The Sexuality of Jihad

"You see, you are an American, you can go home anytime and have sex with your girlfriend, this my friend is Lebanon, not Boston," said a member of Hezbollah who I was discussing Lebanon with. I tried to offer a retort saying that many religious Christians take a vow of chastity in the United States and most of them don't blow things up. "Our cultures are different, you can have what you want, we wait," he answered. I pushed the conversation to the back of my mind for months since I've come back from Lebanon, but does sex offer a valid excuse for why many Muslim males go off and feel the need to fight?
At a 2002 Harvard "Conference on Religion and Terrorism" Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies Mark Juergensmeyer and Terrorism lecturer Jessica Stern noted by Bruce Fudge in the Boston Globe:

The overwhelming majority of terrorists, they noted, are young, single males. A recurrent theme in interviews with these men is one of personal humiliation and feelings of victimization. According to Stern, Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, has himself stated that "violence is a way out of humiliation." This humiliation may be fueled by sexual or marital frustration, commented Stern. She cited the example of Mir Aimal Kasi, the Pakistani national who was recently executed in Virginia for the murder of two CIA employees, and who told Stern that if his mother had been alive, he might not have killed anyone - because, she explained, "she would have made sure he was married." Another extremist interviewed by Stern referred to himself as "vaginally defeated." Juergensmeyer bluntly summed up: "Can't get married, can't have sex, so they blow things up."

Not every speaker found this line of argument persuasive. If the United States bombs Iraq, asked Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, "will bin Laden and al-Zawahiri be sitting in a cave somewhere, wondering if Cheney and Wolfowitz are getting enough sex?"

So, is sex the answer? It must play some part to the logic of a young man plotting to blow himself up among a group of whom he considers an "infidel." Remember, when this young person goes off to paradise, he is to get some 72 virgins; not a bad deal for a sex deprived teenager or twenty something. Still, for those who claim that it is ALL about sexuality is the reason why so many decide to kill, there is much proof to refute that. In Israel a number of Palestinian women have been recruited to carry out suicide bombings, including some who have had children. Others like the Chechnyan "Black Widows" threatened to blow themselves up as well, their reasoning was because their husbands were killed by Russians. That reason has less to do with sex, and more to do with revenge.

The religious character of many of these bombers is also ignored. The Quran itself has 111 violent passages and glorifies martyrdom and jihad. Couldn't that be used to explain the violence generated by young suicide bombers? When the Iran-Iraq War is mentioned in most academic circles the notion of a "Shi'ite's yearning for martyrdom" is often brought up. In Iran today there are numerous martyr monuments and even a cemetery with a "blood" (red water) fountain. One of the main stories that essentially led to the real establishment of Shi'ism was the martyrdom of Ali, and subsequent murders of early Shi'ites by the Sunnis. Martyrdom is at the HEART of Shi'ism, so, how can it be about sex? Iran may be one of the most repressive theocratic states this side of the Ganges, but rrecently there was 60 Minutes program showing how many young Iranians are having wild parties (wild by Iranian standards, its not like I'm referring to some insane fiesta down in Alston [a popular area for Boston University parties]) complete with sexual interaction and liquor. I'm betting the mullahs don't like that, but still, if these parties are going on, albeit in secret, many Iranians still have that jihadist drive.

In Sri Lanka the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Elan (LTTE) have perfected the "art" of suicide bombing in much the way Hamas has done so in Ramallah. TIME's Alex Perry spent time with the Tigers,

Apart from a burning desire to die before she got old, Eraj Samandi was about as far removed from traditional teenage preoccupations as an 18-year-old could get. She didn't care about clothes, music or parties. She couldn't remember the last time she had to study for a test. And as for boys, she dismissed all the men in Sri Lanka with a fierce frown and sharp shake of the head.

But asked when she hoped to achieve her dream of being a suicide bomber, she grinned, squirmed and buried her face in her arms. "She's already written her application," said her commander, Lt. Col. Dewarsara Banu, smiling at her charge's shyness. "But there's still no reply." "Why hasn't there been a reply?" whined Samandi, looking up with the one eye, her left, that survived a shot to the head and fiddling with the capsule of cyanide powder around her neck. "I want this. I want to be a Black Tiger. I want to blast myself for freedom."

...Almost nothing in Samandi's life was left to personal choice. The only jewelry the Tiger women can wear are three dog tags, around the wrist, neck and waist that ensure identification of even the most dismembered of bodies. The Tigers enforce a hairstyle of two plaits tied in loops across the back of the head to avoid, so they say, hair snagging on bushes during an attack. Music is limited to revolutionary songs. The photos that plastered Samandi's bedroom walls were of dead suicide bombers, not pop stars. And movies in Tiger territory were a strict diet of action flicks, both homemade efforts using real war footage and Hollywood shoot-�em-ups. For unmarried Samandi, sex or even holding hands, like cigarettes and alcohol, was banned. The Tiger leadership also reserved the right to prevent any marriage it deemed unsuitable — that is, outside L.T.T.E ranks — and sometimes arranged unions between guerrillas.

But for dedicated soldiers like Samandi, earthly freedoms did not matter. She had made up her mind to kill and to die, and her disappointment at taking part in just one battle before the cease-fire, and surviving, was palpable. "Five of my friends died in that attack," says Samandi, "I was very sad for them.

As stated, the girl had little interest in boys, she instead said a rhetorical sounding, "I want to blast myself for freedom." Of course the sexual aspect reared its head when it was noted how women were forbidden to have sex or marry outside of who their commanders wanted, but the girl does not cite that as a reason for her yearning to blow herself up. Additionally, many sociologists who claim sex as the leading reason for persuading many into the "suicide bomber line of work" don't seem to acknowledge that many Muslim terrorists, like their Hindu counterparts in the LTTE are also not allowed liquor (wine/liquor is expressly banned in the Quran). Couldn't one technically say that the banning of liquor ALSO drove many to kill themselves? When many are entering puberty (around age 13) both liquor and sex is banned, so far I haven't seen many 13 year olds "die for the sake of Allah."

I am not saying sexuality doesn't play a part in the brain of a would be "shahid," but for one to assert that it is the MAIN reason many run off to die, it really leaves out innumerable other reason.


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