A suicide bombing is a special kind of evil. Its horror is intensified by the vision of a human being transformed into an explosive device, mingling in a crowd of strangers and tearing his or her own body with shrapnel while murdering and maiming as many chance bystanders as possible.
It reveals a sickening disdain for human life, both other people’s and one’s own. It goes against most religious beliefs because if a God or a Supreme Being has brought us into the world so that we could dismember ourselves and one another in this grotesque manner, then surely there can be no hope whatsoever for salvation or redemption.
Suicide bombings are now being used even when they aren’t, strictly speaking, necessary. A few conventional bombs planted in the Moscow metro would have done just as much damage. Yet, the terrorists — young women no less — opted for suicide to heighten the effect of the massacres.
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