Passport to paradise
From Dr Mike Diboll Sir: Muslim apologists claim that suicide is prohibited in Islam, and therefore the hijackers' actions are un-Islamic. This is disingenuous. 'Intihar' (derived from the verb 'to cut a throat') — that is to say, suicide to avoid physical or mental suffering — is most certainly prohibited by Islam, which takes a very 'pro-life' position on such things. However, `shahaada' — martyrdom brought about by fighting against impossible odds on a 'suicidal' mission in the cause of Islam — is regarded as a short cut to lenna', the Muslim paradise. For many Muslim authorities the hijackers' actions clearly come into the latter category.
The answer as to how, with a clear conscience, supposedly God-fearing people can crash a plane containing children lies in the dogma of 'Mukallafat', the Islamic age of responsibility. Various Muslim authorities put the age of Mukallafat at between seven and 11. In Islamic jurisprudence there is no division between what we would see as civil and criminal law, and religion. Thus, for the fundamentalist mindset. if a hijackee is over the age of Mukallafat, and is not a Muslim, he or she has made a conscious decision to reject Islam and is therefore an infidel bound for hell-fire, and a worthy target. If, on the other hand, the hijackee is under the age of Mukallafat, like the two-year-old on the first jet that hit the WTC, he or she is an innocent, and in killing the child the hijacker has actually done her a favour, since as an innocent she will also enter Jenna without enduring the Day of Judgment.
For many fundamentalists, the vast majority of Muslims are Muslims in name only (the Taleban advised the Shia minority in the north of the country to embrace their version of Islam, face execution or flee to another country). Thus, if such a 'Muslim' were in the WTC, the hijackers would merely be killing another infidel. If by chance a Wahhabite, Salafi or Deobadi were to be in the vicinity of the WTC and was killed, unwittingly he would have par ticipated in the action of the shuhuhaa, and will enter paradise with them.
Mike Diboll
London SE16
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