Profiling Suicide Bombers

Friday April 21, 2006

If Islam is a religion of peace and suicide is forbidden, then why are there so many suicide bombers in Islam but not in Judaism or Christianity? That's a difficult problem that many philosophers, theologians, and social scientists have tried to wrestle with - unfortunately, there hasn't been a lot of progress in understanding just what is going.

A CNN report from a couple of years ago does, however, offer some interesting insights:

Candidates for martyrdom were told the first drop of blood shed by a martyr washes away their sins. They could select 70 of their nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and they would have at their disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of paradise, Hassan recounted in the New Yorker. Indeed many of the statements written by suicide bombers before they died spoke of a painless death that offered the shortest path to such a Heaven.

Fundamentalist Islamic leaders justified such acts by saying those who were strapping bombs on their bellies, or flying planes into buildings were not committing suicide, but were chosen by Allah to commit “sacred explosions” and become shahids, or martyrs. ... They were promised martyrdom if they died in the cause of jihad. And anyone who left the group was called an infidel.

It’s not really “suicide” when you sacrifice yourself in defense of a cause and in defense of your community. A soldier who charges a machine gun nest is not committing suicide, even though he knows he won’t survive. People who sacrifice their lives for the sake of the future of their community are always lauded as heroes, whatever the religion or culture. This, in turn, creates an atmosphere where more and more people becoming willing to do it. Who doesn’t want to be a hero?

Thus, those who ague that suicide bombers are acting contrary to Islamic prohibitions against suicide are simply missing the point and, therefore, are failing to deal with the problem in an adequate manner. Instead of pretending that suicide bombers and terrorism are outside the boundaries of Islam, moderate Muslims need to spend more time looking at what there is about Islam which, unlike with other religion, has allowed this problem to flourish.

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