Are you ready? Tomorrow you will be in Paradise . . .(Interviews with Suicide Bombers)

Times Online ^ | July 14, 2005 | Nasra Hassan

[FreedomSurge]

What motivates a suicide bomber?

Our correspondent talks to a young Muslim who survived his intended 'martyrdom' and describes the terrorists' rigorous training

AT DAWN, when the three men heard the morning call to prayer from a mosque in the village below their hideout in the hills, they knelt and uttered the traditional invocation to Allah that Muslim warriors make before setting off for combat. They put on clean clothes, tucked the Koran into their pockets, and began the long hike over the hills and along dry riverbeds to the outskirts of Jerusalem.

In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, they walked in silence so that their accents, the guttural vernacular of Gaza, would not arouse suspicion. It was June 1993, and they were members of the Palestinian fundamentalist group Hamas. Along the way, they stopped to pray at every mosque. At dusk, they boarded a bus that was heading toward West Jerusalem, filled with Israeli passengers. When the driver thwarted their attempt to hijack the vehicle, they tried to detonate the homemade bombs they were carrying.

The bombs failed to go off, so they pulled out guns and began firing wildly. The shots injured five passengers, including a woman who later died. The young men fled the bus, hijacked a car at a red light, and forced the driver to take them toward Bethlehem. Israeli security forces stopped them at a military checkpoint, and in a gun battle two of the young men and their hostage were killed. The third hijacker, whom I will call S, was struck by a bullet in the head; he lay comatose for two months in Israeli hospitals. Finally, he was pronounced brain-dead, and the Israelis sent him back to his family in the Gaza Strip to die.

But S recovered, and when we met, five years later, he told me his version of the events. By then, he was married and the father of three sons. Each of them had been named for shaheed batal — “martyr heroes”.

In Gaza, S is celebrated as a young man who “gave his life to Allah” and whom Allah “brought back to life”.

He was polite as he welcomed me into his home. The house was surrounded by a high cement wall that had been fortified with steel. We sat down in a large, simply furnished room whose walls were inscribed with verses from the Koran. On one wall was a poster showing green birds flying in a purple sky, a symbol of the Palestinian suicide bombers.

S had just turned 27. He is slight, and he walked with a limp, the only trace of his near-death. He invited his wife to join us, and he answered my questions without hesitation.

I asked him when, and why, he had decided to volunteer for martyrdom. “In the spring of 1993, I began to pester our military leaders to let me do an operation,” he said. “It was around the time of the Oslo accords, and it was quiet, too quiet. I wanted to do an operation that would incite others to do the same. Finally, I was given the green light to leave Gaza for an operation inside Israel.”

“How did you feel when you heard that you’d been selected for martyrdom?” I asked.

“It’s as if a very high, impenetrable wall separated you from Paradise or Hell,” he said. “Allah has promised one or the other to his creatures. So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”

S was one of 11 children in a middle-class family that, in 1948, had been forced to flee from Majdal to a refugee camp in Gaza, during the Arab-Israeli war that started with the creation of the State of Israel. He joined Hamas in his early teens and became a street activist.

In 1989, he served two terms in Israeli prisons for intifada activity, including attacks on Israeli soldiers. One of his brothers is serving a life sentence in Israel.

I asked S to describe his preparations for the suicide mission. “We were in a constant state of worship,” he said. “We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life.”

“What is the attraction of martyrdom?” I asked.

“The power of the spirit pulls us upward, while the power of material things pulls us downward,” he said. “Someone bent on martyrdom becomes immune to the material pull. Our planner asked, ‘What if the operation fails?’ We told him, ‘In any case, we get to meet the Prophet and his companions, inshallah.’

“We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We made an oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah — a pledge not to waver. This jihad pledge is called bayt al-ridwan, after the garden in Paradise that is reserved for the prophets and the martyrs. I know that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet — the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah ’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”

S showed me a video that documented the final planning for the operation. In the grainy footage, I saw him and two other young men engaging in a ritualistic dialogue of questions and answers about the glory of martyrdom. S, who was holding a gun, identified himself as a member of al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, which is one of two Palestinian Islamist organisations that sponsor suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad is the other group.) “Tomorrow, we will be martyrs,” he declared, looking straight at the camera. “Only the believers know what this means. I love martyrdom.”

The young men and the planner then knelt and placed their right hands on the Koran. The planner said: “Are you ready? Tomorrow, you will be in Paradise.”

SINCE 1982, I have been an international relief worker. In 1996 I was posted to the Gaza Strip during one of the most vicious cycles of suicide bombings. To understand why certain young men voluntarily blow themselves up in the name of Islam, I began, without official sponsorship, to research their backgrounds and the beliefs that had led them to such extreme tactics.

I was warned that my interest in trying to understand the suicide missions was dangerous. But eventually, when the people who were observing me had assured themslves of my credentials — an important one was that I am Muslim and from Pakistan — I was allowed to meet members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who would help me. “We are agreeing to talk to you so that you can explain the Islamic context of these operations,” one man told me. “Even many in the Islamic world do not understand.”

From 1996 to 1999, I interviewed nearly 250 people involved in the most militant camps of the Palestinian cause: volunteers who, like S, had been unable to complete their suicide missions, the families of dead bombers, and the men who trained them.

None of the suicide bombers — they ranged in age from 18 to 38 — conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality. None of them was uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle-class and held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires. They all seemed entirely normal members of their families. They were polite and serious, and in their communities were considered to be model youths. Most were bearded. All were deeply religious.

I was told that to be accepted for a suicide mission the volunteers had to be convinced of the religious legitimacy of the acts they were contemplating, as sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam. Many of these young men had memorised large sections of the Koran and were well versed in the finer points of Islamic law and practice. But their knowledge of Christianity was rooted in the medieval crusades, and they regarded Judaism and Zionism as synonymous.

Most of the men I interviewed requested strict anonymity. The majority spoke in Arabic and they all talked matter-of-factly about the bombings, showing an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of their cause and their methods. When I asked them if they had any qualms about killing innocent civilians, they would immediately respond, “The Israelis kill our children and our women. This is war, and innocent people get hurt.”

They were not inclined to argue but they were happy to discuss, far into the night, the issues and the purpose of their activities. One condition of the interviews was that, in our discussions, I not refer to their deeds as “suicide”, which is forbidden in Islam. Their preferred term is “sacred explosions”. One member of al-Qassam said: “We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior — our exploding Islamic bombs.”

My contacts told me that, as a military objective, spreading fear among the Israelis was as important as killing them. Anwar Aziz, an Islamic Jihad member who blew himself up in an ambulance in Gaza, in December 1993, had often told friends: “Battles for Islam are won not through the gun but by striking fear into the enemy’s heart.”

Military commanders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad remarked that the human bomb was one of the surest ways of hitting a target. A senior Hamas leader said: “The main thing is to guarantee that a large number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag, the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing.”

As today’s weapons of mass destruction go, the human bomb is cheap. A Palestinian security official pointed out that, apart from a willing young man, all that is needed are such items as nails, gunpowder, a battery, a light switch and a short cable, mercury (readily obtainable from thermometers), acetone, and the cost of tailoring a belt wide enough to hold six or eight pockets of explosives. The most expensive item is transportation to a distant Israeli town. The total cost of a typical operation is about US $150 (£85). The sponsoring organisation usually gives between $3,000-$5,000 (£1,700- £2,830) to the bomber’s family.

I met an imam affiliated with Hamas, a youthful, bearded graduate of the prestigious al Azhar University in Cairo. He explained that the first drop of blood shed by a martyr during jihad washes away his sins instantaneously. On the Day of Judgment, he will face no reckoning. On the Day of Resurrection, he can intercede for 70 of his nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and he will have at his disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of Paradise. The imam took pains to explain that the promised bliss is not sensual.

There is no shortage of willing recruits for martyrdom. Hamas and Islamic Jihad generally reject those who are under 18, who are the sole wage-earners in their families, or who are married and have family responsibilities. If two brothers ask to join, one is turned away.

The planners keep a close eye on the volunteer’s self-discipline, noting whether he can be discreet among friends and observing his piety in the mosque. During the week before the operation, two “assistants” are delegated to stay with the potential martyr at all times. They report any signs of doubt, and if the young man seems to waver, a senior trainer will arrive to bolster his resolve.

A planner for Islamic Jihad said that his organisation carefully scrutinises the motives of a potential bomber: “We ask this young man, and we ask ourselves, why he wishes so badly to become a human bomb. What are his real motives? Our questions are aimed at clarifying first and foremost for the boy himself his real reasons and the strength of his commitment. Even if he is a long-time member of our group and has always wanted to become a martyr, he needs to be very clear that in such an operation there is no drawing back. Preparation bolsters his conviction, which supports his certitude. It removes fear.”

A member of Hamas explained the preparation: “We focus his attention on Paradise, on being in the presence of Allah, on meeting the Prophet Muhammad, on interceding for his loved ones so that they, too, can be saved from the agonies of Hell, on the houris, and on fighting the Israeli occupation and removing it from the Islamic trust that is Palestine.”

I asked one planner about the problem of fear. “The boy has left that stage far behind,” he said. “The fear is not for his own safety or his impending death. It does not come from lack of confidence in his ability to press the trigger. It is awe, produced by the situation. He has never done this before and, inshallah, he will never do it again. It comes from his fervent desire for success, which will propel him into the presence of Allah. It is anxiety over the possibility of something going wrong and denying him his heart’s wish. The outcome, remember, lies in Allah’s hands.”

Al-khaliyya al-istishhadiyya, which is often mistranslated as “suicide cell” — its proper translation is “martyrdom cell” — is the basic building block of operations. Generally, each cell consists of a leader and two or three young men. When a candidate is placed in a cell, usually after months, if not years, of religious studies, he is assigned the lofty title of al-shaheed al -hayy, “the living martyr”. He is also referred to as “he who is waiting for martyrdom”.

Each cell is tightly compartmentalised and secret. Cell members do not discuss their affiliation with their friends or family, and even if two of them know each other in normal life, they are not aware of the other’s membership in the same cell. (Only the leader is known to both.) Each cell, which is dissolved after the operation has been completed, is given a name from the Koran or from Islamic history.

The young men undergo intensified spiritual exercises, including prayers and recitations of the Koran. Usually, the trainer encourages the candidate to read six particular chapters of the Koran: Baqara, Al Imran, Anfal, Tawba, Rahman, and Asr, which feature such themes as jihad, the birth of the nation of Islam, war, Allah’s favours and the importance of faith.

Religious lectures last from two to four hours each day. The living martyr goes on lengthy fasts. He spends much of the night praying. He pays off all his debts, and asks for forgiveness for actual or perceived offences.

In the days before the operation, the candidate prepares a will on paper, audiocassette or video, sometimes all three. The video testaments, which are shot against a background of the sponsoring organisation’s banner and slogans, show the living martyr reciting the Koran, posing with guns and bombs, exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and extolling the virtues of jihad.

The wills emphasise the voluntary basis of the mission. “This is my free decision, and I urge all of you to follow me,” one young bomber, Muhammad Abu Hashem, said in a recorded testament before blowing himself up, in 1995, in retaliation for the assassination of Fathi Shiqaqi.

The young man repeatedly watches the video of himself, as well as the videos of his predecessors. “These videos encourage him to confront death, not fear it,” one trainer told me. “He becomes intimately familiar with what he is about to do. Then he can greet death like an old friend.”

Just before the bomber sets out on his final journey, he performs a ritual ablution, puts on clean clothes, and tries to attend at least one communal prayer at a mosque. He says the traditional Islamic prayer that is customary before battle, and he asks Allah to forgive his sins and to bless his mission. He puts a Koran in his left breast pocket, above the heart, and he straps the explosives around his waist or picks up a briefcase or a bag containing the bomb. The planner bids him farewell with the words “May Allah be with you, may Allah give you success so that you achieve Paradise.”

The would-be martyr responds, “Inshallah, we will meet in Paradise.”

Hours later, as he presses the detonator, he says, “Allahu akbar” — “Allah is great. All praise to Him.”

The operation doesn’t end with the explosion and the many deaths. Hamas and Islamic Jihad distribute copies of the martyr’s audiocassette or video to the media and to local organisations as a record of their success and encouragement to other young men. His act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques, and provides material for leaflets, posters, videos, demonstrations, and extensive coverage in the media. Graffiti on walls in the martyr’s neighbourhood praise his heroism. Aspiring martyrs perform mock re-enactments of the operation, using models of exploding cars and buses. The sponsoring organisation distributes cassettes of chants and songs honouring the good soldier.

The bomber’s family and the sponsoring organisation celebrate his martyrdom with festivities, as if it were a wedding. Hundreds of guests congregate at the house to offer congratulations. The hosts serve the juices and sweets that the young man specified in his will. Often, the mother will ululate in joy over the honour that Allah has bestowed upon her family.

But there is grief, too. I asked the mother of Ribhi Kahlout, a young man in the Gaza Strip, who had blown himself up in November 1995, what she would have done if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”

# Nasra Hassan works in Vienna. She has compiled a database of more than 200 profiles of Muslim suicide bombers and has just completed a book on the subject. A version of this article originally appeared in The New Yorker

[FreedomSurge]

"if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”

[US admirer]

"His act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques,..."

Here is the reason that we will be fighting Islam as long as it exists in its present form.

[Suzy Quzy]

This religion is for SICKO s.

[Maria S]

I wonder if there are some kind of drugs, or a drug-induced state involved in this?

Once again, I have to wonder what our good liberal friends would be saying if these were Christians.

[prisoner6]

tucked the Koran into their pockets

Sooo...let me get this straight...they blew themselves up. That would mean they also blew uptheir clothing, which was holding a koran....so they blew up a koran as well.

I CALL KORAN DESECRATION!

Feh!

prisoner6

[righttackle44]

So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the d"oor to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”

Are you kidding? YOU can't get there from here. The Marines guard the road to Heaven.

Verse Three of the Marine Hymn:

Here's health to you and to our Corps, which we are proud to serve.
In many a strife we've fought for life and never lost our nerve.
If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven's scenes,
they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.

Don't think you're going to make it, guy.

(I have not served. My tagline honors my son and cousin.)

[ModelBreaker]

“It’s as if a very high, impenetrable wall separated you from Paradise or Hell,” he said. “Allah has promised one or the other to his creatures. So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”

Wow. Now there's some deep theology. I wonder who thought it up.

[Recovering Hermit]

Our correspondent talks to a young Muslim who survived his intended 'martyrdom' and describes the terrorists' rigorous training...

...and afterwards, simply lets him go on his merry way to kill innocent human beings.

[FreedomSurge]

The only drug appears to be the reverie from the religious fever.

[daviscupper]

Yes, this gives the lie to the frequently repeated assertion that Muslims abhor the suicide bombers. The truth of the matter is that many Muslims glorify these misguided young men. The religion is sick.

[Dark Skies]

“We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We made an oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah — a pledge not to waver. This jihad pledge is called bayt al-ridwan, after the garden in Paradise that is reserved for the prophets and the martyrs. I know that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet — the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah ’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”

And that is why democracy is not an antidote to Islam. Our world will have terror until Islam is expunged from the planet. Fascism and National Socialism are puny in comparison to Islam.

[USF]

Thanks for the ping. Great article. It ties in with my own experiences of talking to wannabe shaheeds about their cult of death.

The thing which struck me the most in some of the conversations I had, was for the individuals concerned, it was not about "revenge" for some perceived wrong.. they had cleared their minds, and wanted to die because their delusional belief system tells them it pleases Allah, and they would be guaranteed to enter paradise.

One of the most insightful moments I had, was on a private online jihadi messaging forum (pretending to be one of them) in early 2002 before just about everyone on the planet became aware of the jihadi recruitment sites. I was talking to Muslims the US and EUrabia who were talking quite candidly about their dreams of becoming shaheeds. It's was a small group of a half dozen "regulars" including myself and an imam (I'll get back to the evil imam later) who was a kind of moderator... keeping watch on the individuals, answering questions and offering "guidance." During the course of the intense conversation, they never mentioned revenge once.

For these Muslims in the west, it's often not about revenge for whatever we have done. It was not about Israel, what the "crusaders, tyrants, Russians or Jooos" were doing to their "brothers," and all the other whining we're so accustomed to. It was all about them knowing they had sinned, and or strayed from Islam, and they were all scared... petrified, that they would never see paradise and its promises of rivers of wine and virgins.

It's because their lives have failed somewhere, and they see no other way to redeem themselves in the eyes of Allah, but to die while engaged in Jihad. Think of the jail house converts like Reid and Padilla.. They failed in society, but they are embraced by a new cult, a support system that tells them the society that has written them off and made them outcasts does not matter, its your redemption in the eyes of Alaah they must consider. Wafra Idris was yet another outcast her society, filled with shame and looking for a way out and to redeem herself.

If the coversation was not focused on themselves and what they expected in paradise, the budding jihadis would talk about how their whole families had assimilated and joined the ways of the kuffar, and they knew (according to their imams) that their family members would never enter Islams paradise. One of them asked the imam about his own brother. He was ashamed of his brother because of his lifestyle... he had turned his back on islam and was involved in homosexual relationship. Others had famly members that drank, gambled, or did not go to the masjids (mosque) for jummah. The imam assured everyone that a shaheed would not only saves himself, but gets to select 70 of those who are close to him to enter paradise with him. IMHO as far as shaheeds go, the Chechen Black Widows are probably one of the few where revenge may be a major factor and driving force for the individual shaheed. Like Wafa Idris, as mere women and non-virgins in their repressive Islamic society, I doubt their lives were going to be that great anyway.

I'm not writing off the "revenge" for political factor, but I've found that motivation often belongs higher up in the islamic terrorist foodchain for which the shaheeds its the lowest lifeform. The likes of the evil imam are the ones who are filled with hatred for the west and are pushing the political agenda, but they use the brainwashed Islamic masses to do their filthy work for them. Those like the imam are cowards because they dare not do it themselves, they incite, and indoctrinate others with evil to be selected for "martyrdom operations" one day. Their followers are cowards because they can not face the consequences of their lifes choices and where it has lead them.

The London bombers need not have killed themselves. They could have flung their bags into the packed subway trains as the doors were closing and tried to make their escape. Or they could have quietly activated a short timer and left a bag on the subway train or the bus and got off on the next stop as the doors began to close and the train or bus about to move away. They killed themselves not because the were brave enough to do so, or had to for some kind of "revenge," but because they were cowardly swine indoctrinated with MohamMADs recipe of evil who dared not face life.

"Inshallah, we will meet in Paradise"

As DS said: "And that is why democracy is not an antidote to Islam. Our world will have terror until Islam is expunged from the planet. Fascism and National Socialism are puny in comparison to Islam."

[Dark Skies]

Damn...one of the finest pieces of writing on this subject I have ever read (or even hope to)...congrats, bro, on a job well done.

You swatted that one out of the park.

[USF]

Thanks DS, for the kind words and all the other pings.

[Fred Nerks]

That's a keeper!

[TBall]

"They put on clean clothes" OK, I'm going to finish reading the article, but I must admit that this is setting off a BS alarm.

[jan in Colorado]

Thanks for sharing that USF!

This is an enemy like NONE we have ever seen!

[USF]

One of the people I infiltrated Islamic forums with reminded me about Reem Raiyshi. Not the usual shaheed, but the RoPers were nice enough to give her the choice of honor killing or redemption by murdering others as she checked herself out of this world. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say "Allah is merciful" :

Atoning for adultery with 'martyrdom'

(excerpt)

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian mother of two small children, who killed four Israelis by blowing herself up at a border crossing, carried out the suicide bombing to atone for having committed adultery.

The attack last week marked the first time the militant group Hamas had used a female bomber, part of an evolving belief that women who are disgraced by sexual activity outside marriage can "purify" themselves by becoming "martyrs," Israeli security officials said...

...According to the report, based on Israeli military sources, Raiyshi's husband is a Hamas operative who urged her to carry out the suicide mission.

The Associated Press, citing Israeli security officials, reported yesterday that Raiyshi was an adulteress forced to carry out the attack to restore her family's honor.

It is not uncommon for Palestinian women accused of adultery, or of having sex before marriage, to be killed by their families trying to rid themselves of perceived disgrace.

The officials told AP on condition of anonymity that Raiyshi's illicit lover recruited her, giving her the suicide bomb belt. Palestinian security officials said her husband drove her to Erez to carry out the attack...

[dfwgator]

How come you never see the NOW-gang talking about Islam and its treatment of women?

[Fred Nerks]

"The officials told AP on condition of anonymity that Raiyshi's illicit lover recruited her, giving her the suicide bomb belt. Palestinian security officials said her husband drove her to Erez to carry out the attack..."

And then there's that other story I heard, where the pali's were thinking about hiding semtex in the vagina of their women who were going to work in Israel because they know that the border checkpoint guards wouldn't dream anyone could use a vagina as a weapon...pali birth control, I call it.
Islam is a mass psychosis.