Since Sept. 11, 2001, the willingness of terrorists to give their own lives has proven to be both effective and difficult to stop.
The American public has often assumed suicide attackers are motivated by religious extremism. But in a new book, Robert Pape and James Feldman argue that religion has little, if anything, to do with it.
According to Pape and Feldman, suicide attackers act not out of religious conviction but to resist foreign military occupation.
In their book, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It, Pape and Feldman examine every case of suicide attacks over the past three decades.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.