Lionel Shriver, writing in today’s Guardian, has a good article on the irrational fear of terrorists. It’s a companion piece to the article by Jonah Lehrer that I mentioned earlier this month. Ms. Shriver also weaves in two other strands of the story that I think are valid. First, as she says, all the banging on about terror by Bush, Blair and the media simply drives up the level of irrational fear in the population at large. And second, that the psychological profile of a typical suicide bomber is probably very similar to how she describes them:
"They suffer from equal parts self-pity and grandiosity. They have chips on their shoulders. They feel underestimated and nourish a private sense of superiority. They glorify their own view of the world, which they fantasise about shoving down everyone else’s throat. They covet celebrity, and even the posthumous kind will do. They’re actually very imitative, and suggestible, but they think of themselves as exceptional, as special, as elect. It’s a type. It’s not just an Islamic type. You find it in every ethnicity, all over the world".
And, I would add, they are usually male. The female of the species seems to be slightly more balanced, although there is probably little to choose between the Tricoteuses and the serried ranks of women clad in black burqas urging on their menfolk
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