Open Letter to a Suicide Bomber

Open Letter to a Suicide Bomber

Published by The Huffington Post, February 16, 2017

I understand that your leaders have tried to persuade you to blow yourself up in the fight against the infidel oppressor. They have told you that you will become a martyr (shaheed) and enter paradise.

I'm a professor of world religions at a secular university and an afterlife scholar; my research owes nothing to any religion or church. The course of action you are considering is momentous. I'd like to help you think it through.

I will suggest to you here that suicide is un-Quranic and inconsistent with the Hadiths, even in the fight against the perceived infidel. Yes, you would survive death—about this the evidence supports you—but the afterlife you would enter is not what you have been led to believe.

As the following verses make clear, suicide is un-Quranic: "Do not kill yourself, for God has been to you most merciful. He who does so will be punished in the fire, and easy this is for God to do" (4:29-30). Even more emphatically: "Do not kill yourself with your own hand" (2:195).

In the most revered Hadiths, at least half a dozen passages forbid suicide, as in the following: "And if somebody commits suicide with anything in this world, he will be tortured by that very thing on the Day of Resurrection" (Bukhari 8,73,73).

Moreover, suicide on the way to martyrdom was unheard of in Islam until the 1980s. The conservative Islamic website Ascertain the Truth supports this view:

If suicide was permitted in Islam there would be many examples of the Prophet (saaw) encouraging it and Muslim history would be replenished with examples of suicide as a technique in war. But there is no such history, no such examples and no such encouragement even down through the centuries from the 7th century Caliphates of the four rightly guided Imams, the Umayyad Empire, Abyssinian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Muslim Spain, Persia, the well documented Crusades, etc. The Iran/Iraq war—in which more than a million people were killed—went on for more than 8 years and had many bombings but no suicide bombings!

But your leaders are telling you to ignore this history. The radical Islamic website TheReligionofPeace asks the question, "Are suicide bombings justified or condemned under Islam?" then answers it in the following way:

Suicide is against Islam. Martyrdom is not. "Suicide bomber" is a derogatory term invented by the West to try and describe what in Islam is known as Fedayeen or Shahid—a martyr. The point of the bomber isn't suicide—it is to kill infidels in battle. This is not just permitted by Muhammad, but encouraged with liberal promises of earthly rewards in heaven, including food and sex.

Almost all Muslims praise the martyr, but martyrdom for most of them means dying in battle from the enemy's sword or bullet or bomb, not one's own.

This brings us to the expected reward of martyrdom. The Quran says that those who fight in the cause of Allah will be given a "great reward," whether they live or die in battle. But their reward is no better than what awaits any good Muslim male: beautiful gardens, palm trees, gushing springs, low-hanging fruit, delicious meat, wine that doesn't intoxicate, peaceful homes with fine carpets, handsome couches and beds, dignified speech, and "fair [virgin] women with large eyes" to marry (44:54) in addition to one's earthly wife or wives. As for seeing God, the Day of Resurrection will give all souls that opportunity and the faces of the righteous will be radiant, while those of the damned will be contorted (75:22-23).

This isn't as much to go on as you might like, and you might want to look elsewhere for the future that awaits you. Will you allow me to help you?

Humans who have died sometimes come back to us and tell us through gifted mediums about their world. The best of this "spirit literature"—and several dozen books fall into this category—provide some of the most interesting and inspiring reading on the planet. This literature shows why life on earth is precious and should not be thrown away for any reason, however noble. It might suggest to you why Allah forbids suicide and why righteous Muslim warriors have shunned it down through the ages.

Much that the Quran says about "the Garden" is supported by this literature. Our spirit friends tell us, for example, that there are

landscapes and seas and houses and cities reminiscent of our world—a natural world, but of higher vibration insensible to us earthlings. . . [And there are] gardens, universities, libraries, and hospices for the newly dead—but no factories, fire stations, sanitary landfills, or smokestacks. All accounts describe a world of exquisite natural beauty.

But there is much more. In particular, the afterlife is not an idle world where the righteous spend eternity eating, drinking, enjoying the sights, and making love. Challenges abound. Inhabitants are invited to grow into better beings. And this will require service, courage, and spiritual ambition. Is there joy, even fun? Plenty of it. Travel is easy; you do it by thinking yourself where you want to be. And there are many smaller worlds, or sectors, within the larger world. Muslims and Hindus will live in different sectors, as will Sunni and Shia, until they outgrow their mutual distrust. In the meantime they can visit, and they do. The adventurous spirit of a young man who died at 20, and knew nothing of Islam, visited a Muslim sector and discovered "some of the finest cities you can conceive of, and in one there is a temple which excels in outward splendor anything I ever saw. . . . It was what you would call a mosque."

One of my favorite passages comes from a Christian minister who died in 1970 and came through in spirit two years later. This is what he said, and you might find it attractive, especially since by now the author has outgrown his narrow earthly outlook:

We are all walking. We Christians walk here, the Hindus walk there, the Buddhists walk in another place, and so forth. All have their own paradise, goals, aims, and objectives for so long. Then suddenly they are into the tremendous experience of knowing that all is one under God and that there is no division in purpose. . . . There is one God of us all.

So you see, my young friend, suicide might not be a wise choice. It might be in your best interest to choose a long and eventually happy life on earth, with children and grandchildren to hang on your neck and shower kisses on your cheek. Isn't that what your mother and father want for you? I'm pretty sure it's what Allah wants for you too. May you be blessed with wisdom at this fateful moment.