Here’s a thread of one of my favorite articles I wrote, about why IS fighters sometimes bring flowers along for suicide bombings. The first example I saw was this IS up-armored SVBIED in Iraq's Dijlah province in October 2016 that was adorned with flowers 1/x
I’ve seen thousands of SVBIEDs, and this was a very rare phenomenon. Eventually I found more examples – Like these SVBIEDs captured near Tal Afar in Iraq in August 2017. It seemed absurd that IS would arrange ornate floral displays before racing towards certain death 2/x
It’s important to realize that there are a number of religious customs and traditions associated with suicide bombings (‘amiliyat istishadiya’ - or ‘martyrdom operations’) for Salafi-Jihadists. To them, a ‘martyrdom operation’ is a definite path to the afterlife, ‘jannah’ 3/x
Within Salafi-Jihadi circles, the use of floral images typically represent both martyrdom itself, as well as paradise. Red, white & yellow flowers are the most commonly used. I managed to find older examples of this phenomenon in ISI videos from 2008 as well 4/x
Those pictures were from a video series titled “Knights of Martyrdom”, which was filled with floral imaging. For example, the animated intro graphic to some of the videos zoomed in on a tanker truck SVBIED along a path lined with yellow flowers, referencing martyrdom 5/x
According to @Hegghammer suicide attacks are seen as a kind of wedding celebration for jihadists, which is also why many prospective suicide bombers groom their bodies in anticipation of meeting the “Hoor al-ayn” in the afterlife. Here a still from a Feb. 2019 TIP video 6/x
Adorning SVBIEDs with flowers has also been documented outside IS core areas of Syria and Iraq. Here's a still from an IS video from Libya's Benghazi in the fall of 2016, where the driver of an SVBIED was handed a bouquet before departing 7/x
IAdorning an up-armoured SVBIED with flowers could be seen as both a wedding gift to the virgins of the everlasting paradise, as well as an intra-jihadi signal of piety. In this IS video from Mosul, flowers were included in a shot of a suicide bomber 8/x
Salafi-Jihadists commonly attempt to recreate or copy practices of the prophet and his companions. For example, suicide bombers sometimes wear musk before embarking on their mission. This smell is often included in jihadi martyrdom literature 9/x
In September 2013, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Egyptian group who later pledged loyalty to IS and became wilayat Sinai) conducted an SVBIED attack in Cairo. It was carried out by a former army member, and he had a bouquet of flowers next to him in the vehicle 10/x
Another interesting trope sometimes repeated by JIhadists is comparing their SVBIEDs to a "steed", saying that it's the "horse of this time" - referencing the horse that the prophet Muhammad and his followers used to ride into battle on. From a 2012 ISI video 11/x
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