TYT: STUDY: Terrorists Motivated By Politics Way More Than Religion
An analysis of every suicide attack since 1980 shows a surprising motivation for those attacks, and its not the motivation youve been hearing in the media. "What 95% of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
"Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all.
He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome, and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been many hundreds of secular suicide attackers, which suggests that radical theology alone doesnt explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the world leader in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.*
Read more here:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-what-man-who-studied-every-suicide-attack-world-says-about-isis-motives