Towards a Redefinition of Islamic Suicide Terrorist’s Motivation: An “Altruistic” Terrorist Model

Abstract

The article aims at a redefinition of Islamic suicide terrorist’s motivation� It describes the basic determinants and conceptualizations of terrorism and discusses major theories and explanations of that phenomenon from an individualistic and sociocultural perspective� Due to the fact that suicide terrorism is a very distinct and narrow subcategory of terrorism, the paper addresses the questions of Why it is unique? and in What ways it is distinct from (“normal”) terrorism in general? Given the absence of convincing psychological, sociological and educational evidence that terrorists (and especially suicide terrorists) differ in any particular way from the normal population, the author has developed and proposed an “altruistic” suicide-terrorist model� The proposed model treats suicide terrorism as a process of continuous communication/ — ABSTRAKT —