Islam at War: A History

(Ron) #1
DYING FOR GOD 241

because his would be a suicide mission. His mind and heart must be set on
a successful kill and not at all on his own escape. He learned techniques of
the dagger: where and how deep to strike, and how to circumvent armor.
He was taught the use of poisons. He was instructed in the use of disguises
and, if necessary, instructed in other religions, including Christianity, in
order to be able to pass himself off convincingly as a member of the victim’s
own faith.
With a corps of such young men ready to kill and die, the grand master
had a weapon that was often as powerful as an entire army. It inspired such
fear that even the greatest rulers would think twice before going against the
wishes of the grand master. (Robinson, 66–67)

The Garden of Paradise legend may or may not be apocryphal. In view
of the Koran’s promise, there has never been a shortage of young Muslims
ready to die for their faith.


Surah IV, 74. Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this
world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be
he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.

Numerous other passages promise Paradise for the faithful. This par-
ticular surah, spawned on the battlefield at Badr, specifically says that
when you die fighting “in the way of Allah” you receive the “vast reward,”
which has come to mean immediate entry into Paradise and the services
of seventy-two virgins. To understand how this influenced these young
men, one must step back into the twelfth century, imagine young men with
no understanding of drugs who were given a taste of heaven for a day and
then dumped back into their primitive squalor. Is it surprising that such
young men would, upon the command of their imam, die without thought?
Today, it is easy to say that the Assassins lived 800 years ago and are
irrelevant to the modern world. But they existed, and their philosophy was
and still is a real force in the Middle East.
The ideology that brought the Assassins into the world and the surah
in the Koran that made the promises of eternal life in paradise are alive
and well. In May 1982, during the Iran-Iraq war, it is reported that young
Iranian boys were “volunteered” by their parents to sacrifice themselves
in the front line. The method, so it is reported, was for the boys to be
roped together and advanced through minefields, detonating the explo-
sives and clearing the way for the better-trained soldiers with their tanks.
They are said to have had black cloths tied around their heads, with the
inscription“One who will love martyrdom.”These were theBassij,or

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