THE LATEST OUTBREAK of violence in Israel included yet again another suicide bombing. Just this past weekend, on Saturday night, a Palestinian blew himself up in a crowded garden cafe across the street from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's fortified residential compound. He killed at least eleven people.

Why do Muslim males blow themselves up among innocent people?

Yes, the first Muslim female just recently succeeded in this feat in Jerusalem. But overall, this has clearly been a male phenomenon in Islam.

Anti-American and anti-Israeli groupies would have us believe that suicide bombers act out of desperation because of American and Israeli imperialism.

Wrong.

Suicide bombers have embraced a death wish because of the nightmarish reality that Islamic culture and religion have imposed on them.

In Islam, "Jihad" (the holy war against the infidels) fills the void of an absent father in a young Muslim man's life. Expressed through suicide, Jihad also allows the Muslim youth to punish himself for the agonizing guilt he harbors regarding his sexual feelings for women, which are demonized in Islam. Moreover, suicide offers the young Muslim male a final union with Allah, which ends the young man's life-long search for a father figure.

The entire history of Islam is a story about the missing father. This was the reality of the Prophet Mohammed himself.

Without a father, a child's ability to construct a healthy identity is seriously harmed. Within the setting of this tragic abandonment, any societal structure will always be lacking. History and empirical realities have demonstrated that there is one kind of "family" that tends to produce violent men: the one in which women rule and men are invisible.

A fatherless male child blames his victimization on the female. Boys who are nurtured by their fathers, and who see their fathers nurture their mothers, always have more respect for women than fatherless males.

This foundation for the hatred of women is fertilized by the venomous misogyny inherent in Islamic religion itself. In Islam, males are taught to control desire (shahwa). Women are the incarnation of shahwa. Shahwa comes from the devil. It becomes clear, therefore, why the association of shahwa, the devil and woman, is rife throughout Islamic religious literature.

Muslim males hate women because they are symbols of their own lust and repressed sexuality. As a result, males must oppress and denigrate the object of their lust. But this does not mean that males natural attraction toward the opposite sex disappears. The result is excruciating sexual rage and guilt.

The problem is that wherever men oppress and despise women, a collective form of suicidal behavior emerges. In the Muslim Arab world, the society is so pathological that suicide takes on a literal form.

It only makes sense that Islamic terrorists violently strike out against American freedom in the same way they strike out against their own women: they hate what stimulates their desire and guilt. In punishing America, they punish their own sinful urges.

And it is no coincidence that, in many interviews with failed suicide bombers, Muslim males confess they were motivated by how the shedding of their own blood would yield the forgiveness of their sins.

Interestingly these men also confirm that they acted out of a lifelong search for love and desire to be with Allah. In this case, the suicide bombers are clearly searching (unconsciously) for their absent fathers. They wish to please their fathers and to get the affirmation and attention from them that they have craved their entire lives.

Suicide, therefore, offers the Muslim male a tool with which to punish himself - as well as those who have made him feel an overwhelming sense of guilt. In killing himself along with the enemies of Allah, he is able to fulfill his lifelong dream: to be with the father whose love and presence he's never ever known.

Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He is the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist and of Canadian Policy Toward Khruschev's Soviet Union ( McGill-Queens University Press, 2002). Born in the U.S.S.R., Jamie is the son of prominent Soviet dissidents, and now resides in Vancouver, Canada. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice column for angst-ridden leftists at EnterStageRight.com. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.