Jihadi terror as religious sacrifice – pathway to a nuclear war with Iran

“The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the sacrifice, of the other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying.” – Otto Rank, Will Therapy and Reality (1936)

Following the collapse of Syria’s Bashar al Assad’s regime, jihadi terror groups are being refashioned in the Middle East. Though there are evident and significant differences between these groups, all share a single overriding objective. This common goal is not geopolitical advantage or national self-determination, but “power over death.” Whatever else differentiates jihadi terror group ideologies and tactics from one another, all Islamist groups seek personal redemption through “sacred violence.”

In essence, jihadist terror represents a convenient form of religious sacrifice. The jihadi rallying cry, “We love death,” is common to Sunni and Shia insurgents. In exclaiming this perverse cry, no fundamental differences appear between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, Houthi in Yemen and Hamas/Fatah in Gaza/’West Bank’. All jihadi forces seek “martyrdom” in order not to die. This is the case even though virtually all terrorist leaders in Hamas, Houthi, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah prescribe martyrdom for their followers but not for themselves.

Despite easily-discoverable commonalities of jihadi terror, the evolution of Palestinian Arab criminal violence against Israel displays a unique historical narrative. The original fraternity of Palestinian Arab terrorist groups contained markedly disparate bedfellows. Originally, Israel’s “liquidation” justified all manner of indiscriminate harms and every Arab enemy of Israel was urged to join the obligatory war against “Zionists.” At that time, even Marxists and similarly flagrant “unbelievers” found welcome under the same operational tent.

Presently, things are different. The jihadi terrorist fight is now openly oriented to the idea of “holy war” as religious sacrifice. This unhidden orientation is relentless, persistent, conspicuously barbarous and potentially irremediable. The October 7, 2023 Hamas rape and murder of Israeli and other nations’ noncombatants is the most obvious case in point.

In explaining such egregious crimes, history deserves pride of place. Speaking on official PA (Palestinian Authority) TV, on November 7, 2014, a senior Fatah official blessed all Islamic killers of Israelis: “Jerusalem needs blood in order to purify itself of Jews.” Two days later, on November 9, 2014, PA television honored these same killers as follows: “Greetings and honor to our heroic martyrs…We stand submissive and humbled by what you gave and sacrificed.”

On November 14, 2014, the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs summarized in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “Jerusalem needs sacrifices and blood.”

Who are these prospective “martyrs?” The deepest roots of jihadi terror stem from cultures that embrace religious views of belligerent sacrifice. In these cultures, the purpose of “sacred violence” always extends beyond any expectations of civic responsibility. Instead, this purpose goes to the most elemental human fear, the palpable dread of personal death.

With this in mind, Jihadi enticements are not difficult to understand. After all, the promised reward for those who sacrifice for jihad is nothing less than individual salvation. Says Sura 2:154: “Do not think that those who are killed in the way of Allah are dead, for indeed they are alive, even though you are not aware.”[1]

In the Islamist Middle East, where theological doctrine divides humankind into the dar al-Islam (world of Islam) and the dar al-harb (world of war), acts of terror against “unbelievers” have long been defended as expressions of sacredness. For jihadi fighters, individual sacrifice ultimately derives from a feverishly hoped-for conquest of personal disintegration. Adopting atavistic practices, the jihadist expects to achieve an otherwise unattainable immortality. Also usually expected are a variety of more sensual or lascivious benefits.

For jihadists, there are aspects of sacrificial terror that ought never to be overlooked. This two-sided nature of terror/sacrifice – the sacrifice of “The Jew” and the reciprocal sacrifice of “The Martyr” – is codified within the Charter of Hamas and elsewhere as a “religious” problem.” Always, for the Islamist terrorist, the true enemy is “The Jew,” not “The Israeli.”

Earlier, Yasser Arafat’s appointed clergy, preaching on the Temple Mount, affirmed an immutable religious precept: “Palestinians spearhead Allah’s war against the Jews. The dead shall not rise, until the Palestinians shall kill all the Jews….” Today, when jihadists of any type plan tactics of suicide terrorism – that is, when leaders give orders from Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, etc., for “believers” to make sacrifices of themselves – they leave nothing about immortality to chance. Because dying in the act of killing “infidels,” “apostates,” and “unbelievers” is assured to buy freedom from the penalty of dying, these jihadists can reliably conquer personal mortality by killing themselves.

Although nonsensical ipso facto, it’s a grand and incomparable bargain, one that deserves much closer consideration in Jerusalem (and also Washington). For Palestinian Arab jihadists in particular, homicide-suicide offers not only a transient “death” for heroic Muslims, but the required annihilation of a religiously-despised Jewish State. Accordingly, the promised bargain represents a “win-win” for all jihadi “warriors.”

Though not widely understood, the root terror problem in the Islamic Middle East is jihadi death fear and the consequent compulsion to sacrifice expressly despised “others.” In turn, this often overriding compulsion stems from a doctrinal belief that killing unbelievers and being killed by unbelievers defines the best available path to personal immortality. To counter such fanatical belief, Israel must ultimately think in terms of desacralizing its relentless Islamist adversary and convincing this enemy that variously ritualistic murders of Jews will lead not to paradise and limitless pleasures, but (per Qur’an) to untold “terrors of the grave.”

For all jihadi terrorists, the violence-based struggle against Israel and America has never been about land, politics, “settlements” or “self-determination.” Always, it has been about God and immortality. In this regard, Israel and the United States should be reminded that there can be no greater “political” power on earth than “power over death.” This is the case though any such power is an obvious contradiction in terms.

In the current reconfiguration of Islamist terror groups following Bashar Assad’s regime collapse in Syria, all groups will share a presumptive stake in escalating terror violence. Going forward, decision-makers in Jerusalem will need to understand that transient name changes of regional jihadi organizations will be of manifestly secondary significance. Whatever differences emerge between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its predecessors, whether suddenly or incrementally, all jihadi groups will continue to embrace terrorism as a redemptive expression of religious sacrifice.

For Jerusalem, this means not only a continuous need for traditional counter-terrorist operations, but also a heightened urgency to prevent a nuclear Iran. A worst case scenario would be one in which jihadi terrorist assaults “soften” Israel for eventual nuclear attack by the Islamic Republic. A next-to-worst case scenario would involve Israeli nuclear weapons use against a still pre-nuclear Iranian aggressor. This second narrative would represent an asymmetrical nuclear war. The first and worst-case narrative would be a symmetrical nuclear war.

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and publishes widely on world politics, terrorism, and international law. Born in Zürich on August 31, 1945, he is the author of some of the earliest books on nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, including Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1979); Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980); and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986). Professor Beres’ writings can also be found in The Atlantic; U.S. News & World Report; Israel National News; The Jerusalem Post; The Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Brown Journal of World Affairs; Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College; BESA (Israel); International Security (Harvard); World Politics (Princeton); Modern War Institute (West Point); The War Room (Pentagon); Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); Special Warfare (Pentagon) and Oxford University Press, Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence. His twelfth and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2nd ed., 2018): https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy