practices. Whether it’s Abu Gharib torture, Dresden Fire Bombing, Colonial slaughter of the “uncivilized,” the direct killing of civilians in Hiroshima, Western liberal democracies have always operated by a logic that is indistinguishable conceptually from so called terrorists. Both are able to appeal to concepts of necessity, defense of ways of life, etc.
-the Western “secular” democratic nation state unleashes hitherto unseen technological ability to kill and destroy. What Asad so powerfully shows is that what makes this unique is the nation states ability to intertwine life and death, cruelty and compassion. Drawing on a genealogy of medieval Christian theology, Asad convincingly argues that the modern nation state still draws upon the cult of sacrifice, blood, and death (think of the value of dying for your country, or the outrage at NFL players kneeling during the anthem). So there is this bizarre contradiction where the modern nation state claims to be a progressive secular force of freedom, humanitarian values, democracy, etc. and yet still finds ways to justify massive levels of killing, terror, assassination, torture, and constant disregard of international law.
It was by happenstance that I started reading this with a group of good friends right before the current conflict in Israel/Palestine, but man it couldn’t be more relevant as we see the ongoing barbarism of Israel towards Palestinian civilians, the disregard of international law, and the manufacturing of consent in media nationally and internationally.
May 26, 2021
I cannot for the life of me understand why I was not assigned this at any point during my undergrad. This seems to me to be one of the most cogent indictments of liberalism and human rights discourse in the West today. Although published in 2007 this book remains as and more relevant than ever. Just a couple banger quotes from Asad:
"In a liberal democracy, all citizens and the government that represents them are bound together by mutual obligations, and the actions of the duly elected government are the actions of all its citizens. When the government acts against suspected terrorists and inferior military opponents, everone is (rightly or wrongly) involved in the space of violence. There may be criticism by particular citizens of the government's actions on moral or legal grounds, but until these are conceded constitutionally by the government, all citizens remain bound to the space of violence that its representative government inhabits" (29)
"More remarkable than the use of torture by a US regime that is said to be undermining the rule of law in several respects is the absence of any sustained public outrage in the democratic societies of the West...In a war against barbarians, the use of cruelty has always been more acceptable than it has been against civilized enemy populations." (34)
"For many, this seems to be vindicated by the claim that "terrorism has become bloodier," as it perpetrates "large-scale indiscriminate violence." At the same time, it is claimed that in this war against an uncivilized opponent, the use of increasingly sophisticated information technology has allowed the military to identify its targets more accurately and thus to minimize collateral damage. What is certain is that by fighting the enemy at a distance, it has been able to minimize its own casualties. Unchallengeable air supremacy and precision weaponry make virtual impunity of the pilot possible. Furthermore, domestic public opinion in liberal democracies is critical of excessive war casualties in its armies. This humanitarian concern means that soldiers need no longer go to war expecting to dies but only to kill. In itself, this destabilizes the conventional understanding of war as an activity in which human dying and killing are exchanged. The psychological effect of this unequal killing is mitigated by the fact that there is a long-standing tradition of fighting against militarily and ethnically inferior peoples in which it is proper that the latter die in much larger numbers. Since they do not value human life as the civilized do, they will expose themselves to greater risks, even undertake suicidal operations, and therefore suffer more casualties." (35)
"Violence, I argue, is not only a continuous feature of...[the liberal political] community. The absolute right to defend oneself by force becomes, in the context of industrial capitalism, the freedom to use violence globally: when social difference is seen as backwardness and backwardness as a source of danger to civilized society, self-defense calls for a project of reordering the world in which the rules of civilized warfare cannot be allowed to stand in the way." (62)
"In a liberal democracy, all citizens and the government that represents them are bound together by mutual obligations, and the actions of the duly elected government are the actions of all its citizens. When the government acts against suspected terrorists and inferior military opponents, everone is (rightly or wrongly) involved in the space of violence. There may be criticism by particular citizens of the government's actions on moral or legal grounds, but until these are conceded constitutionally by the government, all citizens remain bound to the space of violence that its representative government inhabits" (29)
"More remarkable than the use of torture by a US regime that is said to be undermining the rule of law in several respects is the absence of any sustained public outrage in the democratic societies of the West...In a war against barbarians, the use of cruelty has always been more acceptable than it has been against civilized enemy populations." (34)
"For many, this seems to be vindicated by the claim that "terrorism has become bloodier," as it perpetrates "large-scale indiscriminate violence." At the same time, it is claimed that in this war against an uncivilized opponent, the use of increasingly sophisticated information technology has allowed the military to identify its targets more accurately and thus to minimize collateral damage. What is certain is that by fighting the enemy at a distance, it has been able to minimize its own casualties. Unchallengeable air supremacy and precision weaponry make virtual impunity of the pilot possible. Furthermore, domestic public opinion in liberal democracies is critical of excessive war casualties in its armies. This humanitarian concern means that soldiers need no longer go to war expecting to dies but only to kill. In itself, this destabilizes the conventional understanding of war as an activity in which human dying and killing are exchanged. The psychological effect of this unequal killing is mitigated by the fact that there is a long-standing tradition of fighting against militarily and ethnically inferior peoples in which it is proper that the latter die in much larger numbers. Since they do not value human life as the civilized do, they will expose themselves to greater risks, even undertake suicidal operations, and therefore suffer more casualties." (35)
"Violence, I argue, is not only a continuous feature of...[the liberal political] community. The absolute right to defend oneself by force becomes, in the context of industrial capitalism, the freedom to use violence globally: when social difference is seen as backwardness and backwardness as a source of danger to civilized society, self-defense calls for a project of reordering the world in which the rules of civilized warfare cannot be allowed to stand in the way." (62)
perhaps-i-will-read-hard-to-say
April 5, 2016Judith Butler says this book asks: "Why do we feel horror and moral repulsion in the face of suicide bombing when we do not always feel the same way in the face of state-sponsored violence?" "...our moral responses - responses that first take form as affect - are tacitly regulated by certain kinds of interpretive frameworks. His thesis is that we feel more horror and moral revulsion in the face of lives lost under certain conditions than under certain others. If, for instance, someone kills or is killed in war, and the war is state-sponsored, and we invest the state with legitimacy, then we consider the death lamentable, sad, and unfortunate, but not radically unjust. And yet if the violence is perpetrated by insurgency groups regarded as illegitimate, then our affect invariably changes..." (Frames of War, p. 41)
October 13, 2023
‘…there is something special about the fact that the West, having set up international law, then finds reasons why it cannot be followed in particular circumstances. I find this more disturbing than the sordid violence of individual terrorists. It seems to me that there is no moral difference between the horror inflicted by state armies (especially if those armies belong to powerful states that are unaccountable to in- ternational law) and the horror inflicted by insurgents.’ (pg. 94)
a pretty great work. a book that could just as easily meandered around ‘motive’ and ‘intention’ and ‘consequences’ instead takes the (to me) much better path of critically engaging with suicide bombing as a phenomenon that is always already tangled up in larger social phenomena and shared identities/categories (and their inherent contradictions). he shows just war theory to be the absurdity that it is (along with other absurdities like international and humanitarian law^). a deeply foucauldian analysis, though michel is only suggested through asad’s use of his concepts: technologies, discipline, power, knowledge, subjectivization etc. appear constantly throughout.
israel/palestine is referred to throughout. even if they weren’t mentioned by name, it would be clear contemporary example to think with. pretty bizarre to start reading this then days later the conflict began it’s new ugly chapter.
a pretty great work. a book that could just as easily meandered around ‘motive’ and ‘intention’ and ‘consequences’ instead takes the (to me) much better path of critically engaging with suicide bombing as a phenomenon that is always already tangled up in larger social phenomena and shared identities/categories (and their inherent contradictions). he shows just war theory to be the absurdity that it is (along with other absurdities like international and humanitarian law^). a deeply foucauldian analysis, though michel is only suggested through asad’s use of his concepts: technologies, discipline, power, knowledge, subjectivization etc. appear constantly throughout.
israel/palestine is referred to throughout. even if they weren’t mentioned by name, it would be clear contemporary example to think with. pretty bizarre to start reading this then days later the conflict began it’s new ugly chapter.
September 22, 2016
Well-written, thought-provoking, incisive. It shakes up much of what's taken-for-granted in liberal thought and in public discourse on the "war on terror."
The first chapter is both a critique of liberal theories of war in general and a deflation of Walzer's facile notion of "just war," in particular. The second chapter debunks several common Islamophobic myths about a "culture of death." The third--most ambitious and most in need of elaboration--interrogates what is about suicide attacks strikes Western audiences with horror. It suggests an explanation in, among other things, the combination of the attacks' intimate invasion of everyday life, the disappearance of the criminal but not the crime, and the clash between such a suicide attack and the redemptive suicide of Jesus's crucifixion.
While, at least the last chapter begs for further elaboration and development, perhaps it can be forgiven, given that this is a series of lectures delivered at a critical theory conference.
The first chapter is both a critique of liberal theories of war in general and a deflation of Walzer's facile notion of "just war," in particular. The second chapter debunks several common Islamophobic myths about a "culture of death." The third--most ambitious and most in need of elaboration--interrogates what is about suicide attacks strikes Western audiences with horror. It suggests an explanation in, among other things, the combination of the attacks' intimate invasion of everyday life, the disappearance of the criminal but not the crime, and the clash between such a suicide attack and the redemptive suicide of Jesus's crucifixion.
While, at least the last chapter begs for further elaboration and development, perhaps it can be forgiven, given that this is a series of lectures delivered at a critical theory conference.
December 25, 2018
Like all of Asad's work, it's a good idea to skim the parts that seem off-topic or uninteresting and focus on the parts that you really want to understand. I'm definitely going to have to give it another read. An interesting point: All suicide attacks - including ones by secular people in other parts of the world - are almost always about protesting military occupation, not religion. Some people ALSO have religion as a motive, or as a justification, but they're primarily about military occupation.
May 31, 2008
I very much enjoyed this book. It gave me a whole new outlook on the topic of suicide bombing. Asad makes a whole bunch of interesting conclusions and criticises the liberal moralising on the topic. I especially liked the last chapter about horror at suicide terrorism where he weaves in some of his knowledge about Islamic and Christian belief.. This is a short read and there’s also a nice end discussion or epilogue you might want to read through at first if you’re new to the topic.
March 7, 2020
“ it is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes”
What a powerful sentence, what a powerful book!
It questions and challenges so many assumptions.
Read it. Read it please.
What a powerful sentence, what a powerful book!
It questions and challenges so many assumptions.
Read it. Read it please.
April 30, 2024
A glimmer of moral and theoretical clarity that reminds, despite all appearance, that the darkness is not total. Free Palestine!
June 3, 2016
I remember in the aftermath of the white supremacist attack on the AME church in Charleston how my social media feed devolved into individuals identifying the attack as a terrorist attack and demanding that the media call it as such. One of the articulated feelings can be paraphrased as "white people can be terrorists too." I strongly disliked this line of reasoning. I found it baffling that (ostensibly progressive) individuals would want to compare people like Nasrallah or Ben Bella to the shooter (his name eludes me). This book, by interrogating the Western understanding of terrorism and, in particular, suicide bombing, articulates much of my disquiet.
The text has three main lines of inquiry. First, how are Western notions of terrorism constructed in contrast with Western notions of warfare (in particular, just war). Second, why is the West fixated on determining the motives of suicide bombers. Third, what underlies the West's overwhelming sense of horror at suicide bombing.
Asad argues that underlying the discourse on terrorism and suicide bombing is, essentially, the colonial discourse mutated. Terrorism is constructed as inherently evil and divorced from historico-political contexts because it is the actions of barbaric (read non-white) savages. The suicide bombers actions must have some pathological motive because a reason as simple as the bomber wished to kill individuals he/she viewed as his/her community's enemy in a particular moment in time requires the Western audience to understand why they are viewed negatively. The horror at the suicide bomber is rooted in how the savage/barbarian/brown bomber transgresses Western rituals surrounding death, political participation, sacrifice, and life.
Throughout the analysis, Asad aptly demonstrates the convolutions and contortions Western thinkers go into to place terrorism on a pedestal of evil while simultaneously excusing indiscriminate bombings, plantation slavery, and other forms of state-sanctioned violence that dwarf in magnitude and horror any individual bombing. These contortions are merely the newest manifestation of the colonial discourse wherein political grievances of colonized subjects must be expressed in a tame, ordered way, and, when they do not, are immediately categorized as acts of savagery in which the unruly bodies of brown/black/yellow/red peoples disrupt the ordered life of Western civilization. The flip-side of this fixation on the savagery/horror of suicide bombing is, of course, an erasure of the violence, both historical and contemporary, that undergirds the founding of the West and the modern nation state.
The text has three main lines of inquiry. First, how are Western notions of terrorism constructed in contrast with Western notions of warfare (in particular, just war). Second, why is the West fixated on determining the motives of suicide bombers. Third, what underlies the West's overwhelming sense of horror at suicide bombing.
Asad argues that underlying the discourse on terrorism and suicide bombing is, essentially, the colonial discourse mutated. Terrorism is constructed as inherently evil and divorced from historico-political contexts because it is the actions of barbaric (read non-white) savages. The suicide bombers actions must have some pathological motive because a reason as simple as the bomber wished to kill individuals he/she viewed as his/her community's enemy in a particular moment in time requires the Western audience to understand why they are viewed negatively. The horror at the suicide bomber is rooted in how the savage/barbarian/brown bomber transgresses Western rituals surrounding death, political participation, sacrifice, and life.
Throughout the analysis, Asad aptly demonstrates the convolutions and contortions Western thinkers go into to place terrorism on a pedestal of evil while simultaneously excusing indiscriminate bombings, plantation slavery, and other forms of state-sanctioned violence that dwarf in magnitude and horror any individual bombing. These contortions are merely the newest manifestation of the colonial discourse wherein political grievances of colonized subjects must be expressed in a tame, ordered way, and, when they do not, are immediately categorized as acts of savagery in which the unruly bodies of brown/black/yellow/red peoples disrupt the ordered life of Western civilization. The flip-side of this fixation on the savagery/horror of suicide bombing is, of course, an erasure of the violence, both historical and contemporary, that undergirds the founding of the West and the modern nation state.
April 10, 2025
Jumps around a lot, a good introduction to the subject. Simple read, can finish in a few hours.
April 3, 2019
honestly i only read this because i love Asad’s work on defining “religion” and “anthropologies of secularism” and wanted more but this was all the library had by him. it is a very succinct argument/exploration of how the west views and interprets “terror” and suicide bombing. asad shines light on issues we tend to deem beyond understanding and unworthy of explanation, like suicide bombing, while at the same time we rationalize and justify mass drone killings that are massively more destructive than suicide bombings and just as terrorizing. asad examines the environment and circumstances that can lead to suicide bombing and refutes ideas that it is somehow a part of islam or jihad.
April 5, 2023
I was recommended this book by a professor after reading the Qur'an. My main question pertained to how Suicide Bombing was justified by the bombers within the religion of Islam itself. This book is a short read, yet highly informative, thought provocking, and written by and expert in the field. Some of the other reviews are long winded, so I will simply say "get the book". One can read it within a few days (could most likely read faster but the material takes some mental processing in my opinion) and will walk away more informed on the nuances of Islam and reasons/why Suicide Bombing takes place to begin with.
February 2, 2012
Its a very interesting book. Talal Asad's questioning of public perceptions about suicide bombers, the supposed war on terror and the presumed conflict of civilizations engages you to think and critically consider the loosely used terms of our life beyond 9/11 and gives a refreshings insight into the culture of death that surrounds the 21st century discourse on terrorism.
July 16, 2008
A mirror directed back at Western liberal society. A must read not just for its polemics, but because Asad makes you feel uncomfortable with his skepticism, forcing you not to empathize with a suicide attacker, but to realize the blatent contradictions when we try to examine 'why'.
May 6, 2009
Not my kinda topic, but I read it for a book club thing. Not the easiest of reads, but you take away some key points. A must read for anyone speaks on behalf of this topic, or even anyone who has a strong opinion about it.
December 14, 2017
I actually really enjoyed this.
It added new perspective to everything we've been taught since 9/11 and to everything I've learned this semester.
it flipped a lot of assumptions of their heads and its definitely worth a read, as its only 150 pages and thought provoking.
It added new perspective to everything we've been taught since 9/11 and to everything I've learned this semester.
it flipped a lot of assumptions of their heads and its definitely worth a read, as its only 150 pages and thought provoking.
December 23, 2007
talal asad is the man. simply put. you must read this.
February 6, 2020
This book was recommended to me by a very liberal (leftist) friend who also (coincidentally) happens to be a professor at Yale, so one can assume that Asad's work is fairly well-received in the academic community. Nonetheless, I will attempt my own perhaps rather amateurish but still sincere critique. Asad essentially makes a terrorist's argument, not dissimilar to the argument floated by Charles Manson at his own trial in an attempt to justify his own complicity in the murder of innocents (the Tate-Labianca killings). Asad essentially argues that “the brutality of a state army and of a terrorist group have much in common[.]" (Asad, p. 36) Similarly to Manson, Asad wishes to sweep away the entirety of law or specifically international law in Asad's case, as some sort of con job by the West. Manson too sought to erase society's distinctions, particularly of guilt or innocence, justifying his own acts by pointing to the acts of the U.S. government in Vietnam - a "Tu Quoque" or "you too" argument. Judging by my own perception of the reputation of this book among the current intelligentsia, and comparing it to Manson's reception among the previous crop of elite pseudo-intellectual terrorists such as the Weather Underground, this type of logical fallacy is still quite fashionable among well-respected members of global society, though without giving any credit or even acknowledgement to Manson. As Asad writes it:
"All constitutional states rest on a space of violence that they call legitimate. In a liberal democracy, all citizens and the government that represents them are bound together by mutual obligations, and the actions of the duly elected government are the actions of all its citizens. When the government acts against suspected terrorists and inferior military opponents, everyone is (rightly or wrongly) involved in the space of violence. There may be criticism by particular citizens of the government’s actions on moral or legal grounds, but until these are conceded constitutionally by the government, all citizens remain bound to the space of violence that its representative government inhabits." (Asad, p. 29)
The argument is not a new one, nor is it a description of a phenomenon confined to the modern age; even during the Middle Ages, emerging complexity had begun to erase distinctions between combatants and non-combatants. (see, Christopher Allmand, War and the Non-Combatant, MEDIEVAL WARFARE A HISTORY 258 (Maurice Keen ed., Oxford University Press 1999) (noting that St. Augustine as early as the fifth century argued that in a just war all could legitimately be killed and there was no distinction between combatant and noncombatant) Just as Manson did at his trial and later through the media, ultimately Asad seeks to erase these distinctions (or differentiation of subsystems as Niklas Luhmann might put it) between acts of state violence and those of the terrorists whom the state fights against. Asad argues that he is not seeking “culprits,” but rather is concerned with “definitions of death dealing” that ultimately justify “the destruction of civilians and the terrorizing of entire populations [by the state].” (Asad, p. 13) Luhmann would of course point out that these differentiated systems are the very features that define or describe modern systems of communication (or "society"). Asad argues that the “ruthlessness of terrorists often matches the effects achieved in the strategic strikes made by state armies, even when the latter use the language of humanitarian law in which a liberating or self-defensive purpose can be claimed.” (Asad, p. 21) But he fails to see (or acknowledge in any real way) that these distinctions of “humanitarian law” (and the like) define modern society, for better or worse.
"All constitutional states rest on a space of violence that they call legitimate. In a liberal democracy, all citizens and the government that represents them are bound together by mutual obligations, and the actions of the duly elected government are the actions of all its citizens. When the government acts against suspected terrorists and inferior military opponents, everyone is (rightly or wrongly) involved in the space of violence. There may be criticism by particular citizens of the government’s actions on moral or legal grounds, but until these are conceded constitutionally by the government, all citizens remain bound to the space of violence that its representative government inhabits." (Asad, p. 29)
The argument is not a new one, nor is it a description of a phenomenon confined to the modern age; even during the Middle Ages, emerging complexity had begun to erase distinctions between combatants and non-combatants. (see, Christopher Allmand, War and the Non-Combatant, MEDIEVAL WARFARE A HISTORY 258 (Maurice Keen ed., Oxford University Press 1999) (noting that St. Augustine as early as the fifth century argued that in a just war all could legitimately be killed and there was no distinction between combatant and noncombatant) Just as Manson did at his trial and later through the media, ultimately Asad seeks to erase these distinctions (or differentiation of subsystems as Niklas Luhmann might put it) between acts of state violence and those of the terrorists whom the state fights against. Asad argues that he is not seeking “culprits,” but rather is concerned with “definitions of death dealing” that ultimately justify “the destruction of civilians and the terrorizing of entire populations [by the state].” (Asad, p. 13) Luhmann would of course point out that these differentiated systems are the very features that define or describe modern systems of communication (or "society"). Asad argues that the “ruthlessness of terrorists often matches the effects achieved in the strategic strikes made by state armies, even when the latter use the language of humanitarian law in which a liberating or self-defensive purpose can be claimed.” (Asad, p. 21) But he fails to see (or acknowledge in any real way) that these distinctions of “humanitarian law” (and the like) define modern society, for better or worse.
October 4, 2021
"In the long perspective of human history, massacres are not new. But there is something special about the fact that the West, having set up international law, then finds reasons why it cannot be followed in particular circumstances. I find this more disturbing than the sordid violence of individual terrorists. It seems to me that there is no moral difference between the horror inflicted by state armies... and the horror inflicted by insurgents... Today, cruelty is an indispensable technique for maintaining a particular kind of international order, an order in which the lives of some peoples are less valuable than the lives of others and therefore their deaths less disturbing."
This book isn't perfect - but I suspect that if there's only one book to be read about the relationship between liberal democracy and suicide bombing by Muslim insurgents, it would be this one. Its claims are by and large true.
Asad does make slippages of scope in certain places. A repeating theme is the unfortunate use of "Judeo-Christian", a questionable binning of wildly different traditions. Asad also acknowledges the etiology of suicide bombing as separate from its use by Islamists: he credits the Tamil Tigers with popularizing the strategy. But this thread is quickly lost as Asad seems to attempt a carving out of conceptual space around suicide bombing by Muslims specifically, while accounting little for the range within this group and importing secular notions that apply much more broadly. None of this is to say that he's wrong. I'm just not sure how closely the project he's in fact done maps on to the project he's claimed to have done.
This book isn't perfect - but I suspect that if there's only one book to be read about the relationship between liberal democracy and suicide bombing by Muslim insurgents, it would be this one. Its claims are by and large true.
Asad does make slippages of scope in certain places. A repeating theme is the unfortunate use of "Judeo-Christian", a questionable binning of wildly different traditions. Asad also acknowledges the etiology of suicide bombing as separate from its use by Islamists: he credits the Tamil Tigers with popularizing the strategy. But this thread is quickly lost as Asad seems to attempt a carving out of conceptual space around suicide bombing by Muslims specifically, while accounting little for the range within this group and importing secular notions that apply much more broadly. None of this is to say that he's wrong. I'm just not sure how closely the project he's in fact done maps on to the project he's claimed to have done.
August 23, 2025
This book erases the distinction between deliberately targeting civilians and the unintended casualties of warfare, producing a false moral equivalence. The author attributes suicide bombing largely to Western intervention and Israeli policies while sidestepping the internal social mechanisms (such as families, schools, and religious institutions) that cultivate cultures of martyrdom. This evasion lets him critique Western discourse without grappling with how grievance is transformed into the embrace of self-destruction. The book’s performative polish masks a refusal to confront the psychological and social roots of radicalization, leaving it less a serious inquiry than an ethically troubling act of moral repositioning. I am very disappointed.
February 23, 2025
Kind of interesting, some worthwhile reflections mixed with a decent amount of psychobabble. I don’t really understand his reticence to credit explanations of suicide terror by reference to “sacrifice”. I agree it’s not an Islamic notion of sacrifice, I think the impulse to sacrifice oneself in service of a higher cause is pre-religious but is articulated in different social and political contexts. In any case this weird tendency aside I don’t regret reading this.
January 1, 2019
مشكلتي مع الكتاب كانت فقط أسلوب الكاتب المضجر أحياناً..
إلا أنه كتاب ممتع بمفاهيمه التي تطرح الكثير من الأسئلة على هؤلاء الذين يكتبون عن الحرب على الإرهاب وعن الجهاد..
ينتقد طرح الغرب كما الشرق لهذا الموضوع كما يضيف الكاتب الكثير من المفاهيم الإضافية تمكن القارئ من فهم المواضيع المماثلة على الصعيد العالمي..
إلا أنه كتاب ممتع بمفاهيمه التي تطرح الكثير من الأسئلة على هؤلاء الذين يكتبون عن الحرب على الإرهاب وعن الجهاد..
ينتقد طرح الغرب كما الشرق لهذا الموضوع كما يضيف الكاتب الكثير من المفاهيم الإضافية تمكن القارئ من فهم المواضيع المماثلة على الصعيد العالمي..
November 19, 2019
The climax of Assad’s argument doesn’t hit until nearing the end of the third chapter, but, when it does, it comes like a load of bricks. The distinction between sanctified and barbaric sacrifices to defend certain “ways of life” has never been argued so clearly.
July 28, 2022
2.5. Parts I couldn't wrap my head around. A text mostly centred around Speaking Back to Western Liberalism, but lol reading it made me realise that my sensibilities are a lot less Western than I had thought.
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May 8, 2025Didn’t enjoy as much as expected. Promises and fails to analyse thoroughly any theological perspectives. The critique of liberalism is quite tired. And the epilogue suggests an ungrounded idea that victims of imperialist warfare would do the same had they only the same weaponry.
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