For Islam, suicide attacks legitimate self-defense

For Islam, suicide attacks legitimate self-defense

Michel Sailhan, Agence France-Presse, Cairo

While Islam universally bans suicide as a crime against oneself,
it allows it in defense of Muslims and their land, and celebrates
as "martyrs" those who make the sacrifice.

The Arabic term for kamikaze-style acts is not "suicide
attacks" but "martyr operations," underscoring that they fall
under the Muslims' sacred duty to wage jihad, or holy war, when
they come under attack.

A martyr, or "shaheed" in Arabic, describes both those who die
while fighting and civilians killed by the enemy.

There is a consensus that "martyr operations" can be resorted
to when the defenders have no other options or when the invader
has an overwhelming force -- such as the U.S.-led coalition
invading Iraq, the Israeli army against the Palestinians, or
Russian troops against the Chechens.

In 1983, suicide bombings of U.S. and French army positions in
Beirut killed hundreds and forced the two nations to withdraw
from Lebanon.

Muslim scholars, from both the Sunni and Shi'ite branches,
reject martyr operations when their forces have the advantage.
They also stress that self-sacrifice should be motivated by the
fight, not to escape personal problems.

However, eve a leading moderate Islamic scholar, Syria's Grand
Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro, has called for "martyr operations"
against the U.S. and British invaders in Iraq.

Kaftaro rose to fame in May 2001, when he walked with Pope
John Paul II into Damascus's historic Omeyyads Mosque, marking
the first visit by a head of the Catholic Church to a Muslim
place of worship.

"I call on Muslims everywhere to use all means possible to
thwart the aggression, including martyr operations against the
belligerent American, British and Zionist invaders," Kaftaro said
last Thursday.

"Resistance to the belligerent invaders is an obligation for
all Muslims, starting with (those in) Iraq," the mufti said.

Two days later, an Iraqi officer driving a taxi carried out a
suicide bombing at a U.S. checkpoint near the Shi'ite Muslim holy
city of Najaf, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Baghdad.
Besides himself, the U.S.-led coalition says he killed four U.S.
troops, while Baghdad says he killed 11.

Iraq warned the coalition last Saturday that more than 4,000
volunteers had come from every Arab nation "without exception",
ready to follow in the footsteps of the Iraqi officer who carried
out the suicide attack, Ali Jaafar Musa Hammadi al-Numani, whom
President Saddam Hussein awarded two top posthumous medals of
honor.

The Palestinian radical movement Islamic Jihad also said last
Sunday it had sent a first batch of its suicide bombers to
Baghdad.

And the militant movement Ansar al-Islam, which Washington
links to al-Qaeda and has attacked repeatedly in Iraqi Kurdistan
during the war, has redeployed and is preparing suicide attacks
against coalition forces, a statement on an Islamist website said
Monday.

Last Saturday's attack near Najaf prompted the U.S. forces to
curtail the movements of Iraqi civilians and impose stricter
security measure that could harm their proclaimed effort to win
over the "hearts and minds" of Iraqi civilians.

But showing that the incident has made troops nervous, U.S.
officials admitted that seven Iraqi women and children had been
accidentally shot dead at a checkpoint near Najaf on Monday
afternoon.

Still, General Vincent Brooks at the U.S. Central Command's
forward base in Qatar discounted suicide attacks as "a terror
tactic" that "won't be effective" in checking coalition plans to
remove Saddam.