Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on April 9, 2008
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2008 8(2):204-208; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhn003
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The Role of Religion in the Generation of Suicide Bombers
Contact author: Sadik H. Karsim, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 125 S. 31st Street (TRL Suite 2000), Philadelphia, PA 19104-3403. E-mail: sadik{at}mail.med.upenn.edu.
Suicide terrorism is an international problem that endangers the well-being of whole populations. Standard explanations suggest that religious fanaticism is a primary driving force in the generation of suicide bombers. A growing body of empirically based scholarship, however, indicates that suicide terrorism is a multifactorial phenomenon that cannot easily be explained away as an outcome of religious fanaticism. Religion in general, Islam in particular, plays a minimal direct role in the generation of suicide bombers. This brief article will summarize recent studies regarding the root causes of suicide terrorism as they pertain to the fields of behavioral health, violence, and violence prevention.
KEY WORDS: suicide terrorism, religion, behavioral health, violence prevention