A few minutes ago I received an email that made this assertion:
As gris eminence Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the terrorists loosened Islamic law interpretations fairly recently to permit suicide in the cause of jihad. Why can't it be changed back?
I responded:
Actually the idea of suicide in the cause of jihad is no innovation. It is founded upon Qur'an 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah. It is a phenomenon that is actually found throughout Islamic history, and is not new. In the 18th century John Paul Jones wrote about Ottoman sailors setting their own ships on fire and ramming the ships of their enemies, although they knew this meant certain death for them.And centuries before that, the Assassins, Hashishin, went into their missions knowing that death was virtually certain, and energized by the promise of Paradise that had been made vivid for them in an artful scenario that was used as a recruitment tool: the prospective assassin would be given hashish and then taken into a garden full of beautiful women, and told that he was enjoying a taste of Islamic Paradise. Then to return to that Paradise, he was told that he had to go out and kill his victim, and be killed in the process.
Paradise that had been made vivid for them in an artful scenario that was used as a recruitment tool: the prospective assassin would be given hashish and then taken into a garden full of beautiful women.
*** 56:33 ***
Sex sells, and for that reason Islam has made a whole lotta sales.
"gris eminence"? Bleu sacre!
In Sahih Bukhari, the hadith collection Muslims consider most canonical, there is the following excellent motivator for suicide bombing:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 377
Thanks Robert, I learn something new every day.
None other than Bill Maher hast castigated Islam for stooping to promising pu**y in heaven to achieve its ends on Earth.
And of course Sahih Bukhari also has this for suicide bombers:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 46
Here, I've fixed the link for the hadith above:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 46
lol!
To the e-mailer: It's "eminence grise."
And Sahih Bukhari has yet another motivator for suicide bombers:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 54
Bukhari: "...Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty."
There it is again, "war booty" in the form of treasure and slaves, especially women slaves. How comforting to know that if you fight for Mohammad, er... Allah..., you will either have eternal sex pleasures in paradise, or female sex pleasure on earth. Suicidal madness, from the very beginning, for pu**y? Unbelievable, primitive savages! Sick!!
And Bukhari has yet another motivator for suicide bombers:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 72
Well, Treah beat me to it in citing the Hadith, so I'll turn to popular culture instead. Here's the Porky Pig cartoon, "Ali-Baba Bound".
Our hero Porky is in the Foreign Legion, and is sent to protect a fort from Ali-Baba's vicious hordes. Along the way, he takes a little camel under his wing that the horde also wants to harm.
One of Ali Baba's men is a *suicide bomber with a bomb strapped to his head*. Porky and the camel outwit the fanatical but stupid suicide bomber several times.
The suicide bomber finally makes the mistake of angering the little camel's very protective dad, who has been looking for him. Anyway, he gets blowed up real good, and doesn't get to take anybody else with him.
I wonder if the Warners Brothers' cartoonists realized that having a pig as the hero made it extra Haram?
"Ali-Baba Bound" was made in *1940*. Sanctioned "suicide"—as long as it takes out as many Kufr as possible—is nothing new in Islam.
Here's porky and the little camel:
http://ak2.static.dailymotion.com/static/video/913/778/877319:jpeg_preview_large.jpg
And here's the suicide bomber:
http://www.ironmanchangedmylife.com/zzzzz/porky_arab.jpg
Here's another view of the suicide bomber plotting to attack the fort—putting the sports term "suicide squad" to good comedic use:
http://www.classicalvalues.com/alibababomber.JPG
And in the canonical Sahih Bukhari hadith collection, you learn that even if you have killed one of Muhammad's jihadist soldiers, you can be forgiven, and even get into Paradise, provided that you join Islam and become a jihadist martyr yourself:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 80i
gravenimage -- that last link of yours is pretty remarkable!
Not surprising that the American Porky creators in 1940 would have been up on these things; the Nazis were of course allied with the Mufti of Jerusalem and get, even to this day, a lot of interest and sympathy from Muslims...
Damn they knew this all along !! They put the lid on it for 70 years plus 14 centuries ?! Has it always been like this ?! I remember Western countries being attacked one at a time and having trouble helping each other, all through the Middle Ages. There is something seriously wrong with Us damn it..
One key word in the history of Islamic warfare to understand their ultra-kamikaze penchant -- is inghimass, which means "to plunge into" battle.
To pick one example out of a fez, back in 2008, Jihad Watch reported a minor jihad in Chad against Christians and "atheists", where the Muslim attackers were described by Chad's security minister as "intoxicated by indescribable extremism ... almost mad" as they "threw themselves" against the fire of security forces in the belief they were immune to bullets."
traeh has supplied many hadiths about "martyrdom" in battle. Here is one from Sahih Muslim that could well be using the Arabic word inghimass:
"The tradition has been narrated on the authority of 'Abdullah b. Qais. He heard it from his father who, while facing the enemy, reported that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Surely, the gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords. A man in a shabby condition got up and said; Abu Musa, did you hear the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say this? He said: Yes. (The narrator said): He returned to his friends and said: I greet you (a farewell greeting). Then he broke the sheath of his sword, threw it away, advanced [inghimass?] with his (naked) sword towards the enemy and fought (them) with it until he was slain."
Book 020, Number 4681
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/020.smt.html#020.4681
Also:
1.
Sheik al-Qardawi [on Al Jazeera television in 2005 as reported by Walid Phares] went as far as linking today's suicide bombing to what he called "inghimass" (to throw oneself against the enemy). According to him, this has been permitted by religious teaching since the early days of Islam.
http://jihadwatch.org/archives/007583.php
2.
The Muslims of the Philippines have been suicidally attacking for apparently centuries -- attacking first the Spanish (and most likely attacking the original island dwellers when Muslims first arrived), then the Japanese, then the Americans -- also known as juramentados. These juramentados were "fanatics who, believing that they would enter Paradise if killed in battle against infidels, would whip themselves into obsessed states of self-hypnosis and, kris [dagger] in hand, charge blindly into the ranks of the enemy, be he Spaniard, American, Japanese or Filipino. In this semimystical trance the juramentados often raced directly into heavy volleys of rifle fire, shrugged off incredible wounds, and had to be killed on their feet literally, before their attack ended."
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196504/kris.and.crescent.htm
3.
"As for the arguments that have been used to prove that it is permitted for someone to kill himself in order to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy, like the proofs that it is permitted to be courageous and plunge into enemy lines [inghimas]... this [permission] does not allow one to kill one's self, but rather [permits one to enter into situations where] one is killed by the enemy or by someone else..."
"we use the proofs and the texts calling for bravery and penetrating [iqtiham] and storming [inghimas] enemy lines - but this without being foolhardy - and [this is permitted] even if it leads to one's being killed by the enemy, so long as there is in one's storming [enemy lines] an overriding benefit to the jihad, to Islam, and to the Muslims. On the other hand, we have the proofs and the texts that forbid one to kill one's self. The reconciliation [of these two groups of texts] is possible and easy, and there is absolutely no need to have recourse to limiting [the application of] or abrogating [texts]!"
-- Syrian Sheik Al-Tartusi as reported in Memri
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR4006
Also, I read somewhere (but lost the reference) that Muslim in SE Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia) resisted Western colonialism in the 19th and early 20th century through suicidal attacks, and may have been the first to use explosives this way -- thus antedating the Tamil Tigers whom everyone trots out as the "inventors" of suicide bombing attacks.
Maybe we could help all the jihadis out! Paint a big "X" in the desert. Invide them down. They could dance around, wave their swords and shoot the AKs off and then - instant martyrdom!
Works for me.
Raymond Ibrahim in his "The al-Qaeda Reader" translates an essay by Zawahiri that goes to great (and greatly strained) lengths to argue that suicide bombing is not sinful because it isn't really suicide. As I recall, he had to rely on tertiary sources to make his case, but it's been a while since I read it and my memory is hazy. It makes fascinating reading, though.
*raises hand*
I have been curious about another think historically- was there ever a beautiful and romantic time in Islam? The sort of Aladdin-esque feel where women are actually treasured, and queens/princesses wore beautiful jewels and got the handsome prince? I notice that when I was in high school and even college the idea of Islam and these romantic stories are presented as inextricably tied. It seems impossible for those romantic ideas to be reconciled with the Quran. Where they the traces of the cultures present before Muhammad?
One source of that romanticized picture of medieval Islam was the 1,001 Arabian Nights: When it was first translated into a Western language (French, by Antoine Aland) in the 18th century, it became a best-seller in the West, and continued to sell into the late 19th century. Throughout those centuries many Western poets, writers and painters indulged in this romanticized view of the Islamic "Orient".
The original sources of that collection of stories may never be known, but scholars think it derives from a chain of transmission -- first Persian, then Indian, and ultimately perhaps Indonesia, and earlier than Islam.
Even if the source is ultimately pre-Islamic, as it was transmitted it obviously acquired Islamic motifs and themes. When you read that collection closely, you'll see it wasn't all romanticized "princes and princesses" -- there are many glimpses into the uglier more brutal underside of Islamic culture.
Robert and almost all the comments have established beyond doubt both the textual and the historical basis for refuting the suggestion that “the terrorists loosened Islamic law interpretations fairly recently to permit suicide in the cause of jihad”.
At the risk of preaching to the choir, and rehashing the “what constitutes suicide” debate, it is worth briefly examining whether Robert’s correspondent was interpreting Lewis correctly, in the absence of any specific citation or quotation from Lewis.
A quick check indicates Lewis has in at least several places recently made various statements along these lines allowing just such an interpretation, perhaps most accessibly in his 2003 “The Crisis of Islam”.
Lewis cites what he calls nationalist terrorists of the 1960s and ‘70s who “generally took care not to die along with their victims but arranged to carry out their attacks from a safe distance... Earlier religiously inspired murderers, notably the Assassins, disdained to survive their operations but did not actually kill themselves. The same may be said of the Iranian boy soldiers in the 1980-1988 war against Iraq, who walked through minefields, armed only with a passport to paradise, to clear the way for the regular troops.”
“The new type of suicide mission in the strict sense of the word seems to have been pioneered by religious organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah, who from 1982 onward carried out a number of such missions in Lebanon and in Israel... They were offered a double reward – in the afterlife, the minutely described delights of paradise; in this world, bounties and stipends for their families...”
“Unlike the medieval holy warrior or assassin, who was willing to face certain death at the hands of his enemies or captors, the new suicide terrorist dies by his own hand. This raises an important question of Islamic teaching. Islamic law books are very clear on the subject of suicide. It is a major sin and is punished by eternal damnation in the form of the endless repetition of the act by which the suicide killed himself.” [Lewis here refers the reader to citations from the hadith collections, especially of Bukhari, and to a scholarly article by Franz Rosenthal on suicide. But here Lewis is discussing suicide as we conventionally understand it in the West]
“... The early authorities make a clear distinction between facing certain death at the hands of the enemy and dying by one’s own hand.” [Lewis quotes in support a hadith where a mortally wounded soldier killed himself by his own hand to shorten his pain, and was denied paradise for that reason]
“Two features mark the attacks of September 11 and other similar actions: the willingness of the perpetrators to commit suicide and the ruthlessness of those who send them, concerning both their own emissaries and their numerous victims. Can these in any sense be justified in terms of Islam?
“The answer must be a clear no.
“The callous destruction of thousands in the World Trade Center, including many who were not American, some of them Muslims from Muslim countries, had no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history. Indeed, there are few acts of comparable deliberate and indiscriminate wickedness in human history. These are not just crimes against humanity and against civilization; they are also acts – from a Muslim point of view – of blasphemy, when those who perpetuate such crimes claim to be doing so in the name of God, His Prophet, and His scriptures.” (pp. 117-120)
“In Islamic usage the term ‘martyrdom’ is normally interpreted to mean death in a jihad and its reward is eternal bliss, described in some detail in early religious texts. Suicide by contrast, is a mortal sin and earns eternal damnation, even for those who would otherwise have earned a place in paradise. The classical jurists distinguish clearly between facing certain death at the hands of the enemy and killing oneself by one’s own hand. The one leads to heaven, the other to hell. Some recent fundamentalist jurists and others have blurred or even dismissed this distinction, but their view is by no means unanimously accepted. The suicide bomber is thus taking a considerable risk on a theological nicety.” (p. 30)
Lewis himself, however, in all this seems to have blurred or even dismissed the crucial issues of agency and intent. It might possibly be argued that there is a distinction between a plane hijacker hurtling a hundred lives including his own to a certain death, and a bomber whose direct action kills himself and a hundred bystanders. And perhaps between the ancient Assassins who were killed by others as against the Iranian boy soldiers who died by mines laid by others. But perhaps not. What was their intent?
But these may be theological niceties. The “suicide by cop” analogy is not irrelevant here. What is the intent of the morituri, of the we who are about to die? Is agency more a function of a technology unknown in the seventh century?
It is as if Lewis has blinkered himself in his thinking both by strong moral outrage over 9/11 and by an over-commitment to an idealized memory of the Assassins whom he first wrote about over 40 years ago.
Hesperado -
I too have read a substantial portion of the '1001 Nights', in the old - complete and unexpurgated - Burton translation, complete with Burton's voluminous footnotes.
This being of course the Burton who, to satisfy his insatiable curiosity as to what was *really* inside the Kaaba, managed to pretend to be a Muslim convincingly enough to make the hajj without getting found out and killed.
The translation, volume after volume (I forget how many in total) resided on several shelves of a major university library to which I had access as a student. I started in at volume one and I think got as far as volume IV before I ran out of time and the course I was actually doing, had to take precedence.
I recall the violence, yes: both sexual and physical. Burton's lurid, though scholarly and gossipy and exceedingly well-written, footnotes were, shall we say, an Education for a nice teenaged Christian girl....
But what I took away as a final impression from my explorations of Burton's brilliant translation was not so much the lurid images of violence and depravity in the harems and the bazaars - and the superstition and occult practice that pervades folk Islam - but, in the end, the sense of an all-pervading, icy-cold, paralysing fatalism. Which is, of course, central to Islam. Kismet. Mektoub. The Will of Allah. And *that* was what I found most repulsive of all. (As I had also, btw, been utterly repelled by the capriciousness and cruelty and indifference of the Greek 'gods', in the stories of Homer and Ovid and in Greek drama).
In that regard, reading the unexpurgated 1001 Nights, even if I didn't finish it, taught me much about the 'atmospherics' of Islam.
My kids' favourite childhood film was "The Thief of Baghdad", made in the forties or fifties, and it was very romantic. But I have thoroughly squashed that romantic picture of Islam for them, and continue to do so with daily reports!
From reading MBR's quotes from Bernard Lewis, where Lewis snakes through the question in deference to the Orient, one would conclude that for Lewis, being a "gris eminence" is better than being a "greasy Islamophobe".
dumbledoresarmy,
I too never got through the whole collection -- I probably read 3/4. While I immensely enjoyed the imagery and inventiveness, it began to get a little repetitious after a while. I read the Antoine Galland translation (I mistakenly wrote "Aland" above). I noticed the fatalism too, but I found it at the time amusing and charming, sort of like the fatalism in the movie Zorba the Greek. When a world like that never threatens to intrude into reality, one can indulge in not taking it as seriously.
By the 18th century, most Westerners for the first time in over 1,000 years experienced an Islam-less existence, and only rare world travelers, adventurers and those who braved the far seas had run-ins anymore with Muslims for the most part (for the West hadn't yet even thought to embark upon the insanity of admitting millions of Muslims into the West). There might have been the odd Muslim diplomat or visitor here and there, in one European or American capital, but these were rare curiosities, not much different from the South American indians put on display at the French court in the 16th century whom Montaigne witnessed and wrote about. As brutal and primitive as were the Muslims those few Western adventurers experienced, when they brought back reports of them, the reports became woven into the general aura of an exotic fiction about "the Orient", seamlessly of a piece with the spirit of the Arabian Nights.
All the while the West has been busy for the past 300 years working out its own problems and progressing spectacularly, transforming human life and the Earth itself, Muslims have been busy hunkering down in their spiderwebs and scorpion nests in the crevices and cracks of their former failed empires with the assiduous monomania of army ants plotting the only thing that makes sense to them: the revival of Islamic conquest of the world. And over the past half century -- increasing with each passing decade, with an enormous boost at the 911 point -- they have been crawling out and swarming amongst us in what is increasingly becoming clear to be a vast and complex Global Intifada.
The thing that has struck me the most about these discussions of "suicide" attacks is the narcissistic focus of Muslim apologists on the death of the Muslim attacker, and less attention to the question of the killing of the non-Muslims in these acts.
The emailer to Robert asked:
"As gris eminence Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the terrorists loosened Islamic law interpretations fairly recently to permit suicide in the cause of jihad. Why can't it be changed back?"
A question: Did Lewis actually exhaustively search everything that has ever been written by Muslims over the centuries, and in doing so found that there were no examples of scholars etc. in previous times approving this type of "suicide" (or entering a situation in which one knows one will probably be killed in the process of attempting to kill others) in jihad, and that Muhammad and company never approved such attacks; and that Islamic terrorists using "suicidal" attacks have a recent innovation, full or partial?
I have my doubts that the answer to this question is yes.
That said, in jihad, intentionally putting oneself at a very high risk of being killed, with the intention of doing this to try to kill non-Muslim enemies, is well-established in the Quran, Hadith, and Sira. Indeed, to fail to put one's life on the line in jihad is considered hypocrisy, apostasy, disbelief, and punishable by hell-fire (just read Suras 9 for example). Except for a group of Muslims who are to stay behind and defend the home-front and maintain the religion, the rest of the able male Muslims are called to jihad and must fight in Allah's cause (2:216) because they are bound by divine contract to do so (9:111).
The chief differences between a jihadist (a) intentionally plunging into the enemy, knowing that he will almost certainly be killed--and affirming this by throwing off his protective mail or by deliberately sabotaging his own means of escape--and (b) walking into a group of enemies and intentionally pushing a button that should detonate explosives that will almost certainly kill himself are (A) the time lag between (1) entry to the lethal conditions and (2) death, and (B) the physical and chemical nature of the weapon.
The same way a suicide-belt wearer wants to kill as many people as possible and wants to die a death in Allah's cause, so too the jihadist who plunges into the enemy kamikaze-style trying to kill as many enemies as possible and wants to die a death in Allah's cause. Plunging into the enemy in this fashion is knowingly and deliberately taking an action that will very probably kill oneself. Same thing with the detonator, except it is quicker (if it works).
Sahih Muslim, Book 20, Number 4678: "It has been reported on the authority of Jabir that a man said: Messenger of God, where shall I be if I am killed? He replied: In Paradise. The man threw away the dates he had in his hand and fought until he was killed (i.e. he did not wait until he could finish the dates)." [Also see Ishaq, p. 300, Umayr b. al-Humam, brother of b. Salima, has dates, then throws them away and fights until slain].
Ishaq, p. 300. “ ‘Asim b. ‘Umar b. Qatada told me that ‘Auf b. Harith—his mother was ‘Afra’—said ‘O apostle of God, what makes the Lord laugh with joy at His servant?’ He answered, ‘When he plunges into the midst of the enemy without mail.’ ‘Auf drew off the mail coat that was on him and threw it away: then he seized his sword and fought the enemy till he was slain.”
Sahih Muslim, Book 020, Number 4655:
It has been narrated on the authority of Abu Huraira that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Of the men he lives the best life who holds the reins of his horse (ever ready to march) in the way of Allah, flies on its back whenever he hears a fearful shriek, or a call for help, flies to it seeking death at places where it can be expected. (Next to him) is a man who lives with his sheep at a hill-top or in a valley, says his prayers regularly, gives Zakat and worships his Lord until death comes to him. There is no better person among men except these two.
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 63:
Narrated Al-Bara: A man whose face was covered with an iron mask (i.e. clad in armor) came to the Prophet and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Shall I fight or embrace Islam first?" The Prophet said, "Embrace Islam first and then fight." So he embraced Islam, and was martyred. Allah's Apostle said, A little work, but a great reward. "(He did very little (after embracing Islam), but he will be rewarded in abundance)."
“According to the venerable Abu Musa, Allah’s Messenger has said: The portals of heaven lie under the shadow of the sword. On hearing this a lean and emaciated man stood up and said: O Abu Musa, did you hear this hadis with your own ears? ‘Yes’, said Abu Musa, and then and there the man went up to his companions and said: I bid you salaam. So saying he broke the sheath of his sword and proceeded towards the enemies. He killed many with that sword and ultimately attained martyrdom himself.” Mishkat-ul-Masabih, Number 4549.
Sahih Muslim, Book 20, Number 4681:
“The tradition has been narrated on the authority of 'Abdullah b. Qais. He heard it from his father who, while facing the enemy, reported that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Surely, the gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords. A man in a shabby condition got up and said; Abu Musa, did you hear the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say this? He said: Yes. (The narrator said): He returned to his friends and said: I greet you (a farewell greeting). Then he broke the sheath of his sword, threw it away, advanced with his (naked) sword towards the enemy and fought (them) with it until he was slain.”
Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Number 2567:
“Narrated Abbad ibn Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr: My foster-father said to me - he was one of Banu Murrah ibn Awf, and he was present in that battle, the battle of Mu'tah: By Allah, as if I am seeing Ja'far who jumped from his reddish horse and hamstrung it; he then fought with the people until he was killed.”
Ishaq, p. 534. “When the fighting began Zayd b. Haritha fought holding the apostle’s standard, , until he died from loss of blood among the spears of the enemy. Then Ja‘far took it and fought with it until when the battle hemmed him in he jumped off his [roan-colored horse] and hamstrung her and fought till he was killed. Ja‘far was the first man in Islam to hamstring his horse.” [brackets added]
Ishaq, p. 535. “…the apostle said: ‘Zayd took the standard and fought with it until he was killed as a martyr; then Ja‘far took the standard and fought with it until he was killed as a martyr…I saw in a vision that they were carried up to me in Paradise upon beds of gold.” [This is also reported in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 55].
Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Number 2535:
Narrated Mu'adh ibn Jabal: The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) said: If anyone fights in Allah's path as long as the time between two milkings of a she-camel, Paradise will be assured for him. If anyone sincerely asks Allah for being killed and then dies or is killed, there will be a reward of a martyr for him. Ibn al-Musaffa added from here: If anyone is wounded in Allah's path, or suffers a misfortune, it will come on the Day of resurrection as copious as possible, its colour saffron, and its odour musk; and if anyone suffers from ulcers while in Allah's path, he will have on him the stamp of the martyrs.
Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Number 2533:
“Narrated AbuSalam: AbuSalam reported on the authority of a man from the companion of the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him). He said: We attacked a tribe of Juhaynah. A man from the Muslims pursued a man of them, and struck him but missed him. He struck himself with the sword. The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Your brother, O group of Muslims. The people hastened towards him, but found him dead. The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) wrapped him with his clothes and his blood, and offered (funeral) prayer for him and buried him. They said: Apostle of Allah, is he a martyr? He said: Yes, and I am witness to him.”
62:6. "Say (O Muhammad SAW): "O you Jews! If you pretend that you are friends of Allah, to the exclusion of (all) other mankind, then long for death if you are truthful. 62:7. But they will never long for it (death), because of what (deeds) their hands have sent before them! And Allah knows well the Zalimun (polytheists, wrong-doers, disbelievers, etc.)."
3:140-143. (Arberry). “If a wound touches you, a like wound already has touched the heathen [unbelievers]; such days We deal out in turn among men, and that God may know who are the believers, and that He may take witnesses* from among you; and God loves not the evildoers; and that God may prove the believers, and blot out the unbelievers. Or did you suppose you should enter Paradise without God know[ing] who of you have struggled** and who are patient? You were longing for death before you met it; now you have seen it, while you were beholding.” [brackets added]
*shuhadaa. **jahadoo
33:23. (Pickthall). “Of the believers are men who are true to that which they covenanted with Allah. Some of them have paid their vow by death (in battle), and some of them still are waiting; and they have not altered in the least;."
Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 14, Number 2506:
“Narrated AbuAyyub: AbuImran said: We went out on an expedition from Medina with the intention of (attacking) Constantinople. AbdurRahman ibn Khalid ibn al-Walid was the leader of the company. The Romans were just keeping their backs to the walls of the city. A man (suddenly) attacked the enemy. Thereupon the people said: Stop! Stop! There is no god but Allah. He is putting himself into danger.
AbuAyyub said: This verse was revealed about us, the group of the Ansar (the Helpers). When Allah helped His Prophet (peace be upon him) and gave Islam dominance, we said (i.e. thought): Come on! Let us stay in our property and improve it. Thereupon Allah, the Exalted, revealed, "And spend of your substance in the cause of Allah, and make not your hands contribute to (your destruction)."* To put oneself into danger means that we stay in our property and commit ourselves to its improvement, and abandon fighting (i.e. jihad). AbuImran said: AbuAyyub continued to strive in the cause of Allah until he (died and) was buried in Constantinople.”
*In reference to verse 2:195, suggesting a reading contrary to that of the modern apologists, that self-destruction (i.e., of the soul) could occur if the able person did not die in jihad in the cause of Allah.
Lastly, there was an example from the Sunnah cited by Raymond Ibrahim, some time ago, which I can't find, where a jihadist asked to be set up in a catapult to be launched bodily at an enemy fortress gate, to almost certain death. Does anyone have this example?
Ladies and gentlemen
I think, at this point, I will direct attention to Drybones, the Israeli Jewish cartoonist, and his ruthlessly satirical 'take' on Muslim 'religious' practices.
Here is cartoon number 1, entitled, 'the religious life'.
http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/religious-life-1993.html
Number 2, which sums up the nature of the *real* 'inner struggle' that we see happening every day inside dar al Islam (we vulgar kafir refer to this sort of struggle as 'civil war')
http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/jihad-2009.html
And, finally, number 3, 'the gates of paradise', which bears directly on the topic under discussion in this thread:
http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/heavens-gate-1995.html
As noted above, Lewis in his 2003 discussion of suicide in Islam as if in justification for his position refers the reader to a 1946 21-page article by Franz Rosenthal (a true and great Orientalist before Edward Said fouled and polluted the term). I dug it out but can do no better than refer readers to a summary by Andrew Bostom, who observes that:
"Rosenthal noted that in contrast with negative Islamic attitudes towards suicide (for melancholia/depression), acts of jihad martyrdom were extolled in Islam's foundational texts, i.e., the Koran and hadith..." and then quotes Rosenthal directly:
"While the Qur'anic attitude toward suicide remains uncertain, the great authorities of the hadith leave no doubt as to the official attitude of Islam. In their opinion suicide is an unlawful act….On the other hand, death as the result of "suicidal" missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts. However, such cases are no[t] suicides in the proper sense of the term."
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2009/10/10/yale%E2%80%99s-post-franz-rosenthal-islamic-studies-travesty/
The possibility that Lewis has (deliberately or merely carelessly?) misread Rosenthal is further strengthened when one considers:
"Quran 4.66(69) would also seem to indicate a
condoning attitude toward suicide, if it is committed
for a worthy purpose; for the passage deals with the assumption that the Muslims might be commanded 'to kill themselves (uqtulu anfusakum).'
"The commentators, however, are of the opinion that this verse is an exhortation to seek death in the Holy War, and thus, of course, would not apply to individual suicide."
("On Suicide in Islam" p.240)
Kinana,
Plunging into the enemy in this fashion is knowingly and deliberately taking an action that will very probably kill oneself. Same thing with the detonator, except it is quicker (if it works).
There still is a difference in agency of the actual killing instrument. That in fact is one of the main sophistical points which the Syrian theologian Sheik Al-Tartusi tries to argue in order to distinguish suicide bombing from all other sorts of courageous plunging into battle.
The "suicide by cop" example highlights this. There are some people who actually think that shooting themselves in the head is morally wrong suicide, distinct from goading a cop by threatening his life to shoot the person in the head. At the end of the day, when a Muslim plunges into battle, he will not literally kill himself with his own sword -- he will goad the enemy into doing it for him. But the suicide bomber is not getting the enemy to push the detonator. Believe it or not, but this distinction of punctilious sophistry is actually seriously and meticulously argued by the aforementioned Al-Tartusi:
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR4006
Of course, the overarching problem here is that these points do not belong in Religion at all, and all military and police matters should be outside of it in other spheres of society unrelated to it.
Very interesting thread with great comments.
But what about the issue of "intent". The suicide bomber is motivated by the intention of killing infidels, advancing the cause of islam ang giving his life for Allah, while someone committing true suicide, escapes life for personal reasons. Hence the flawed analogy between suicide and suicide-bombing that Allah surely wouldn't fail to notice.
Treah and Azov, yes, this is a great cartoon! Clearly the West knew more about the fanatical nature of Islam in many ways 70 years ago than now—almost 10 years after 9/11.
The stalwart Warner Brothers cartoon characters—Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck—fought all kinds of evil—Nazis, murderous 'Jap' supremacists, and crazed Islamists, and did it in high style and without apology.
The thing that's disturbing now is that Warner Brothers has virtually completely censored these cartoons. I saw a few of them as a very young child on TV, but only saw them more recently at a film festival of censored cartoons at a theatre in San Francisco.
If you do get a chance to see these cartoons, I would highly recommend them—oddly insightful and completely hilarious. With just a few rough exceptions—like the much more profane "Team America"—no one is making anything even vaguely like them today.
Amber Slatosky wrote:
I have been curious about another think historically- was there ever a beautiful and romantic time in Islam? The sort of Aladdin-esque feel where women are actually treasured, and queens/princesses wore beautiful jewels and got the handsome prince?
....................
I think most of us grew up with some version of this-even quite young children today are still watching Disney's Aladdin, with its humor and feisty Princess Jasmin. Even here, though, there are hints at terrible violence and forced marriage.
The romance with aspects of the "exotic" Muslim world in the West probably began with Napoleonic France's contact with Egypt in the last years of the 18th century, and increased with France's presence in Algeria beginning in the 1830s—initially to suppress Barbary piracy.
You have beautiful "Orientalist" art starting from Eugène Delacroix, numbers of Victorian-era British, French, and German artists, and Edwardian-era children's illustrator Edmund Dulac.
Here is one of Dulac's entirely fanciful pieces from The Arabian Nights. I have this print up in my studio.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZO6brBJskrI/SS9LZ_-9IQI/AAAAAAAACCM/-_uDellDq_I/s400/dulacEbonyHorse.jpg
Most of this work is heavily romanticized and bowdlerized—often created by Western artists who had never ventured further east than Italy. Even those artists who did travel to the Muslim world—say Turkey or Egypt—rarely had access to the harems and baths they lovingly painted. The situation was much the same with romantic writers.
But as with the cartoon version of Aladdin, Muslim brutality often seeps through these stories, anyway—Ali Baba threatened by thieving raiders, Bluebeard's terrible room filled with the corpses of his dead wives (he was often depicted as a turbaned Muslim), and remember—the most famous of all framing devices, the 1001 Nights—has the young storyteller motivated to tell the tales to so fascinate her homicidal husband that he will let her live another night, and not murder her, as he had planned.
Even many of the Orientalist artists portrayed at least some of the ugliness of the Muslim world, with images of slave markets and brutal public executions. And Delacroix—for all his romantic views of Algerian harems—also painted many works decrying Muslim Turkish atrocities, and extolling the Greek fight for liberation from the cruel Ottomans.
In a recent (April 22) article Suicide Terrorism, an Islamic Phenomenon?, the Islam propagandist, pro-sharia, Tariq Ramadan-supporting site Loonwatch claims, in reference to Robert's brief article above, "Robert Spencer is at it again attempting to say suicide terrorism is not only part and parcel of Islam but unique to it. We destroy his argument here."
They then proceed to present irrelevant examples, cite verses from irrelevant contexts, and ignore the Hadith, in addition to presenting "suicide" attacks in other (non-Islamic) traditions.
In fact, Robert Spencer did not claim that suicide terrorism is uniquely Islamic. His overall claim, as I understand it, is that it is found in Islamic history and has a basis in Islamic scripture. And those who are familiar with Robert's approach will know that he means that the basis for suicide attacks in Islam is determined by Islamic scholars and jihadists; Robert is not basing this on his own personal interpretation. Some jihadists and some Muslim scholars have made suicidal attacks a part of Islam. But Loonwatch would prefer to spin false allegations against Spencer rather than critique the Muslim scholars who are actually advocating suicidal attacks (i.e., "martydom operations").
(Why don't I post this on Loonwatch? I can't; I discovered some time ago that they won't publish my posts. Several other posters have reportedly had the same problem).