A Question About Suicide In Islam Quote: --------------------------------- Would appreciate your take on the following:
I have a trusted friend who is less favorably disposed toward Islam/Muslims than I, but he also does not have a good opinion of Israel. He has had occasion to interview a number of teenaged American Muslims, the vast majority of whom say they would willingly become suicide bombers in Israel, but nowhere else. When he presses them (suggesting optional targets) they say they would first choose Israeli military or government targets, but if those were not accessible, would target civilians. Granted, these are teenagers, but.......? --------------------------------- LSJohn thanks for bringing the question to our attention and seeking answers from Muslims. This is a lot better attitude to take than the know-it-alls who seem to know Muslims and their religion better than Muslims themselves. I wish the world would follow your example. Most American Muslim teenagers that I know are not really knowledgeable about the Palestinian Israeli situation. This is especially true in the US with some of them, just by lazy osmosis, having bought into the media spin hook, line and sinker. I am not accusing your friend of lying but I find the responses he claimed to have gotten very difficult to believe. The response is flawed from a Muslim perspective and is very far from Muslim thinking. The numerous statements in the Quran against injustice and the example of the Prophet on numerous occasions where he admonished his followers about taking the lives of innocents and even destroying heedlessly plants and animals are too prevalent in Muslim learning for the idea of killing civilians to be even casually accepted. An example of how the Prophet (saaw) dealt with his enemies can shed light on the correct Muslim attitude. There was an incident during one of the battles where children of the enemy were killed by mistake. The Prophet (saaw) was observed with tears in his eyes, in pain because of the killing of innocent children, and also for the death of all the combatants. Some of his followers tried to sooth the Prophet by saying, "They were only the children of Kafirs" The Prophet (saaw) turned to the one who spoke, and he was visibly angry, and said, " Aren't you the child of a Kafir too?" For suicide to even be considered against military or even civilian positions as a way of fighting from American Muslim teenagers is really a stretch. Without going into too many details the prohibition in Islam against suicide is very strong. But to read and listen to this worlds media broadcast about Islam, we would never know that. We are led to believe that a religion, whose holy book, the Quran, commands the following regarding suicide, is the fertile ground for the most suicides in the world: Quote: --------------------------------- But let there be amongst you Traffic and trade by mutual good-will: Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves: for verily God hath been to you Most Merciful! If any do that in rancour and injustice,- soon shall We cast them into the Fire: And easy it is for God. Quran 4:29 - 4:30 --------------------------------- The references above in chapter 4 and other places in the Quran, commands Muslims to not kill themselves and warns of severe punishments. Suicide is strictly forbidden along with the killing of innocents in Islam. G-d is the author of life and it is only He who could take life or tell human beings what conditions a life should be taken under as in punishment for murder, etc. As human beings we don't own our lives, G-d does! As such we don't have the authority to take it. Suicide is disrespecting G-d and being ungrateful for the life he has given us. Also from the Hadiths: Quote: --------------------------------- The Prophet said, The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr. --------------------------------- If knowledge shared by a scholar is considered greater and closer to G-d than a person dying in war for a just cause, how much further down the scale in value is suicide in Islam, especially when it is condemned by the highest authority in our religion? If suicide was permitted there would be many examples of the Prophet (saaw) encouraging it and Muslim history would have been replenished with suicide as a technique in war. But there is no such history and no such encouragement even throughout the centuries in the Abyssinian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Muslim Spain, Persia, the well documented Crusades, etc. It seems that while strongly condemning suicide, somehow Islam is the best promoter of it. All of a sudden we have disobedient Muslims hatching like crazy all over Iraq and Palestine. Oddly, they did not become so disobedient until they came in contact with Israelis. I guess there must have been something about Jews that caused Muslims to employ a method of fighting that their Quran strongly condemned, the examples of the Prophet (saaw) and all pious Muslims in the history of Islam did not endorse, their own will to live resisted and looking at the gains versus the cost, really was not worth it. At the same time we have a Media that is too eager to enlighten and spread the word about those crazy Muslims killing themselves for 72 virgins. This, by the way, is not even in the Quran. Smells fishy? It should, because it is all pure BS! I quote the following from Impatient who makes this point even clearer: Quote: --------------------------------- Islam has been around for 1400 years. Is suicide a religio-cultural tradition? Looking only at history in the last 150 years can you point to suicide as a method of fighting the enemy? The French experience with Muslim terrorists in Algeria had its bombers, but no suicide bombers. The English experience in fighting the Arabs in 1918 in Iraq was fierce, but no suicide bombers. Israel has been fighting the Palestinians since 1948, where are the Muslim suicide bombers in those years between 1948 and 1985? If it were a religious predilection it would not have made a sudden appearance in Israel within the last twenty years. Islam is a worldwide religion, fighting battles in places far from the Palestinian conflict before 1985 where were the Muslim suicide bombers outside of Israel? Myth of the suicide bomber --------------------------------- To answer your question in a nutshell: If indeed those were the answers given by Muslim teenagers they were answers influenced more by Western thought or distortion of Islam than true Islamic teachings. The concept of killing innocents and suicide are both strongly condemned and there is no basis for justification of either in the religion of Islam! But who are really doing the suicide bombings since there is justification to show that Muslims are not the most likely candidates? Cyte answers the question with a question and also adds in some common sense: Quote: --------------------------------- The question remains as to whether we have anything more than fiction and talk. A better question would be: Do you know anyone whose relative "suicided" themselves and the Palestinian investigators worked with the civilians and they all agreed that the clear evidence showed that it was suicide? No Muslim I know has ever met a terrorist or heard of someone who did, let alone a suicide bomber. It is all composite fiction. Shock and Awe in London --------------------------------- I am sure if Muslims today asks the questions stated above, they would come to the same answers. No Muslim they know has terrorist aspirations nor suicide aspirations! As a convert (we prefer to say revert) to Islam for more than 30 years, I have never met any terrorist, suicide prone Muslims. This is as a result of experiencing Muslims both in the US and in the Middle East. I am sure that the more than 1.5 billion Muslims would tell you the same. So where are all these terrorists and suicide Muslims that the media is telling us about coming from? It is a sick and despicable mind that feels that it has a right to attack, steal, murder and cause harm to others but if the others dare fight back they are wrong and therefore terrorists. This one sentence describes Israeli thinking and their policies. They believe they are superior and entitled and they have a right to do anything to other people and those people better not retaliate. As a result they have done more by way of propaganda to take the legitimate fight of those who are against their wrongs and demonize them. We now have this ongoing enormous propaganda campaign to make Palestinians and anyone belonging to the same religion as Palestinians, to be seen as mindless terrorists and suicide bombers with no cause other than to do evil. Their propaganda is so powerful that they have even gotten some foolish Muslims to buy into it. Continuing with the question about who is really doing the suicide bombings, Impatient writes: Quote: --------------------------------- Suicide is absolutely unnatural; it is an aberration in creatures whose instinct is to survive. It is not easy to override that instinct. It is so contrary to instinct that stories of suicide for a cause are few and always make us marvel: the samurai who falls on his sword as penance for a loss in battle, the kamikaze pilot who knows he goes to certain death, the Roman who prefers death by his own hand to the humiliation of being killed by his enemies. There have been Christian and Buddhist martyrs who use suicide as a demonstration of belief and/or protest. All these are distinct from the unwilling martyrdom of dying in conflict. The fact that suicide for a cause is so exceptional in our history is one thing that makes me question the burgeoning phenomenon of the Muslim suicide bomber. The Japanese Kamikaze pilot is understandable as a cultural phenomenon with roots in the concept of the samurai, but again, this is so exceptional that we look in awe on those whose sense of duty is so strong. Can we find a similar antecedent for this peculiar type of martyrdom among Muslims in these last fourteen centuries, keeping in mind the difference between dying in battle and an intentional suicide? I don't think so. Are there any other instances of intentional martyrdom in all our history that have been met with such cruel derision and mockery as the Muslim suicide bomber of our time? Doesnt such a reaction by itself make this case extraordinary? That suicide for a cause is anti-instinctual, exceedingly rare, and when found, traceable to its cultural antecedents, makes me very skeptical that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such cases would spring forth quite suddenly in a people, no matter what the provocation. I do not believe that Muslims were involved in 9/11, but wasn't the notion of the suicide bomber the direct antecedent of the suicide hijacker? I believe there were no hijackers involved in 9/11. But for all those who buy the hijacker scenario, the preparation they have been given to believe that Muslims have no qualms about suicide leads directly to the conclusion that Muslims must be the culprits. Myth of the suicide bomber --------------------------------- We read and hear daily reports about suicide bombings in Iraq as if that is endemic to Islam. But at the same time we have already seen reports coming out stabbing holes in the theory that they were really suicides. Numerous reports detailing how bombs were planted by the occupational forces in car vehicles, soldiers enticing Iraqi children with candy and then immediately rushing out of the area after setting off bombs, trucks used by Iraqis to carry fruits and vegetables stopped at check points only to have bombs stuck in their barrels by soldiers, Mossad agents carrying out fake suicide bombings, Israelis wiring retarded Palestinian boy for remote detonation to be labeled a suicide bombing, etc. If these incidents were not found to be what they were our too compliant media would have reported them as suicide killings. To backup these claims I am including links to published articles presenting these reports: Who Murdered 32 Iraqi Children? (Truth Comes Out) Occupation forces CAUGHT placing bombs in unsuspecting vehicles in Iraq U.S. forces behind deadly children bomb The case of the retarded 14 yr. old suicide bomber wired by Israelis 2 religious soldiers believed behind J'lem fake bomb Mossad bombs kill 34 children Israeli bus bombings LONDON BOMBINGS MOSSAD FALSE FLAG ATTACK SOLVED There are obvious benefits gained by perpetuating the myth of the Islamic suicide bomber. Those benefits serve nicely with those who are enemies of Islam. As in the recent case in London, it perpetuates the propaganda that seeming innocent and decent Muslims are dangerous and prone to suicide. In this day and age of open season attacks against Islam for war purposes, many benefits can be gained from the myth of the Islamic suicide bomber. Impatient lists the benefits as follows: Quote: --------------------------------- To demonize Islam To make Muslims look stupid, fanatical, and murderous. To create worldwide terrorism that they can claim has nothing to do with Israel, but everything to do with Islam. To attack those who think themselves to be allies, but are not, e.g. America, Spain, Britain. To shift the blame for any bombing Zionists perpetrate onto the Muslims, simply by calling it a suicide bombing. To control public opinion in favor of Israel as the most grieved victim of terrorism. To justify apartheid in Israel. To justify war in the Middle East with the spoils of war accruing to themselves, while the costs are borne by their allies. So it's not the fundamentalism, it's not the occupation, it's not suicide, it's not a guerilla tactic, it's the timeless strategy of the Jews working to advantage themselves on their journey toward dominion. Myth of the suicide bomber --------------------------------- What I wrote about Islam's position on suicide and killing of innocents is not secret, esoteric knowledge. It is common knowledge well known and can easily be discerned by anyone doing a very elementary study of the religion. Yet what we have today is the knee jerk, unconscious association of the religion of Islam with suicide bombings. Even to the point where claims of getting 72 virgins are an Islamic prize offered for suicide. This is a cruel and ugly lie about Islam that has been so widely perpetuated that it is accepted as fact. Corrections to the association of Islam with suicide and the killing of innocents are not made in the media. Instead it is glued even tighter by reporting that not a person disobeying Islam, but a Muslim imbued with Islamic religious fervor committed a suicide. I have to smile at how the media even reported the London bombings. They have made Islam to be so tightly wound up as a major factor that writers boldly wrote about how the 4 men became more religious and how unlike rule #2 for how to commit suicide bombings, they did not say, "Allah-u-Akbar". The subliminal message is that becoming more involved with Islam is the cause for suicide bombings and it is expected for the suicide bomber to invoke Allah's name in this act. If he doesn't then something is wrong. By using a prefix or suffix that ties these acts to the religion of Islam, although it is well known that the religion of Islam strongly condemns those actions, an ugly method of religious demonization is employed. If we were to report Judaism's Bugsy Siegel and Catholic Lucky Luciano as an example when they commit crimes, then the suffix used with their names is tied into the crime as well. Subliminally the association is made as the association is made today with so many in the Western world with Islam to terrorism, suicide, etc. BTW...I wrote a satire titled, Judaism's Bugsy Siegel and Mayer Lansky Kills Innocent Children! to illustrate this very point. The ones who control the media allowing the false and dangerous propaganda to be spewed are to blame. We need to find out who they are. That is easy because it has been done by many. Here are two references that will help identify them: Quote: --------------------------------- There are no important media outlets in the US that are not owned or controlled by Jews. Israel Shamir "One is inevitably led to believe that the success of the Jews has not been a mere coincidence. It resulted from long and arduous years of planning, which preceded their cunning control of the world's media. In a speech delivered in Prague in 1869, the Jewish Rabbi Yeshurun expressed this Jewish interest in the media, when he said: 'If gold is our first means to control the world, then the press should be our second one.' "The first [Zionist] Congress, held in Basle in 1897, marked an ominous turning point, because the participants expressed their [desire] to implement a criminal plot to set up the State of 'Israel'. They unanimously agreed that, unless complete control over the media, and the press in particular, is achieved, unless they fully subdue the press, so as to deny their enemies even one medium of __expression, and unless they themselves act as filters of information in society, such a state [Israel] would not reach fruition." http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/zionazis/DarkSecret.html http://www.voxfux.com/features/stranger_than_fiction.htm --------------------------------- What got my attention the most about the above declarations is the following statement: unless they fully subdue the press, so as to deny their enemies even one medium of __expression . Anyone doing careful analysis of events and reading the news stories broadcasted would probably come to different conclusions. Along with that, a historical presentation showing true causes and effects for events in the world will give readers more understanding and even turn some of todays perceived demons into heroes. But the other perspectives are not allowed. The side of those who are victims of Jews is never presented and those victims are shown by the lying media to be senseless animals that kill mercilessly for no reason. Of course their poor innocent victims are Israelis especially from suicide bombers. It started with the poor Israelis and now those evil terrorists are bringing their evil to the whole world. The ridiculousness of the obvious Israeli fake stories about suicide bombers is pointed out by this excellent link provided by Laconas: Quote: --------------------------------- SUICIDE BOMBER MIRACLES Typically, stories about suicide bombers tell us that the bomber went to a public place such as a bus stop, market, restaurant, pool hall, etc., and blew himself/herself up along with one, two, or many Israelis. Funny, they rarely hit military targets. I wonder why? The general story line is that the bomber had explosives attached to his/her person. The story goes on to describe the carnage in grisly detail dismembered bodies, etc. But, remarkably, the suicide bomber himself/herself is not blown to smithereens. The bomber's body is left in sufficiently good shape to be identified immediately, and of course the Israeli authorities do just that. But even more remarkable: The Israelis come up with these nice portraits of the culprits. And what is most remarkable of all? Everything is coordinated, bombers ID'd, photos gathered, stories written and published all over the world by the Zionist press within a few hours or days after the event. http://www.public-action.com/911/toothfairies.html --------------------------------- Well we know who controls the media that is perpetuating the vicious lies about Islamic suicide bombers. They have a vested interest and the benefits are real and measurable for them as pointed out above. But what should be done by those who have this information and are against them? I dont know about non-Muslims but for Muslims the guidance is clear. Our Quran tells us in no uncertain terms what is stated below. Isnt it about time that we start following this guidance instead of believing the myths deliberately perpetuated by our enemies? Quote: --------------------------------- 49.006. O ye who believe! If a wicked person comes to you with any news, ascertain the truth, lest ye harm people unwittingly, and afterwards become full of repentance for what ye have done. --------------------------------- Lets ascertain the truth and when the truth become known lets do all within our power to disseminate it! When this is done all of us will have a firm basis by which to take definite actions. "Strive as in a race to achieve the goal of excellence in all that you do." For real insights visit: http://www.geocities.com/mewatch99/ Regards, Nashid
