Suicide

You know

there are about 800 suicides in Scotland every year,

more than four times the number of deaths due to traffic accidents,

and the Samaritans suggest that figure may be considerably underestimated.

What can possibly be the reason

for someone thinking that death has to be better than life?

Is it just a matter of hopelessness,

seeing no way out of the difficulties of this world?

Certainly those in deprived and low income groups

are three times more likely to see it as

a way out of their problems.

But why would any muslims want to end their own lives,

opt out of the tests of life that are a part of their Deen,

forgetting their relationship with God

and abandoning their hope and reliance on God's provision.

Do they lose their faith in God entirely,

or is it just that they never really understood

the way that our relationship with God works?

Does it come from a sense of worthlessness?

Do they not understand that the value of their lives

doesn't rely on what they achieve in this world,

what they own or how much they are worth?

Do they not know that their purpose

is not to achieve success in this life but in the next,

and that all of us are created equal before God,

and that our actions are only judged by God

according to the good or bad nature of our intentions.

Our value depends only on our morality.

Is it perhaps that such a feeling of worthlessness

comes from a sense of guilt,

regretting past actions

and considering that they are unforgivable

and taking on the responsibility of punishing themselves

for what they have done?

But God is the Judge of our actions,

and God is the Ever-Merciful, the Forgiver,

and to remain feeling guilty despite regret

and good intentions

is to refuse God's offer of forgiveness.

Can it be just a sense of pointlessness,

a lack of purpose in life

leading to confusion and despair?

Do they forget that

no matter how little impact their actions may make in this world,

the way that they perform them is what matters?

We may face constant failure to achieve

any of our intended goals in this life,

but if our attitude in attempting them is right

we will be able to be steadfast,

as our purpose is actually to achieve the Garden.

But what about

what is known as assisted dying,

anticipating a painful death

and pre-empting it

with a concoction of pain killing drugs.

Well, we know that morphine and other drugs give pain relief

at the cost of some life duration,

but that is not quite the same

as making one dose terminal.

Deciding to take the decision of our time of death out of God's hands

is to assume that we know what our future holds in store for us,

and only God actually knows what the future will bring.

But in the muslim world nowadays,

there is one form of suicide that has become seen on the TV news

and touted by assorted 'jihadi' groups

as peculiarly and specifically 'Islamic',

the suicide bomber.

How can this have become seen as somehow

an intrinsic part of a modern 'Islamic' approach to warfare

when it demands not one but two acts

that were considered forbidden under Shari'ah law

from the time of the Messenger

until comparatively recently?

The act of a suicide bombing is doubly wrong

because it involves both suicide

and the killing of non-combatant victims,

totally against the rules of jihad,

holding whole populations responsible

for perceived grievances.

This slaughtering of communities

for disagreeing with the viewpoint of those doing the bombing

shows none of the compassion and mercy required in the Deen,

but is instead based on arrogance and intolerance.

So why would anyone raised in Scotland

or the western world

try to do it?

Perhaps a simple-minded ignorance

of the true foundations of their Deen

leaves them open to being misled and manipulated.

Thinking their actions will guarantee paradise,

they believe that they can take the decision out of God's hands.

Lacking an identity they can feel proud of in the west,

they become heroes in their own sight.

Perhaps feeling outsiders to the society that surrounds them

due to their narrow understanding of Islam,

and seeing their grievances reflected in

injustices to muslims being played out around the world,

they see their chance to make their mark in a fight for justice,

in the same way that in earlier times

people went to fight in the Spanish civil war.

But here the enemy is quite different.

No longer specific individuals or armies,

the enemy now has become amorphous,

anyone who disagrees with

either the religious dogmas of a 'jihadi' group,

or the methods they use to try to impose them,

are seen as a collective enemy,

and unable to fight specific individuals

or forces that they blame for their perceived injustices,

they just kill whoever they can reach,

whoever is available.

Crucially,

ignorance of the principles of their faith

means these 'jihadis' have no way of critiquing what is told to them.

This also means that they are unable to find an identity in the west

because the Islam they are taught often comes from people

who have no idea of how to translate their Deen into a living religion

for the modern world.

Many of the mosques they might have relied on to gain such knowledge

would have been funded from abroad,

funded by Wahhabi/Salafi money

with the requirement that only their brand of Islam be preached there,

a simplistic, narrow-minded, authoritarian view of Islam

that has proved to be fertile ground for the new

and even more strident and dictatorial view of Islam

propagated by the new 'jihadis'.

So what do these 'jihadis' offer to their prospective suicide bombers?

Well,

first they appeal to their vanity,

suggesting that they are going to go from 'nobodies' to 'heroes'.

Those groups who enjoy some little success will also promise

all the goods and property that will have been 'liberated'

from the people they have killed or displaced from an area.

And they offer the romance of travelling to foreign parts

to fight for their cause.

Then, of course, they offer the adrenaline rush

of an orgy of unrestrained bloodletting

and untrammelled human butchery

commingled with the fear of death

from bombs or shellfire

or any fellow jihadis who take objection to the way you think

as an ongoing context.

They promise sex,

not quite as abandoned as Ibitha,

but for girls arranged marriages with 'heroes',

and for men their pick of women captured during battle.

They offer a sense of identity,

no more mockery for your faith

or challenging questions

addressed to your lack of understanding of it.

If the group all think the same,

there will be no need to think too much about things for yourself,

with reason and rationality and knowledge all considered unnecessary,

and even detrimental to the cause.

They offer certainty without the need for self-critique, or questioning,

let alone challenging those they follow,

displaying their roots in the Wahhabi/Salafi approach to Islam,

the fountainhead which spews forth such groups.

And they offer a guaranteed place in the Garden

as a martyr

according to those who encourage their gullible followers to volunteer.

And one question that rarely seems to be asked is

whether these bombings actually work,

or simply make the situation worse.

Most suicide bombings just seem to trigger

overwhelming responses,

killing more muslims clearly innocent of the event

than were killed by the original bomb.

Not so much warfare

more a very public statement of frustration with a heartfelt injustice.

They are a lethal form of publicity,

not warfare.

Of course the other thing that suicide bombings do

is harden the hearts of non-muslims around the world against Islam.

It's hard to imagine this brutal and mindless 'Islam'

converting the world like the original Message.

Which would seem to suggest in no uncertain fashion

that the 'Islam' being peddled in this situation

is something completely different from the original Message

that was welcomed by so many in the world.

But if suicide bombings are indeed successful and so highly commendable,

how come the leaders of the 'jihadi' organisations

that preach its praiseworthy nature

get others to do it rather than doing it themselves.

Do they consider themselves too important as leaders,

so get some foolish teenage footsoldier

to do it for them?

Is it from a feeling of self-importance

or something more cynical than that?

If suicide bombing is such a good idea

it should be practised from

the top of the organisation down.

They should set an example,

not tell others to do it

but show them how.

If members of jihadi groups

were intelligent enough to demand that of their leaders

there would most certainly be a lot less suicide bombings.