Ferreting them out

Submitted by Fred Miller (United States), Dec 3, 2003 at 15:04

I wonder if these suicide bombers are abberations from the average Muslim. It would seem that there is something about the strength of their beliefs in a rewarding afterlife that makes a very large number of Muslims willing to undertake self annihilation for the "cause". And as a result perhaps they are not being trained for these tasks over a lengthy period of time but just volunteer as something they have been willing to undertake subconciously for years.

When Salman Rushdie was being hunted because of the fatwa issued by some mullah somewhere I inquired on several Muslim sites for an explanation of who can issue a fatwa and how people can reconcile a call for all to kill someone with no further legal procedures and no recriminations against the killer. Never got an answer. It seems we are dealing with an extraordinary facet of a culture so different from ours as to seem unfathomable.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".