Fighting terrorists requires understanding their concept of time

An improved understanding of "terrorist time" would have special benefits in our dealings with the "suicide bomber."

This type of terrorist is uniquely afraid of death, so afraid that he is actually willing to kill himself as a means of becoming immortal. This paradoxical attempt to conquer death by dying in a homicidal way is a tactic to unstop time (the late Kurt Vonnegut wrote more generally about such notions in "Slaughterhouse Five.")

Truth, here, lies buried in paradox, and America can benefit from disinterring an apparent oxymoron. We must understand a core Islamist terrorist idea that real time does not have a "stop." For our time-centered terrorist enemies, who seek to soar above the mortal limits imposed by clocks, such real time is clearly sacred.

How, then, can counterterrorism be improved by incorporating culturally differentiated concepts of time?

The most obvious way to combat the Islamist suicide bomber's deadly notion of time is to disabuse him of such a notion. This would entail our prior realization that the suicide bomber sees himself as a religious sacrificer, who in full ceremonial action, seeks an escape from time.

Abandoning the profane time of ordinary mortals – a chronology that is linked to personal death – the Islamist suicide bomber prepares to transport himself into the divinely protected world of immortalized martyrs. It shouldn't surprise us that the temptation to sacrifice "infidels" at the purifying altar of jihad can be irresistible.

What must we do with our improved understanding of terrorist time? Clearly, by itself, America's narrow military war against terrorist infrastructures can never be the total solution. Rather, the immediate and corollary task must be to convince prospective suicide bombers, either directly or indirectly, that their intended "sacrifice" of "infidels" can never elevate them above the immutable limits of time.

Before we can win the war on terror, the jihadist terrorists will first need to be convinced that they are not now living in profane time, and that every intended act of sacrificial killing would represent an authentic betrayal of Islam.

The great majority of Islamic clergy all over the world may already accept this salutary view, however silently. We must now urge them to speak up – to call extremists back from the brink.

America's essential struggle against terrorism in time can be improved only when the particular Islamist vision of time is first recognized, then challenged and transformed.

• Louis René Beres, a professor of international law at Purdue University, is the author of many books and articles dealing with war, terrorism, and international law.

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