Introduction

The preceding chapter addressed the demand for extremist acts. But what about the supply? What leads people to demonstrate and to participate in acts of civil disobedience, terrorist acts, assassinations, and other forms of extremist activity? In this chapter we discuss supply with special focus on one example: suicide martyrdom. We focus on the supply of suicide martyrs because it is an extreme case, one that is particularly difficult to understand. But the analysis applies to any form of extremist participation, as the reader will see.

In suicide martyrdom, the perpetrators are willing not merely to risk their lives but to commit themselves to die for their cause. This apparent readiness to make the ultimate sacrifice is what makes the threat of suicide terrorism so large and so incomprehensible. Perhaps more than anything else, it marks off “them” from “us,” as most of us cannot imagine ourselves committing such an act. In this chapter, I argue that it is possible to explain suicide martyrdom in rational choice terms and, although such acts are indeed extreme, they are nevertheless an example of a general class of behavior in which all of us engage.

One reason people join or participate at any level (e.g., participating in activities such as demonstrations or protests, bombings or assassination, as well as suicide martyrdom) in extremist groups is to obtain “solidarity” (or social cohesion or “belongingness”).