Mass murder as a spiritually fulfilling activity

Nasra Hassan has an interview with a failed Hamas suicide bomber in The Times of London:

“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.”

I tend to think it is more likely that the door elsewhere swings open at that moment, but then I am not a bomber.

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...(t)he 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...

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.”

Given all these personal bennies, I don't think these guys would ever qualify as boddhisattvas , but if they are right about Allah, the rest of us are in trouble. He sounds like a pretty unfriendly, anti-tolerance kind of deity.

Nasra Hassan has interviewed 250 bombers and their family members. The whole article is worth a read.

Thanks to Power Line for the tip.