Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

voluntarily. The enthusiasm for self-sacrifice merged with cold, calculated logic.
This was the basis for their recruitment and training. The battle was already lost, but
the desire to die willingly was ensconced. A senior officer would gather about thirty
officers, and speak to them movingly about the homeland and about the need to
sacrifice for its sake. He would ask to hear their answers that very evening, each
officer individually. Only infrequently did one of the officers defer the honor being
offered to them. It is possible that that more courage was required to stand up
against this appointment than to agree to volunteer… In letters, which they left for
their parents, they generally referred to their predicament by saying such things as:
Do not mourn us; we die happy and proud for the sake of the Caesar and victory.” 54
One of the Japanese suicide pilots, Kosonuki Masashiga, even wrote that “he hoped
to be reborn several times over in order to relive the same life he lived during the
war.” It is impossible not to be reminded of the same tradition put forward in the
Hadith by the Prophet Muhammad, of which there are several versions. According to
this tradition, the “Shahid’s most fervent will is to be reborn several times over in
order to reenact the same deeds.”
The identity of the author of the letter is unknown and investigators of the FBI tend
to assume it was Muhammad Atta. But, regardless of the author, the letter provides
us with one of the most vivid and penetrating glimpses into the mind of the planners
of the attacks, and the mental state of the suicide hijackers. The main theme of the
letter is planting in the hijackers’ mind that there is a direct line between them and
the companions (Sahabah) of the Prophet in the 7 th Century. In all their preparations
for the attack and during taking over the planes, they should have seen themselves
and behaved as if they were fighting alongside their ancestors. They were instructed
to tie their clothes “in the same manner our good predecessors had done before you”;
to be courageous, “as our predecessors did when they came to the battle”; to press
their teeth together “as the predecessors used to do”; and to recite “other similar
verses that our predecessors used to mention in battlefield”. They were instructed
54 Maurice Pinguet, Voluntary Death in Japan (Cambridge; Polity Press, 1993), pp. 229-230.
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