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15% in Karachi back suicide bombers: study
KARACHI: Two studies conducted by faculty and students at the Aga Khan University into the attitudes toward suicide bombing among educated people in Karachi and in the tribal areas showed surprisingly divergent results.Fifteen percent of participants in the Karachi-based study supported suicide bombing and said that Islam and other religions supported it. This raised a heated debate among the participants of a concurrent session during the 12th National Health Sciences Research Symposium at the Aga Khan University on Wednesday, some of whom, with backgrounds in Psychiatry, felt that those who become suicide bombers almost invariably suffer from psychiatric disturbances. Professor Abdul Wahab Yousafzai, who conducted the study in the tribal areas of Pakistan, showed that those surveyed strongly believed that religion should influence political thinking (88 percent), that it is important for Muslims to live in an Islamic state (76 percent), but that suicide bombing is not legitimate for Muslims (80 percent) and that suicide bombing is not the result of Islamic fundamentalism (68 percent). At the same time, 83 percent said they did not support suicide bombing. Whereas the study conducted in Karachi by students Faraz Kazim and others showed that 15 percent supported suicide bombing and 84 percent believed suicide bombing is the result of religious fundamentalism, while 55 percent believe that suicide bombers have some underlying psychiatric illness. However, nearly 50 percent of all those surveyed in Karachi believed that suicide bombing was acceptable in Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon. Commenting on this, Dr Murad M. Khan of the Psychiatry department at AKU said that the likely reason for this belief is partiality toward the underdog in asymmetrical warfare. At the same time, the Karachi study also showed that 82 percent believe that suicide bombers are religious fanatics, while approximately 60 percent feel that suicide bombers are relatively uneducated people, who are outcasts from society and who feel frustrated. Some 70 percent say that it is the poorest factions of society that produce suicide bombers. Posted by: john frum 2008-08-28 |
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