Murder by Suicide: Episodes from Muslim History Author(s): Karin Andriolo Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol.

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KARIN ANDRIOLO

U
Murder

by

Suicide:

Episodes

from

Muslim

History

life employbeliefsand practicesintendedto reconcile and other operationsthat consumethe killer's ABSTRACT Suicideterrorism the Assassins of Syria and Persia, the killer with hisor herown death.Thisarticlereviewsthree episodesfromMuslim juramenhistory: the neuEachof these episodes manifestsa differentsymbolic at Karbala. and Husayn's tado inthe Philippines, stratagem: martyrdom of the past onto the present. and suicide,and the justifying fusion of murder of transition tralization projection anxiety,the sacrificial Middle suicide terrorism, East,Iran,Philippines] Islam, [Keywords:

cide, as executed in the destruction of the World TradeCenter, by Palestinian suicide bombers, and by commandos in Lebanon against U.S. targets and Israeli military installations. Although Muslim groups are strongly represented among organizations that recruit, train, and assign members to suicide missions, they are not the only ones that steer the human potential for self-sacrifice into political violence. For example, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Hindu) have assassinated several high-ranking politicians, including Rajiv Gandhi and President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka (see Hoffman 1997; Taheri 1987; Wright 1985). In these and similar acts, suicide is part of a public agenda. It is linked to a group and its program, and it is motivated, planned, and executed within the organizational framework of this group. The highly private, individual, and volatile progression toward ending one's life marches to the beat of an ideological movement seeking violent recognition. The partnership between martyr and movement seems functionally mismatched. However, it takes effect in extreme situations, and the conditions for its success do not necessarily correspond to the requirements for mainstream social action. In particular, this partnership draws strength from contingencies that, in less exceptional circumstances,would constitute the weakest link between structure and agency. Written into the murder-by-suicide script is a fundamental paradox: While agency soars toward the moment of radical choice, structure needs to control its every move. The martyr must freely embrace his death in order to achieve self-martyrdom. He must also be bound to his death in order for the movement's agenda to succeed. Such incongruous demands might derail a rational program. In the symbolic zone, however, they might pose a galvanizing challenge:
ANTHROPOLOGIST AMERICAN 104(3):736-742.

WE

with murder NOWall too familiar ARE by sui-

How to recast the control, which the movement imposes, as the martyr's freedom from the world; and how to convert the commanded action into the martyr'sultimate desire. This article explores the imaging and ritualization that contribute to the effectiveness of the murder-by-suicide script. Three episodes from Muslim history articulate symbolic constructs that synchronize the interests of martyr and movement. THEASSASSINS A notorious precedent for the murder-by-suicide script was enacted by the Nizari state, two loosely connected clusters of mountain fortresses in Syria and Persia, which existed from the 11th century into the 13th century. Fact and fiction about the Syrian branch first reached Europe in the tales of returning crusaders, and one of the names for their operatives, "assassins,"found a permanent place in Western languages. Travelersto the FarEast, like Marco Polo, embellished the emerging picture with local hearsay about the Persian Nizari. With the inclusion of Muslim sources, modern scholarship has sorted substantiated history from speculative dilation. Our brief excursion will dip into both. Recent historical studies inform the sketch of the Nizari's position and interests,' followed by gleanings from the speculative reports of their contemporaries. The Nizari State was the domain of Shi'is,2and one of the very few places in which they held political power. In the attempt to bring down Sunni rule in the Middle East, an elite corps of young men were trained and ordered to assassinate prominent officials from among the Sunni establishment. They were boys from the countryside, taken to a fortressfor extensive training in weaponry, languages, and whatever knowledge and skills would allow them to later pass undetected in various disguises. Their mission
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was to come so close to a highly placed and well-protected target, that they could dispatch him surely with a dagger. Frequently, this involved inching their way into a confidential position, and sometimes several men were set to close in on the same quarry.Assassins did not give heed to their survival and took pride in dying defiantly with their victims (Lewis 1968:127). Throughout their regime of more than two hundred years, the Nizari pursued clear and unchanging goals and strategies. If a mighty and long-entrenched hegemony was to fall at the hands of the righteous few, the thrust was not to be made on the battlefield, which favored the resources of superpowers. Surgicaloperations would take out leaders and cause disruption, a climate of fear, and shifting alliances. They aimed high and succeeded in murdering two caliphs, and several vizirs, sultans, emirs, administrators, judges, and clerics. They did not fell their most illustrious pray, Sultan Saladin, who survived at least two assassination attempts (Lewis 1976a). However, Saladin did enter a ddtente agreement with the Syrian Nizari, supposedly swayed by the demonstration that his two most trusted bodyguardswere, in fact, planted assassins (Lewis 1976b:x, 237). (This intriguing tale may not be as factual as are the reported attempts on his life.) The death-embracing mindset of the assassins, who are also called fida'is in some sources, increased their effectiveness on technical and psychological grounds. The murdererwho is not distracted by the hope or plan for his own survival is more likely to succeed in his task, on which he can concentrate his skill, fervor, and improvisational versatility. Furthermore,the assassins' disregardfor their own life forecloses the possibility of influencing them with threats or promises. The certainty of their death places them beyond reach. They can only be feared, not guarded against. The Nizari belonged to the Ishma'ili minority within the Shi'a, and stated their political goals in the exalted language of a millenarian program intent on smashing the wrongful rule and bringing about the triumph of justice. The nobility of their moral-religiousmission was impressed on the young men and stoked by effective ritualization. BernardLewis observes that the act of killing "had a ritual, almost sacramental quality" (1968:127). Only a daggerwas used, although other means might have proven more efficient at times. The dagger was handed over ceremoniously by the leaderwhen the chosen man was sent on his mission. In the end, the Nizari did not weaken Sunni hegemony, and later in the 13th century the Mongols redrew the political map of the Middle East. The planning, discipline, and duration of their political violence, however, had no previous or subsequent match (Lewis 1968:129). Much in the Christian accounts about the Nizari lacks historical support. The hearsay they report may or may not describe reality. Even imaginary systems can indicate real needs that require responses. In other words, they may give fictional answers to actual questions. Indeed, the question that many rumors seem to address is still asked

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today with equal curiosity: What binds the fida'is with such intransigence to the self-destructive completion of their assignment? The early sources mention the promise of paradise, which conforms to the traditional Islamic belief that those who die on the path of Allah will enter paradise without having to atone in hell for the sins they have committed earlier.This promise is connected to other themes of local provenance. Much is made of the fierce loyalty that binds the fida'is to their master, whose hold over them is conditioned during their secluded residence and training in his fortress. For example, if asked by their master to do so-even if only for the purpose of demonstration-assassins would instantly jump to their deaths (Lewis 1976b:x, 236).3 The master's expectation of complete loyalty and the fida'is' desire for paradise are functionally linked in the stipulation that the master's help is needed, or at least expeditious, for an assured entry into the heavenly garden reserved for martyrs and prophets. Furthermore,the master supposedly employs devious means to program the young men's overriding desire for this place of bliss. Such stories were told to Marco Polo on his way through Persia. A lovely, secret garden has been constructed in the fortress and staffed with experts in providing all manners of sensual delights. From time to time, fida'is are drugged and transported into the garden, which they believe to be paradise. After a while, they are removed again in drugged slumber (Polo 1926:52-55). Thus, they become addicted to pleasures that they hope to gain instantly and forever when they die completing their assignment. They also become convinced of their master's gatekeeper role. An impressive plot, but it is as unsupported as are the rumors of the assassins' hashish habit, which led to a now-rejected theory about the derivation of their name. Whether these stories are fact or fiction need not concern us here. Eitherway, they make an excellent point. For taking on a suicidal assignment, the promise of paradise may have great purchasing power. However, it needs supplements that can neutralize the fearful expectation of impending death, of leaving behind the known and entering the darkpassage between this world and the hereafter. The legerdemain ascribed to those who masterminded the assassins' training addresses this very problem. The occasional transport into and from the illusory paradise familiarizes the fida'is with the transition from life to death. What would otherwise loom threateningly as the great unknown, the black hole, has been experienced already and repeatedly. Upon death, exactly the same will happen one last time. The known gatekeeper who has arrangedfor the easy journey before will do so again. Giving tempting realism to the pleasures of paradise is a useful design, but taking the edge off transition anxiety is ingenious. Thus, the old fables about the assassinshave told us that murder-by-suicidescripts ought to combat transition anxiety. Indeed, we can now recognizein variousMuslim images of self-martyrdom the same concern. A different method, however, effects the bridging of the void: Immanence

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replaces familiarity; the time between death and entry into paradise must shrink to near zero. A traditional Muslim image for speeding up the transition is the flying white horse that transports the martyr to heaven. Today, the elitist horse has gone out of fashion in most places. The symbol favored by Palestinian suicide bombers is that of green birds, often shown on a purple background. These are the birds of paradise that, according to a saying of the Prophet, carryin their bosom the soul of martyrsto Allah (Hassan 2001:39). Nasra Hassan conducted numerous interviews in Gaza between 1996 and 1999 with men who are in waiting for martyrdom operations or did not succeed in their assignment, and with those who train the recruits in small cells of two or three young men. All of them emphasize that martyrs must focus on paradise, must imagine it from the inside and feel themselves in the presence of Muhammad and Allah. Especiallyin the last days before the operation, they must concentrate on the immediacy of reaching it (Hassan 2001:36, 40). The conquest of transition anxiety by means of accentuating immediacy, particularly in its contemporary, explosive form, is poignantly described by a man who was arrestedbefore he could carry out his mission: "[Paradise]is very, very near-right in front of our eyes. It lies beneath the thumb. On the other side of the detonator" (2001:40). During Iran's war with Iraq, all the horses and birds would not have sufficed for the martyr transport once the Ayatollah Khomeini enticed young boys over the age of 12 to enlist even without the permission of their parents. Running ahead of the soldiers in the battle zone, they exploded the mines and died by the thousands. They had been issued plastic keys to paradise, made in Taiwan, to let themselves in without delay (Taheri 1986:280). IN THEPHILIPPINES JURAMENTADO The second episode, based on ethnographic records, is set among the Muslim minority in the Philippines. There we encounter a highly structured version of murder by suicide, together with its opposite, suicide by murder. This will lead us to examine the seeming inversion of the two.4 In the 16th century, Islam rapidly spread into the Philippines, replacing Hindu-Buddhism and various native religions. It was soon eclipsed by the expansion of Spanish rule and Catholicism, and only in the southern islands of the Sulu Archipelago did a number of ethnically different tribes continue to adhere to Islam. They were called Moros by the Spanish and formed pockets of resistance throughout the 300 years of Spanish colonialism. Philippine Muslims practiced two forms of suicidal attacks on the hated Christians. In the arena of warfare, in fighting the Spanish army, some men volunteered for front-line placement and charged into enemy troops with wild abandon, until they were mowed down. In the private version of this jihad, a man entered a Christian settlement armed with a kris, and sometimes also a short spear,

and attacked whoever crossed his path. Non-Christians, women, and children were sometimes spared.The surprise and frenzy of his onslaught generally left several victims in his wake, before he was killed himself. Occasionally, a number of men joined together by previous agreement for such a rampage. The suicidal attack was only the final part of an established practice, which carried different local names and was called in Spanish "juramentado" (having sworn an oath). The man who intended to swear the oath first sought permission to do so from his parents and, subsequently, from a local or higher authority. A formal oath supplemented this request. Next, he attended to his weapons and then engaged in a series of ritual preparations. These include the washing, prayers, and purification that customarily readied a body for burial, which had to be performed while he was still alive enemy, since his corpse would not be recovered. Other procedures functioned to give his body strength and endurance and involved amulets and incenses, shaving his head and plucking his eyebrows, and binding his penis in an upright position. The main provisions needed for the man's rampage had been supplied by his culture all along: a facility with weapons, an inclination for violence, and an ardor for redressing perceived wrongs. To paraphraseThomas Kiefer, who did fieldwork in the late 1970s among the Tausug, the major ethnic group of the Sulu Archipelago:Violence springs up easily in response to even a minor theft, an inappropriate remark, a contemptuous glance, a debt not paid in time. It quickly escalates into killing among men whose standard clothing includes an ammunition belt, a rifle, and a bladed weapon. An insult that is not retaliated is shaming, and any death must be avenged (Kiefer 1972: 52-59, 68-70, 75-77). Reports on juramentado are few in number and restricted to core features. They agree on the obligatory ritual sequence and on the framing beliefs, which stem from orthodox Islam and are tempered by local notions. The man killed in fulfilling juramentado will be instantly transported into paradise on a flying white horse and will not have to atone in hell for the sins he has previously accumulated. This is predicated on having died "an innocent death" (Kiefer1972:133), which is defined, in turn, as a death at the hands of an evil enemy. The Spanish qualified for the part of evil enemy, since they aggressively urged religious conversion. Once they were defeated in 1898, neither Americans nor Filipinos measured up to the role of Islam's foe, and the frequency of juramentado declined. Later, it was briefly directed against the Japanese and, in the recent past, sporadicallyagainstFilipino soldiers. Juramentado differs from the assassins' operations in several structural aspects. It is not organized from the top down by a leader commanding supreme and exclusive loyalty from his recruits, who are trained and indoctrinated in sectarian seclusion until assigned a mission. The juramentado steps out from amidst his regular life in the village and does so by his own choice and on his own time.

Andriolo * Murder by Suicide Even though his action is extraordinary, he is not an isolated disconnected from the operative, community. The first move in his endeavor takes him to his parents, the headman, close kinsmen, and sometimes the sultan, who was the administrative and religious authority for the Muslim communities in the Sulu Archipelago during the Spanish presence there. He declares his intention and they give their formal approval. What he is about to do will be done by one of them, by a son, a kinsman, a villager, a Muslim. The variants of juramentado reviewed so far-warfare or sudden rampage by one or more men-all qualify as acts of jihad, carried to the extreme by the insistence on dying in the process. Two additional forms deviate from this prototype-that is, from its motivational aspect, although not from the procedures of ritual preparation and execution. A man who has committed a serious religious crime and is held for sentencing might volunteer or be urged by the headman or sultan to seek his death by going juramentado, rather than awaiting execution (Ewing 1955: 151; Kiefer 1972:133). This variant lacks the voluntarism of all other forms of juramentado, since the convict's only choice is that between two manners of death.5 The second variant seems to invert the order of priorities in the murder-by-suicide scenario. A man who wishes to end his life because he has been shamed, is unhappy in his marriage, or distressed for other reasons can go juramentado (Ewing 1955:149). Islam condemns suicide and, accordingly, hell awaits those who commit it.6 Philippine Muslims, however, do not equate the sinful deed with their militant way of opting out of life. Folding one's suicide into the performance of jihad not only neutralizes the stigma attached to the act but also cloaks it with the prestige of commendable conduct and its celestial rewards.Like in other cultures that permit such "masked suicides" (Andriolo 1989, 1998), the individual's death wish is not hidden.' It is a recognized component that does not diminish the merits of the act, even though the man who commits suicide by murder inverts the end and means of jihad. That he can get away with it and, furthermore, straightinto paradise,that the differencebetween self-centered and religious-communal motives does not seem to matter, is vexing-unless I have imposed a difference that is actually irrelevantfor juramentado.The prime suspect for such an ethnocentric projection is, I think, the end/means distinction, which applies to the psychological motivation only. Some are brought to the threshold of action by the wish to escape disappointments or paining tangles; others are swept forward by the rhetoric of revenge, justice, or prowess. For understanding the institution of juramentado, however, we have to look past internal motivations into the zone that men enter, once their decision has crossed the line from private to public. The disclosure to parents and leaders and their formal recognition progressively turn an internal resolution into a statement to the world, a statement that is sealed by the oath. The oath locks the juramentado into his death. What has been solemnly promised to God must not be reclaimed.

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The self-sacrifice, voluntaryuntil then, has becomean obPalestinian suicide bombersswearan oath on ligation.8 the Qur'an(Hassan of Septem2001:37),and the hijackers
ber 11 were instructed to confirm on the penultimate day in a mutual pledge that they would die in the attempt to carryout their mission (Makiyaand Mneimneh 2002:18). The oath handcuffs the man to the deed he pledged. What precisely is this deed? For serving the cause of Islam, he has to fight its enemies and kill as many as he can. For becoming a martyr, he has to die at the hands of his enemies. Thus, dying and killing merge into a singular goal: neither is an end in itself or means for the other.9 The envisioned destruction of self and other clinch tighter the closer he moves toward the realization. Throughout his ritual preparations he evokes simultaneously the deaths he will give and receive, as he strengthens his body magically for the jihad and also prepares it ritually for burial. Killing and being killed become one single, swelling desire that will drive him to frenzy on his ultimate run through town. It might culminate in a scene like the one here described,which conveys a stunning image of terminal fusion: "Eye-witnesses have repeatedly informed me that they have seen juramentadoseize the barrel of a rifle, on being bayoneted, and drive the steel into themselves further, in order to bring the soldier at the other end of the piece within striking distance and cut him down" (Worcester 1898:176).

erases the distinction between suicide Juramentado and murder.The unity of purposepropelsthe man forward and focuses him on the burst of violence he will unleash; it splices into a closed circuit of desire the sacrificial victim he will slaughter and the sacrifice he will come to

be. Moderntechnologyprovidesequipmentthat givesterrible visibility to the deadly fusion: The human bomb exploding herself while she presses close to the enemy; the man in the pilot seat of the fuel-saturated plane crashing into the tower that teems with lives. MARTYRDOM AT KARBALA The fusion of suicide and murder in juramentado constitutes the most radical linkage of the two basic components of Muslim martyrdom: suffering and fighting. The third and last episode traces the Shi'a connotations of martyrdom to its foundation narrative, the slaughter of the Prophet's grandson Husayn at Karbala.1o The practice of living the present through the iconic exemplars of the past has facilitated the persisting pertinence of the narrative and its message. These were the events that led to Karbala: Muhammad had died in C.E. 632 without a son, and the succession to his spiritual and political leadership had become the hub of conflict. Contenders and their supporters championed either closeness of kinship with the Prophet or connections with the leading families of Medina, the base from which Muhammad had united Arabiapolitically and religiously. In the subsequentfive decades,three of Muhammad's

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five successors were murdered, Muslim armies marched against each other, and the factionalism of regional interests proliferated with the first great wave of Arab expansion over most of the Middle East. Significant in the unfolding of events was the fourth successor, or caliph, All. Multiple social bonds with the Prophet made Ali the perfect successor in the eyes of many. Muhammad had adopted his paternal parallel cousin Ali in a son's stead and married him to his favorite daughter Fatima. Ali was assassinated in the fifth year of his rule. The caliphatewent to another clan, the Umayyads, and turned from an elected position into a hereditary one. Nearly two decades later, Ali's second son, Husayn, contested this turn of events, and in C.E. 680 deceitful assurance of support led to his slaughter, together with his entourage of 72 men, at Karbala(literally, "place of sorrow") in Iraq. The treacherous murder of Husayn sealed the emerging schism between Sunnis and Shi'is. The Sunnis respected the caliphate of the Umayyads. The Shi'is (a name shortened from "the party of Ali") insisted that the rightful leader must descend from the Prophet's immediate family. Disagreements on the characteristicsof leadership, metaphysical postulates, ethical demands, and many other aspects of religious doctrine and social conduct cleaved the two groups and proliferated and deepened over time. Orderranked highest in the political cannon of the Sunni majority, and sedition was the foremost threat that needed to be squashed. The Shi'is, who remained in the minority, considered justice to be the principal mandate of rulership and tyranny the arch foe that needed to be wrestled down (Lawrence1998:173). The Karbala narrative circumscribes martyrdom, a dominant element in the Shi'a ethos, and offers to its interpreters three principal themes: Husayn's suffering, its intentionality, and its combative setting. Husayn's suffering is foregrounded by dwelling on every detail in the unfolding of his tragic destiny: How he pleaded for water for the infant son in his arms, whose throat was pierced with an arrowinstead; how he faced his killers after all his companions had been mowed down in the protracted mockbattle of too few against too many; how he died pierced by 70 arrows;how his severed head, en route to the Umayyad caliph, was slapped across the mouth by a provincial governor. Shi'a tradition asserts that Imam Husayn freely chose his martyrdom in full awareness of its every detail and ending, and did so for a purpose beyond politics and succession. During the reign of the Umayyads, Islam had veered toward a preoccupation with power and wealth, and the doors were thrown open for corruption and tyranny. Husayn intended his suffering and death as a wakeup call that would shake the believers from their complacency and rouse the voice of their own conscience. His sacrifice was to reroute them toward the pursuit of justice and the reestablishment of the Islamic community (Ajami 1986:142-143, Loeffler 1988:97-99, 176).

Lastly, Husayn's martyrdom took place on the battlefield where he fought the forces of evil. He did not turn the other cheek; he did not restrain his supporters from charging at the enemy. The hagiography, which richly embroiders every inch of the Karbalanarrative, assures us that Husayn was a formidable warrior, who could never have been defeated until he himself decided to refrainfrom resistance, so that his martyrdom could be completed (Loeffler1988:41-42). The Shi'a churned the narrativeabout redemptive suffering and the fight against injustice into an enduring and motivating constellation, the "Karbalaparadigm" in Michael Fischer's(1980:13, 21) formulation. The memory of Karbala separates and ennobles the Shi'a. It is a sacred wound, kept open ever since, like a well from which to drink identity and purpose. Its staying power derives from co-opting remembrance and identification. Ritual reenactments of the events at Karbala take place every year throughout the month of Muharraminto which falls Ashura, the day of Husayn's slaughter. They include recitations in private houses, commemorations at the mosque, stylized dramatizations of the events, and public processions that carry a replica of Husayn's tomb and are frequently accompanied by flagellants, who might even cut their foreheads with swords (Momen 1985: 240-243; see also Chelkowski 1979). These are not frozen rituals but splendid illustrations of Mircea Eliade's "myth of eternal return" (1954). They siphon the past into the present and confirm its enduring pertinence. They kindle a mood of generic readiness that lasts beyond the ritual performances. As it is said, one should live as if "Everyday is Ashura,and every place is Karbala" (Ajami 1986:141). During the Muharram events, past and present flow into each other. They coexist within the believers-in their minds and also in their flesh. Participantsin the procession yearn to feel and endure on their own bodies the preciousness of Husayn's pain and, simultaneously, the avenging ardor to strike with mighty and just wrath at those who caused his anguish. Grief, lamentation, and agony saturate eye and ear as the procession moves along. The impulse for retribution nests just below the skin and could be released on the slightest provocation. The Indian writer VikramSeth conveys this volatile state and its ready explosion. In his novel A SuitableBoy, set in India in the early 1950s, a mournful Husayn procession accidentally collides with a joyous Rama procession, and the pent-up tension between Muslim and Hindus erupts furiously and drawsblood (1993:1049-1062). Under the fierce guidance of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the government it engendered used to full advantage the two instances of symbolic fusion that render practice from the Karbalaparadigm: suffering and fighting, past and present. In Iran, which has a uniquely large Shi'a majority,11 the year before the revolution began with the police massacre of approximately 70 victims at a student demonstration. This radicalized the political discontent, which had been fermenting

Andriolo * Murder by Suicide for many years. (Khomeini, the most outspoken critic of the Shah's government, was already exiled 13 years earlier.) Demonstrations and more deaths occurred throughout the year, building up momentum as it reached its last month, Muharram (Momen 1985:282-286). Wall graffiti placed the Shah, the government, and those unwilling to rise up against them into the role of the Umayyad caliph, whose rule had been contested by Husayn, with whom, in turn, were identified all those who would give their lives in the struggle. Word went out to substitute political demonstrations for the Karbala processions. "Demonstrators wore white shrouds to symbolize their willingness to die" (Fischer 1980:214), and young men placed themselves up front as sacrificialbuffers against the police. On the day of Ashura, more than a million people took to the streetsof Teheran. Fewerthan two months later, Khomeini returned in triumph (see also Swenson 1985). Khomeini did not succeed with his master plan, the export of the Iranian Revolution into the Muslim world. However, his grafting of suicide onto martyrdom (Kramer 1987b:7-8; Zonis and Brumberg 1987:56), perfected during the war against Iraq and retooled by Hezbollah into suicide terrorism, spread widely. In Lebanon in the 1980s, Shi'i militants drove their exploding trucks into American and Israeli installations and, in turn, inspired the operations of the Palestinian Hamas. Like their Shi'i counterpart, Sunni martyrs transpose their actions into a justifying and fortifying past. Their sacred time predates that of the Shi'i, however, since they envision themselves amidst the prophet and his companions. This is reflected in the manual given to the hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks, containing practical and spiritual instructions for their mission. Kanan Makiya and Hassan Mneimneh analyze the four pages of the text that are publicly available: "The mythical environment in which the hijackers view their action" (2002:18), they observe, is the ten-year period between Muhammad's flight to Medina and his death. During this period the Prophet consolidated his position by "raids"to which he assigned communal ratherthan personalbenefits. They are reenacted in the hijackers' raid on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the intent to renew history in the spirit of the Prophet (Makiya and Mneimneh 2002:18). In the external reality, the hijackers are boarding a plane; in the mythical reality, they move on the battle ground amidst Muhammad's and Mneimneh2002:19). companions(Makiya

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suicide bomber's thumb pressing the detonator simultaneously clocks him into paradise. The assassin has already visited her future-it is safely familiar. The present actions of those who merge into the heroic past will draw from it righteousness and strength. The cognitive-ritual removal of borderlines is not exclusive to Muslim suicide terrorism. The erasure of those distinctions that structurethe lives of the multitude figures among the standard eccentricities of millenarian movements, sects, and certain utopian communities, and also inspires rituals of reversals.This erasure has a specific and a general agenda. In the murder-by-suicide script both agendas address the deaths that complete the operation. Each historical episode articulates a different specific agenda. The assassin's transition anxiety is neutralized by means of closing the gap between now and the hereafter. Juramentado strips murder and suicide of their profane moral and physical connotations by fusing them into one sacrificial offering. The evocation of Karbalaor of Muhammad's raids protects operatives against moral doubts and the lure of domesticity by cloistering them in a justifying and magnifying history. The general agenda, ironically, articulates a fundamental distinction, that between the righteous few and the blind, weak, or corrupted multitude; it correlateswith drawing a spuriously sharp line between good and evil. The same "globescape" stencil is applied by Manichaean worldviews, millenarian movements, and manipulative political rhetoric. However, for those enacting the murderby-suicide script, the self-image of exceptional purity, of being a saint-in-training, additionally papers over a crack in the movement's practice. Suicide terrorism requires the continuance of some members and the discontinuance of others. Those valued only for their self-termination need to feel elevated not only above the corrupt world but also above their surviving comrades.
KARIN ANDRIOLO Departmentof Anthropology, StateUniver-

sity of New York,New Paltz,New Paltz,NY 12561

NOTES 1. The following synopsis of the Naziri state is based on Daftary 1990, Hodgson 1955, and Lewis 1968, 1976a. 2. With reference to Shi'a Islam, I am using three terms: Shi'a refers to the religious system or religious organization;Shi'isrefersto the believers;Shi'iis used for the adjective form, that is, belonging to religious system, organization,or believers. 3. Initially, their reputation of loyalty gave such a positive spin to the word assassin, that Provengal troubadoursreferred to themselves by this name to express the depth of devotion to their lady; Dante used the term in the same context (Lewis1976c:xi, 573). 4. The following synopsis is based on Ewing 1955, Kiefer 1972, and Saleeby 1963. 5. In transculturalperspective, institutionalized forms of suicide tend to slide into involuntary versions, as is the case with sati in India and seppuku in Japan. 6. The Qur'andoes not referunambiguously to the act of self-killing. However, interpretershave pointed out four passagesthat very arguablyadmit such a reading. Suicide is un-Islamic, because it is

CONCLUSION

The symbolic constructs in the murder-by-suicide script, encountered in three historical episodes, share one characteristic: They attempt to erase differences that matter in the daylight world-differences between self-destruction and the destruction of others; between departure and arrival; and between past, present, and future. The fusion of sacrifice and sacrificer consecrates the juramentado. The

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* Vol. 104, No. 3 * September 2002 Fischer,Michael 1980 Iran: FromReligious MA: Disputeto Revolution.Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress. Geller,William, and MichaelScott 1992 DeadlyForce: WhatWeKnow.Washington,DC:PoliceExecutiveResearch Forum. Hassan,Nasra 2001 An Arsenal of Believers. New Yorker, November19: 36-41. Hodgson, Marshall of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari 1955 The Order Ishma'ilis Mouton. againstthe IslamicWorld.'s-gravenhage: Hoffman, Bruce 1997 InsideTerrorism. New York: ColumbiaUniversityPress. Kiefer,Thomas 1972 TheTausug: Violenceand Lawin a PhilippineMoslemSociandWinston. Holt,Rinehart ety. New York: Kramer, Martin,ed. 1987a Shi'ism,Resistance and Revolution. Boulder: WestviewPress. Martin Kramer, 1987b Introduction In Shi'ism,Resistance and Revolution.Martin ed. Pp.1-18. Boulder: WestviewPress. Kramer, Lawrence,Bruce 1998 Shattering the Myth:Islambeyond Violence.Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress. Lewis,Bernard A Radical 1968 TheAssassins: Sectin Islam.New York: BasicBooks. and the Assassins. InStudiesin Classical and 1976a[1953] Saladin OttomanIslam(7th-16th Century). Pp.ix, 239-245. London: Variorum. al-Din'sBiography of Rasidal-DinSinan.In 1976b[1966] Kamal Studiesin Classical andOttomanIslam(7th-16th Century). Pp. x, 225-267. London:Variorum. of Syria and Isma'ilis of Persia. InStudiesin 1976c[1971] Assassins ClassicalandOttomanIslam(7th-16th Century).Pp.xi, 573-580. London:Variorum. Loeffler,Reinhold 1988 Islamin Practice: Beliefsin a Persian Religious Village.AlPress. bany:StateUniversityof New York Lowie,Robert 1922 Takes-the-Pipe, a CrowWarrior. InAmerican IndianLife.E. C. Parsons, ed. Pp.331-334. New York: Huebsch. Makiya,Kanan,and HassanMneimneh 2002 Manualfora "Raid." New YorkReviewof Books.49(1):18-21. Momen, Moojan 1985 An Introduction to Shi'iIslam: The Historyand Doctrinesof TwelverShi'ism.Oxford: GeorgeRonald. Polo, Marco 1926 TheTravels of MarcoPolo.ManuelKomroff, rev.trans.of New York: Marsden. TheModernLibrary. Rosenthal,Franz andSocial 1990[1946] On Suicidein Islam.InMuslimIntellectual A Collectionof Essays. UK: History: Pp.xii, 239-259. Hampshire, Variorum Reprints. Saleeby,Najeeb BookGuild. 1963[1908] The Historyof Sulu.Manila: Filipiniana Seth, Vikram 1993 A Suitable CollinsPublishers. Boy.New York: Harper Swenson,Jill 1985 Martyrdom: andMobilizationof the Mytho-Cathexis Massesin the Iranian Revolution.Ethos13(2):121-149. Taheri,Amir 1986 The Spirit of Allah:Khomeiniandthe IslamicRevolution.Bethesda,MD:AdlerandAdler. 1987 HolyTerror: Insidethe Worldof IslamicTerrorism. Bethesda,MD:Adlerand Adler. Worcester,D. C. 1898 ThePhilippineIslandsandTheirPeople.New York. Wright,Robin 1985 Sacred The Crusade of ModernIslam.New York: SiRage: mon and Shuster. Zonis, Marvin,and Daniel Brumberg 1987 Shi'ismas Interpreted by Khomeini.InShi'ism,Resistance and Revolution.MartinKramer, ed. Pp.47-66. Boulder: WestviewPress.

clearly stated so in sharialaw and in hadith,traditionalaccounts of the sayings of the Prophet and the imams (Rosenthal 1990:xii, 240-243). By the 8th century, if not earlier, Islam "had come to condemn suicide as a gravesin" (Rosenthal1990:243). 7. For example, among the Crow and other Native Americansof the Great Plains, a man tormented by grief, humiliation, or anguish could pledge his death for the next season of warfare,when he would charge recklessly into enemy lines. In the interval between his pledge and his death he held the status of Crazy-DogWishing-to-Die. An aura of drama, heroism, finality, and desire shrouded him, and he was allowed to consume with urgency that which was usually rationed or withheld: attention, praise, and the love of young, even married,women. The recasting of the death wish in a heroic idiom not only neutralized the stigma of suicide, but added glory to the man's life and memory (Lowie 1922). Incidentally, suicide by killing or threatening to do so also comes in highly improvisational and unappreciatedforms. Law enforcement officers in major American cities report with increasing frequency a phenomenon they have labeled "suicideby cop." A person threatens a policeman with a gun, who might use deadly force in self-defense.The officers involved in such incidents cannot recognize early enough the suicidal intention of the person, who might pursue it with ambivalence and hesitancy (Gellerand Scott 1992:193, 194, 222, 315). 8. In transculturalperspective,the solemn promise to commit suicide often carriedthe obligation to complete it. Sati was a case in point, as was also the request of elderly Eskimofor assisted suicide (Andriolo1993:48-50). 9. Two quotes from Thomas Kiefer'sethnography support the assumption that killing and getting killed are looped together: "The purpose of ritual suicide was not so much to kill Christiansas to be killed by them" (1972:133), "the goal was to bring as many nonMuslims with him as possible"(1972:132). 10. The synopsis of the Karbalanarrativeand its significance for the Shi'a is based on Ajami 1986, Ayoub 1978, Daftary 1990, and Momen 1985. 11. The Shi'a majority in Iran constitutes 90 percent of the total population. In the 16th century, the ruling dynasty had imposed Shi'a Islam as the state religion. Iraq and Bahrain have between 50-60 percent Shi'is, followed by Lebanonwith around 30 percent (Momen 1985:282).

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