Suicide Bombing and Islam
In today’s date suicide bombing is a curse familiar to all and is being used to terrorize people psychologically. Suicide bombing first originated as a political tool in the 1980s,in 1982, radical elements of the Shiite resistance in southern Lebanon joined together in the Bekka Valley to form Hezbollah. After that the trend picked up popularity among many terrorist groups as a way to achieve their means. This act is attributed to Islam by all the terrorist groups that make use of it. The Taliban are perhaps the ones responsible for strongly promoting Islam’s image as a violent religion by associating this vile act of suicide bombing with Islam.
The Taliban term suicide bombing as a form of Jihad which is wrong in its essence, in order to understand this, we must know what the term jihad actually means. Jihad in itself a comprehensive term which has further fourteen divisions, our concern is the physical jihad in the name of which the Taliban term suicide bombing as legal in Islam. The Quran clearly states that “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. (2:190)” which means that Muslims are allowed only to wage war or harm those who first try to harm them whereas the Taliban attack innocent people who do not do anything to harm Islam or the Muslims and are in fact Muslims themselves most of the time. The Taliban go against the basic teachings of Islam, Islam clearly prohibits suicides and strongly condemns the act, the Quran states in clear terms “O ye who believe! [Do not] kill yourselves, for truly Allah has been to you Most Merciful. If any do that in rancor and injustice, soon shall We cast him into the Fire…” (Qur’an 4:29-30)” so the Taliban’s stance that suicide bombing is something that is allowed in Islam is wrong because the act of suicide is prohibited. Other than that Islam strongly proscribes killing of any kind, the Quran says: Nor take life – which Allah has made sacred – except for just cause…” (17:33).” So in Islam taking of life is only allowed by ay of justice i.e. death penalty for murder even then Allah urges us to forgive. Another aspect is that Islam in any form of war has forbidden the killing of women and children, suicide bombers almost always attack areas which are packed with the innocent and mostly women and children, then how do the Taliban justify their act?. So the Taliban commit not only the act of suicide bombing but in itself they commit many other sins as well. One misconception that the world has about Islam is the fact that we Muslims say that Islam is a religion of peace however our history does have accounts of war. Hat the non-Muslims don’t understand is that Islam is a religion of peace but that does not mean that its is a pacifist religion, these are two very different things. In fact being pacifist goes against the essence of peace as enduring wrong doing for a long time is to promote it. Islam does not in any scenario permit the killing of the innocent, waging war in Islam is permitted only in terms of self defense, it’s the religion that does not even allow the killing of insects how can it allow the killing of people?.
What the world needs to understand is that terrorism of any from is not just prompted by religion but also many other conditions such as political and societal conditions are huge contributors to the motivation of terrorists all around the world. We need to relieve ourselves of this curse on our religion which came to be because we had stopped going to the Quran and Sunnah for guidance. We are given a complete code of conduct in Quran and Sunnah then why do we not take advantage of it? And why do we turn to other people for solutions of our problems when we are to approach only Allah Almighty. The solution to every problem is present in Quran and we need to interpret it rightly as it was intended by Allah. We need to show the world what Islam really is and for that it is important that we first understand it ourselves.
Amina Mazhar, NUST, Islamabad
