This chapter explores the historical and ideological developments of suicide terrorism, establishing it as a recurrent and culturally rooted form of political violence rather than a purely contemporary or religiously motivated phenomenon. Defined by the perpetrator’s intentional death as a tactical component, suicide terrorism has spanned temporal, geographic, and ideological contexts, from the Thuggee cult and Nizari Assassins to Kamikaze pilots, Tamil Tigers, and current Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Similarly, Western traditions also contain examples of self-sacrificial violence, including biblical accounts, Roman Stoicism, anarchist bombers, and Irish hunger strikers. All of these accounts allude to ideological valorization of self-annihilation in pursuit of collective or moral objectives. The analysis locates suicide terrorism within interconnecting ideological frameworks, religious martyrdom, political confrontation, and psychological-social identity theories. It argues that the act is often construed as honorable, redemptive, or obligatory. Drawing on theorists such as Pape (Dying to win: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Random House, 2005), Crenshaw (How terrorists think: What psychology can contribute to understanding terrorism. In L. Howard (Ed.), Terrorism: Roots, impact, responses (pp. 71–80). Praeger, 1992), Hafez (Suicide bombers in Iraq: The strategy and ideology of martyrdom. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), and Durkheim (Suicide: A study in sociology. Free Press, 1897), it establishes that suicide terrorism is driven less by illogical fanaticism than by tactical, symbolic, and affective logics rooted in perceptions of injustice, occupation, or collective identity. Hence understanding these ideological foundations is critical to constructing effective counter-narratives and workable counter-terrorism policies.