Suicide Bomber Motivations

Suicide Bomber Motivation -

Not Exactly Rocket Science (I'll have to update my favorites list soon, and this site's going on) reports a study of support for suicide attacks among Palestinians and Jews, and finds that support does not correlate strongly with "religious devotion" per se, but does correlate somewhat with "frequent attendance at religious services." (The author suggests that it is the collective "us against them" mentality, reinforced by communal devotions, rather than the religion itself that contributes the most.)

Some years ago, Robert Pape came out with Dying to Win, arguing that the presence of foreigners on home territory was the stronger motive ("The taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism, not religion.") I didn't agree after I read chapter 2 of this CTC study, because while most AQIZ members were native Iraqis, most of their suicide bombers appeared to be non-Iraqis motivated by religion. Anyway, here is another piece of the puzzle.