Terror threat
When Brahim Abdeslam bespattered himself in a restaurant in last November’s Paris attacks he didn’t much look like a man, to borrow the title of Mia Bloom’s seminal study of suicide bombing, Dying to Kill. He looked, rather, like a man killing to die. If there is a script for doing a jihadist suicide mission, as there now assuredly is, Brahim Abdeslam wasn’t following it. He didn’t cinematically burst through the doors screaming “allahu akbar.” He didn’t condemn the restaurant’s patrons in bloodcurdling religious language nor profess his avenging motive for Muslims or God. He didn’t smile, beatifically, in anticipation of all those black-eyed virgins awaiting him in paradise.
When Brahim Abdeslam bespattered himself in a restaurant in last November’s Paris attacks he didn’t much look like a man, to borrow the title of Mia Bloom’s seminal study of suicide bombing, Dying to Kill. He looked, rather, like a man killing to die. If there is a script for doing a jihadist suicide mission, as there now assuredly is, Brahim Abdeslam wasn’t following it. He didn’t cinematically burst through the doors screaming “allahu akbar.” He didn’t condemn the restaurant’s patrons in bloodcurdling religious language nor profess his avenging motive for Muslims or God. He didn’t smile, beatifically, in anticipation of all those black-eyed virgins awaiting him in paradise.
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