In this monograph, Talal Asad stretches out new measurements to the investigations on contemporary methods of violence and terrorism, simultaneously deconstructing the liberal discourse on the classes of war and terrorism. The author takes the analysis of suicide bombing and terrorism to another level and asks the reader to think about much deeper questions.
“Why is suicide bombing so much more terrifying than other acts of violence? What makes terrorism so much less morally justifiable than other attacks executed in a “just war?” Asad examines terrorism and elaborates on the continuities between secular modernity and its past.
Asad addresses whether acts committed in wars are not similarly frightful and ridiculous. This book provocatively tends to these issues and offers elective clarifications by depending upon the assessments of specialists and rationalists.
The book is composed as a response to a progression of inquiries, brought up in the presentation, with regards to the bombing of the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Asad analyses the colonial and post-colonial developments of the classifications of war and terrorism.
He argues that these are constructed according to different logical criteria: the war derives its primary sense from the questions of legality and terrorism from the feelings of vulnerability and fear of social order. Consequently, the two can’t be delivered as fundamentally unrelated.
Asad investigates the liberal discourse on the “war on terror” and questions the popular discourse, which looks to get a handle on religious motivations driving the demonstrations of suicide bombing. Furthermore, contends that hypotheses and speculations concerning the motivations of a suicide bomber are fiction, and hence cannot be varied.
The author critically analyses major theories on just war, terrorism, and suicide bombing alongside the endeavour to set up their relationship with Islam. He raises the issue of culpability and contends that the US interests in the Middle East are firmly associated with the expansion of jihadism.
He censures the conception that jihad ever had a focal spot in Islamic thought and discovers this concept related to the foreign occupation of the Muslim lands.
The idea of a “war on terror” and its theorization were created in the US, Israel, and Europe. Along these lines, Asad contextualizes his conversation on terrorism in the scenery of the US and Israel.
The author asks: “why is it that a religious interpretation of the bomber’s motivation is so welcome to the western mind? What’s the difference between war and terrorism? What’s the culture of killing and dying in the modern liberal secular world?” Regarding the above-mentioned questions, the author scrutinizes a wide range of political, religious, and sociological theories.
On Suicide Bombing is separated into three sections, “terrorism”, “suicide terrorism,” and “horror at suicide terrorism”. The first part starts with a focus on the contrasts between terrorism and war, and questions the Bush administration’s arrangement of the expression ‘war against terrorism’ after 9/11, while highlighting the way that in history, states have dealt with terrorism not with war but with police action.
The author investigates the presumption of the ‘clash of civilization’ thesis, which explains contemporary ‘Islamic jihadism’ as the pith of ‘contemporary terrorism.
The author infers that there’s nothing of the sort as the clash of civilization because there are no self-contained societies to which fixed civilization values correspond.
Asad’s analysis in this section relies upon the similarity between war and terrorism, and he contends that the brutality of the state armed force and a terrorist group share much for all intents and purposes.
He causes to notice the way that states are likewise associated with the organized killings of civilians, and endeavours to feature the cruelties of what’s called legalized violence by nation-states. Furthermore, the author argued that western liberal democracies also need to be reformed if the same is demanded of the Muslim world.
The subsequent section named “suicide terrorism” surveys numerous expert explanations on suicide bombing and endeavours to clarify why suicide bombing is so unique. The author proceeds to discuss suicide operations through the viewpoint of the current theories and speculations which distinguish them from war. The utilization of one’s own body as a killing machine has disturbed westernizes, whose specialists become engrossed with the inspiration of the bombers.
The author critiques the Christianization of Islamic conceptions and acts of martyrdom. Asad expounds the Muslim discussion of shadad, noting that istishadad, a technique of jihad ending in self-annihilation, is a present-day thought. He draws parallels between the rhetoric surrounding istishadad and western conceptions.
Asad additionally moves to the discussion of the formation of modern political subjectivities, especially Palestinian, and closes the section by concurring that suicide terrorism is in actuality unique, and the primary factors motivating these individuals will always be personal experiences of oppression.
At last, Asad finishes up the book by examining why suicide bombing is so shocking. He questions for what reason do individuals in the west respond to verbal and visual portrayals of suicide bombing with the calling of ghastliness? The author explores the idea of horror as a typical response to suicide bombing. He draws upon anthropological compositions to clarify the idea that awfulness in a suicide bombing has to deal with the collapse of social and political identity.
Asad draws upon the crucifixion of Jesus while tracing the development of the idea of horror at suicide bombing and contends that the crucifixion is the most well-known suicide in human history. The crucifixion taught Christians that fierce demise and penance can be viewed as an event of affection for all the dead, however, this is unimaginable in the event of a suicide bombing, because of an absence of redemption for both casualty and culprit.
The author notes that the act of suicide tends to leave survivors in anguish. Those left behind die in some measure, feeling responsible and accountable in some ways. This inclination is associated with the idea of crucifixion. Jesus died for our transgressions, subsequently leaving his devotees to hold up under the obligation.
The author ends up this part by remarking that what frightens isn’t simply dying and killing yet the fierce appearance of something that is ordinarily dismissed in secular modernity: the boundless quest for freedom. Liberalism disapproves of the violent exercise of freedom outside the frame of law. Yet, the law itself is established by and constantly relies upon coercive violence.
Asad rehashes his choirs toward the finish of the chapter: “If modern war seeks to found or to defend a free political community with its law, can one say that suicide terrorism (like a suicidal nuclear strike) belongs in this sense to liberalism?”
Asad asks in his epilogue, how the West thinks of the new rationale of assaulting, then it discovers reasons to not follow these rationales that it created in some different cases. The writer composes, “I find this more disturbing than the sordid violence of individual terrorists. It seems to me there is no moral difference between the horror conflicted by state armies and the horror inflicted by the insurgents.
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).
On the off chance that if we attempt to associate it with the case of Kashmir like how the heinous crimes of the Indian state against Kashmiris are legitimized and justified by the Indians. How a Kashmiri body is socially and politically built and perceived by the Indian military occupiers. Every Kashmiris experience inside and outside the valley illustrates how the “killability” of the Kashmiri body is justified, a body that can be slaughtered without regret or responsibility.
Under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA, executed in 1991), each Kashmiri is a possible suspect. Anybody can be halted, or even shot without any explanation. Asad reflects in the finishing up part that good and bad arguments are available to any individual who wants to legitimize the conduct of insurgents or armies on the battlefield or of tortures in state detention centres. Author’s job has been to call attention to the horror.
So, the author is more worried about finding and locating the causes which result in the creation of terrorism instead of rationalizing the motivations of a suicide bomber. With his energetic discursive questioning all through the book, Asad brings up the intrinsic logical inconsistencies and blemishes in the modern secular policies and the west’s undue interference in and exploitation of the Middle East.
Asad gives new directions by offering a ground-breaking argument against major political specialists who uphold the giving of good preferred position and authenticity to intimidation and coercion against the foe.
Thus, the book is an exceptionally captivating and engaging read and is full of significant discussion of thoughts, definitions, and genealogies. This work is indeed a unique and extraordinary look at suicide bombing that’s helpful to both scholars and readers curious about the topic of suicide bombing.