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By Root 2166 0

The sum itself varies, though $10,000 is often mentioned as the standard payment to the family of a suicide bomber. Payments totalling many thousand dollars have been received by the families of the Palestinian martyrs. A few, very public martyrs have received up to $35,000, as did the suicide bomber who killed four American soldiers during Operation Iraqi Freedom. A public square in Jenin was also named for him, showing Palestinian support for any action against the United States.

This is a significant sum for young Palestinians or Iraqis, many times higher than most could hope to earn in many a year. The payments come from Iran, from wealthy Saudi Arabians, and most recently also from Iraq-in short, from the sworn enemies of Israel and the United States. Within Palestine, teenagers are actively recruited by older young men who work for the much admired religious organizations of Hizballah and ḥamas. Since these meetings are sometimes videotaped, a few have fallen into Israeli hands so we can actually see the dynamics at work with horrifying results.

The confirming society is not just the family. Family support is mirrored by national support. Newspapers and TV stations, which are usually instruments of state policy in Arab countries, have been equally passionate in their support of suicide bombers.70 Together with the adulation that the volunteers receive before performing their act of self-immolation, the path to martyrdom has been hard to resist for young, unemployed, though often highly educated Palestinian Muslims. Though we do not know the personal histories of all the suicide terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center, we can assume that they became fervent Muslims after suffering from the entire range of anomie, as well as social and economic dysfunction, which infects young Muslim men, both in Muslim countries and in the West. We can also suspect that their families were paid by persons anxious to hurt the United States.71

Fundamentalist Education Produces Fundamentalist Extremism

BUT NONE OF IT would be possible, were not religious extremist schooling the main source of education in these communities today. The secular schools in Palestine and many other Arab countries are in total shambles. Many have simply ceased to exist. Fundamentalist madrassas and colleges have filled in the gaps. They turn fundamentalism into fundamentalist extremism. There, the young learn unreformed Islam in which religious martyrdom and religious justification for jihad warfare are much praised, praised higher than finding an occupation and becoming a householder. When asked for help from the wealthy, Saudi Arabian donors are far more likely to donate a new mosque and madrassa than a vocational school or even give direct support for the needy. Secular schools are not even much in the interest of the secular dictators who rule many Arab countries, still less the religious leadership of the ’awqaf (religious, charitable trusts, sing. waqf). Secular schools are expensive to maintain and they tend to teach democratic values. While Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not produce the same fundamentalism, a strong fundamentalist education and atmosphere seem to be one of the indicators of the rise of extremist political radicalism and violence.

The relationship between fundamentalist and parochial education is strongest in Jihadi (extremist) Islam but it is true everywhere. Tariq ’Ali emphasizes that it is one of the strongest reasons why fundamentalism has flowered in Muslim countries. Here is his description of the fundamentalist madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan:

Together with verses from the Koran (learned by rote) and the necessity to lead a devout life, these children were taught to banish all doubts. The only truth was divine truth, the only code of conduct was that written in Koran and the Hadiths, virtue lay in unthinking obedience. Anyone who rebelled against the imam rebelled against Allah. The aim was clear. These madrassas had a single function. They were indoctrination nurseries designed to produce fanatics.