means. Does it mean that Muslims should not go
into battle unless they have enough provisions,
or are they being instructed to keep fighting for
the cause, lest God punish them for giving up
or retreating? Or, is it actually a prohibition of
suicide? The clearest condemnations of suicide,
however, are to be found in the major hadith
collections, some of which devoted chapters to
the subject. In one hadith, Muhammad declares,
“Whoever strangles himself will repeat this deed
in the Fire, and whoever kills himself by stabbing
his own body with some weapon will repeat his
deed in the Fire” (al-Bukhari, Sahih, quoted in
Rozenthal). This hadith and others promise that
God will punish suicide victims severely in the
afterlife.
Apart from statements in the Quran and
hadith, the subject of suicide was also debated
by fiqh specialists. They discussed it in relation
to whether FUnerary ritUals should be held for
suicide victims. The conservative view was that
such rites should not be performed, but others
were more lenient, taking into consideration
cultural practice and the emotional states of the
bereaved. Franz Rosenthal, a leading Islamic
Studies scholar, has identified other questions
raised in medieval fiqh literature. These include
the liability of those who unknowingly con-
tributed to the commission of a suicide and the
status of the legally stipulated bridal gift when a
prospective bride kills herself. Suicidal themes
also arise in love poetry and Sufi literature,
where the lover perishes in the absence of the
beloved, or becomes self-annihilated, as a moth
perishes when drawn to the flame. The moral-
ity of euthanasia only became a topic for jurists
in the modern period, with most ruling that it
should be considered a form of suicide.
In discussions of Jihad warfare, as David Cook
has found, Muslim jurists discussed whether
going to battle against a superior force should
be considered suicide. Most ruled that it is not,
depending on the intent of the soldier, the neces-
sity for resorting to such desperate measures,
and whether the act is performed on behalf of
the community or for self-glorification. These
discussions invariably dovetailed into discussions
of martyrdom (shahada). Although martyrdom
achieved a high degree of symbolic importance
in shiism, focused on the figure of hUsayn ibn ali
(d. 660) and the battle of karbala, it was also
discussed by Sunni jurists. In the case of both
traditions, martyrs were considered to have been
specially blessed—they were exempted from stip-
ulated burial procedures (washing of the corpse
and enshroudment) and promised a higher rank
in paradise than ordinary believers.
Today, debates over suicide attacks committed
by Muslims in places like lebanon, israel/pales-
tine, iraq, aFghanistan, or in the U.S. on 9/11
reflect a wide spectrum of views among both Mus-
lims and non-Muslims. The most simplistic and
ideologically motivated positions taken in these
debates attribute the attacks to what is claimed to
be Islam’s essentially violent nature, irregardless as
to context, or justify them as forms of communal
self-defense. More careful treatments of the subject
explain it in relation to several contextual factors,
some giving more emphasis to religion than others.
Those identifying religion as a significant explana-
tory factor maintain that it is a relatively recent
phenomenon in Islam, and point to the specific
Islamist ideologies and groups that underpin it.
On the other hand, Robert A. Pape of the
University of Chicago has conducted a system-
atic study of all cases of suicide terrorism that
occurred around the world from 1980 through- He documented a total of 315 incidents in
this period and found that there was little con-
nection between them and the Islamic religion
per se. Indeed, the largest number of attacks (76
out of 315) by a single group was conducted by
the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist national-
ist movement in Sri Lanka with no connection
to Islam. Only about half of the attacks were
conducted by Islamist groups. Instead, Pape
has argued that suicide terrorism is primarily
a response to foreign occupation, rather than
being a phenomenon of islamism, and that it
has several specific characteristics, including 1)
desire to achieve national liberation of a home-
land from occupation by a foreign power ruled
K 642 suicide