ABSTRACT
No other phenomenon in our time has generated so much shock and horror as suicide terrorism. And no other, alas, has generated so much misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Not by accident perhaps, because in this post heroic age many are bound to find it inexplicable that young people should be willing to sacrifice their lives to inflict indiscriminate harm on their enemies. In secular societies, ideological passions seem a spent force and fanaticism has become a phenomenon restricted to small, marginal groups. It is now widely believed that suicide terrorism is something quite unprecedented in the history of mankind, that the motive is religious fanaticism, that it is carried out by the poorest of the poor, the most oppressed and humiliated, those who lost all hope, and that furthermore it is an invincible strategy.
