Christian Suicide Bombings?

[Hobelhouse]

How could one get a TL where suicide bombing are routinely perpetrated by Christian groups in certain countries? IE, suicide boming as a tactic of Christian terrorists. What would the scriptural justification for it look like? I can think of a few things:

*The story of Samson killing himself by collapsing the temple on top of him and the Philistines
*The tradition of martyrdom in the early church
*The idea of suicide bombings as redemption, like the death of Jesus

What would the historical events have to be to lead to this? Maybe a longer-lasting, more brutal Ottoman Empire that oppresses the Balkans? Muslim Western Europe where Christianity ends up supressed?

 

[Boom22]

The Romans are IMHO the only force capable of stopping the spread of Christianity and this belongs in Before 1900.

 

[NKVD]

This would probably be before 1900. Christianity would only be this radical if Europeans didn't have the power they did in OTL.

 

[Jasen777]

*The tradition of martyrdom in the early church

A fail to see how the tradition of not renouncing their faith under torture as inspiration for suicide bombings. Jesus didn't kill anyone with is death either. Places in Latin America have suffered a bit and they haven't gone in for suicide bombings, so it'll take quite a bit of work.

 

[Broz]

interestingly the jesuits were founded as basically a military order, and trougout the reformation and counterreformation periods they acted as agitators, spies, ewen assasins and what you would today call terrorists

i dont think any biblical references are necesarry
theres no analogus reference to suicide bombings in koran
people just get ideas
isnt that what religion is founded on i the first place

suicide bombings are not realy a question of religion they are a question of economy, is it proffitable to send one man to do the job of up to 500000 euro worth of military tehnology?

 

[Kriegdämmerung]

I could see something like this occuring in:

-an Ireland gone horribly wrong
-maybe India (oppressed Catholic minority, pick up tactics from the Muslim minorities)
-Africa?

But yeah, to get suicide-bombing a regular Catholic practice, this has to go to Pre-1900...

 

[rcduggan]

Didn't the Donatists do this kind of thing? Or at least they forced random passersby to kill a Donatist to make him a martyr. So maybe a radical sect of Donatists survive, who believe that blowing themselves and heretics or infidels up will make them a martyr.

This has to be far post-1900 though.

 

[admkenshin]

It needs more than just being willing to sacrifice oneself. Suicide bombings generally target random civilians, and one of the main reasons for suicide bombings in the middle east was that a certain freedom movement leader in egypt (with his basis in Islam) became much more fundamental after he was tortured by CIA.

He then turned to publicly going up against the egyptian government, which he viewed as american decadent. He was executed, but he had laid the basis for modern militant Islam. Many such movements rose up against different US-friendly states, but all terror attacks against the government resulted in middle eastern people being angry at these movements. The leaders then decided that the people had betrayed Islam, and could thus legitimately be killed. Random terrorism started soon after.

Without a justification to kill civilians of the same fate, I cannot see any major religion taking up middle east style terrorism.

 

[Berra]

This is not the answer you want but the easist way to have christian sueside bombings are a merger of (parts of) christianity and the radical, revolutionary ideas. Weather it is a struggle against western colonisers or some other movement in the west.

 

[Empror Mike]

How could one get a TL where suicide bombing are routinely perpetrated by Christian groups in certain countries? IE, suicide boming as a tactic of Christian terrorists. What would the scriptural justification for it look like? I can think of a few things:

*The story of Samson killing himself by collapsing the temple on top of him and the Philistines
*The tradition of martyrdom in the early church
*The idea of suicide bombings as redemption, like the death of Jesus

What would the historical events have to be to lead to this? Maybe a longer-lasting, more brutal Ottoman Empire that oppresses the Balkans? Muslim Western Europe where Christianity ends up supressed?

Make the Lebanese Civil War even worse for the Christians. They'll be throwing their lives away for Jesus like nothing.

Anyway, your main problem is the progress of "Christian" countries. Almost everywhere Christian in the world, there has been a certain attempt to seperate religion from conflict and politics throughout the century. This was the standard in much of the empires controlling so-called undeveloped-christian-countries during the first half of our century, and so was rooted in those countries which do have some potential suicide bombers (people with nothing to live for).
In any case, western culture (which dominated Christianity for the last 200 years) is highly individualist and humanitarian, while Islam can easily be interpreted as being anti-individualistic and movemantistic (that isn't really a word now, is it?). But I'm sure that if you get a none-western Christian population to a really screwed-up state (such as the Lebanese example state above) you can get some dudes to die for Jesus.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Christians did do this type of thing all the time in the 19th c, except nationalism, socialism, and anarchism were the main motivators, not religion - although that definitely played into it.

The rationales were similar - end infidel (Muslim) rule over Christian peoples.

How could one get a TL where suicide bombing are routinely perpetrated by Christian groups in certain countries? IE, suicide boming as a tactic of Christian terrorists. What would the scriptural justification for it look like? I can think of a few things:

*The story of Samson killing himself by collapsing the temple on top of him and the Philistines
*The tradition of martyrdom in the early church
*The idea of suicide bombings as redemption, like the death of Jesus

What would the historical events have to be to lead to this? Maybe a longer-lasting, more brutal Ottoman Empire that oppresses the Balkans? Muslim Western Europe where Christianity ends up supressed?

 

[aktarian]

It needs more than just being willing to sacrifice oneself. Suicide bombings generally target random civilians, and one of the main reasons for suicide bombings in the middle east was that a certain freedom movement leader in egypt (with his basis in Islam) became much more fundamental after he was tortured by CIA.

He then turned to publicly going up against the egyptian government, which he viewed as american decadent. He was executed, but he had laid the basis for modern militant Islam. Many such movements rose up against different US-friendly states, but all terror attacks against the government resulted in middle eastern people being angry at these movements. The leaders then decided that the people had betrayed Islam, and could thus legitimately be killed. Random terrorism started soon after.

Without a justification to kill civilians of the same fate, I cannot see any major religion taking up middle east style terrorism.

you explanation does squat about explaining how shi'ias adopted it first and then sunnis copied from them after seeing how effective it can be. Of course Hezbollah was more careful in choosing their targets and didn't saturate the area with them and knew when to use them to prevent deminsihed returns.