fervor, were differentiated by their fundamental goals. Some hoped to expel a foreign occupier; others engaged in violence to celebrate their dedication to a cause, an idea, or a particular leader. The (Hindu) Thugs, (Muslim) Assassins, and (Jewish) Zealots all used terror and were principally motivated by religion.3
Much of what inspires religious terrorism today is reflected in the history of these early organizations. The early terrorists' desire for publicity, their indoctrination of children, their targeting of foreign occupiers, and attacks against collaborators are all surprisingly similar to the tactics used today in Israel, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis has written about the activities of the twelfth-century Nizari, an Ismaili Islamic sect more commonly known as the Assassins. The word assassin, which is still used today to describe a politically motivated murderer, can be traced to the Arabic word hashishiyyin, because the Nizari reputedly smoked hashish before engaging in acts of terror. Their primary goal was to purify Islam. They inflicted relatively few casualties, although in their heyday they posed a serious threat to the governments of the Seljuk Empire in Persia and the Levant. The account written by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century describes what many present-day Islamic suicide bombers think will be their ultimate heavenly reward. Speaking of the Assassin chief, Polo wrote,
The King had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that ever was seen flowing freely with wine and milk and honey and water; and numbers of ladies and of the most beautiful damsels in the world, who could play on all manner of instruments and sung most sweetly, and danced in a manner that it was charming to behold. For the Old Man desired to make his people believe that this was actually Paradise…So when the Old Man would have any Prince slain, he would say to such a youth: “Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest, my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And should'st thou die nevertheless even so, I will send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.” And in this manner the Old One got his people to murder any one whom he desired to get rid of.4
From 1090 to 1256 AD, the Assassins terrorized all who opposed them, killing grand viziers, ministers, and kings, and even attacking the Muslim hero Salah ad-Din. They battled the forces of Genghis Khan during the Mongol invasions of the Middle East. To spread their notoriety, they attacked prominent victims at venerated holy sites and at the royal court. They struck on Muslim holy days when crowds were present to maximize the publicity. Lewis explains that their weapon was “always a dagger, never poison, never a missile…and the Assassin usually made no attempt to escape; there was even a suggestion that to survive the mission was shameful.”5
The Assassins' goal was to return the Islamic community of believers (umma) into a single community, as had been the case under the first four rightfully guided caliphs, the successors to the Prophet, in the seventh century. By the twelfth century there were several centers of Islamic thought and devotion, which had been split apart by war and successive invasions. These splinters gave rise to different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and different interpretations of the faith, which pitted Muslims against other Muslims. The Assassins rebelled against the existing political order and sought to establish their own, one that would consist of a series of mountain fortresses and city states. To facilitate cooperation among the states, they established a network of supporting cells in sympathetic neighboring urban centers.
We can draw many parallels between the Assassins and contemporary Islamic fundamentalist groups that employ terror. Like the Assassins, many of the current movements indoctrinate their followers at an early age and rely upon adherents' dedication to charismatic leaders. Like the Assassins, Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri call for a restoration of the Muslim caliphate and unification of Islam against the non-believers. Like the Assassins, Al Qaeda and its offshoot organizations allege that Islam is surrounded by hostile neighbors and under attack and thus they must use any means necessary to fend off the apostates who would undermine their goal of a united community of believers.
Although there are many early examples of using violence to terrorize a population, the first modern suicide bombers, as far as we know, were the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II. Beginning in November 1944, young university-educated men used their bodies and their planes to attack the American fleet in the Pacific, especially targeting aircraft carriers and battleships.
Admiral Takijiro Onishi had asked the young men to volunteer for a “special attack” (tokkotai) meaning: transcending life and death. Onishi commanded the first squadron, known as Shinpu Tokubetsu Kogekitai. His reasoning was that Japan was nearly defeated, short of resources, and had nothing to lose by sending its young pilots on cost-effective suicide missions in the hope of deterring the enemy. Onishi explained that “if they [the pilots] are on land, they would be bombed down, and if they are in the air, they would be shot down. That's sad…Too sad…To let the young men die beautifully, that's what tokkotai is. To give a beautiful death, that's called sympathy.”6
In a letter to his parents, Second Lieutenant Shigeyuki Suzuki explained his reasons for volunteering for a kamikaze mission:
People say that our feeling is one of resignation, but they do not understand at all how we feel, and think of us as a fish about to be cooked. Young blood flows in us. There are persons we love, we think of, and many unforgettable memories. However, with those, we cannot win the war…To let this beautiful Japan keep growing, to be released from the wicked hands of the Americans and British, and to build a “free Asia” was our goal from the Gakuto Shutsujin year before last; yet nothing has changed…The great day that we can directly be in contact with the battle is our day of happiness and at the same time, the memorial of our death.7
In the Battle of Okinawa, from April to June 1945, more than two thousand kamikaze pilots rammed fully fueled fighter planes into more than three hundred ships, killing five thousand Americans in the most costly naval battle in U.S. history.8 Researcher Peter Hill found that only a minority of the kamikazes actually hit their targets. The Allied fleets deployed radar ships to spot the enemy planes, after which they bombarded them with antiaircraft fire. The Allies also enjoyed air superiority.
Not everyone in the Japanese high command believed that kamikaze attacks were a good strategy. First, it was an extremely expensive tactic to use a trained pilot and his aircraft for a single attack. It conflicted with the basic military principle of inflicting maximum damage on the enemy with the minimum loss to one's own resources. Second, plane-crash attacks lacked sufficient penetrative power to strike a mortal blow to the American aircraft carriers. To be effective, the kamikaze had to strike when the decks were fully laden with aircraft. Third, it was enormously difficult to evaluate the success of missions because the pilots never returned and their commanders had every incentive to overestimate the gains achieved by their men's sacrifice.
Although Japanese pilots committed the vast majority of the kamikaze attacks, similar missions were conducted by other countries. In April 1945, Germany used planes to crash into bridges to impede the Soviet armies closing in on Berlin. The pilots were reported to have signed a declaration saying, “I am above all else clear that the mission will end in my death.”9 There were at least two incidents of American suicide attacks on Japanese ships, one during the battle of Coral Sea in May 1942, the second at Midway that June. In both cases, the planes were either out of fuel or too badly damaged to return to base.
The most significant factor leading to the kamikaze strategy was the fact that Japan could not win against the American juggernaut using conventional forces. The kamikaze attacks inspired terror throughout the American fleet and helped convince American military leaders to deploy nuclear weapons against this nation whose people were so dedicated and so unafraid of death.
However, an attack by a person in uniform against a military target such as a battleship during a declared state of hostilities does not easily fit the
