The Suicide Bomb Morality

Robert Tracinski writes this article from RealClearPolitics on the ethical difference between the values of the West and those of the Islamofascist suicide bombers. And indeed the principle which motivates our enemies should be clear to all.

Tracinski, like Ayn Rand, refers to this idea as the doctrine of self sacrifice. But in thinking about this I believe there is a more accurate way to characterize it. The idea of self sacrifice as it is commonly used in the West usually includes the idea of doing so to help others. Fire fighters, police and military people put their lives on the line to make life safe for their fellow citizens as well as for the payment they receive. And ordinary acts of heroism, like jumping in a lake to save a drowning person, are done with the value of life in mind. These kinds of acts are done in the service of life; with the implicit recognition that life is itself the motivating factor.

But the Palestinian suicide bombers, who Tracinski uses as an example, have an entirely different motivation. These people, and the culture they represent, act in the service of death. They value death and do not value life. They do not practice the ethics of self sacrifice as we understand it in the West. Rather, they are practicing the doctrine of Human Sacrifice, which is an altogether different sort of thing. They not only act to kill themselves, but they are willing to kill their own children if it means the death of the infidels can be accomplished. Indeed, they have chosen the death of their entire society rather than seek peaceful relations with Israel or the West.

When I think of these people I am reminded of primitive cultures such as the Aztecs, who commonly practiced human sacrifice in order to appease their gods. It occurs to me that Islam, when considered in its religious context as opposed to its political dimension, falls into this same category of a primitive mindset which requires victims and sacrifices of blood to appease a vengeful and malevolent god. The first explorers to reach the Americas were shocked to find this way of thinking among American Indian tribes such as the Aztecs and they acted as quickly as they could to stamp it out. In our battle against primitive Islam we should be no less pro-active in seeking the destruction of this horrific ideology of human sacrifice and death.