living islam _ Islamic tradition

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Yamin Zakaria
UK, London
E Mail : yaminz@______

Here is the link: www.bangladesh-web.com/ne...003.htm#A3

There are certain misconception that I feel needs to be addressed.

1) Suicide Bombing or Martyrdom operations

Suicide in the conventional sense (or understood in the ordinary sense) is an action carried out by an individual to take his own life, primarily motivated by the desire to cut short his OWN suffering. As an example he may be feeling intense pain after loosing his family, children etc. Another example is that he may have been injured an suffering with intense pain. All of the above is related to the suffering of the individual himself only. Such an action is clearly prohibited and there is no difference in opinion on this amongst the major Ulemas and Madahibs in Islam.

As for Martyrdom operation is not suicide. One sacrifices ones life in order to cause inflict upon the ENEMY. Not due to cut short his own personal suffering. Those who say people commit these types of operation out of desperation or have lost hope, have fallen victim to the same Zionist propaganda that they claim to be fighting! People who do these actions do out of desperation, but the desperation is related to the uneven situation of fighting a powerful enemy with greater firepower. Not the desperation of relieving ones pain!.

Those who do that are motivated by the reward of Allah(SWT) and they have left tapes showing why they have done that. It is not because they have lost hope!. So please stop spreading this type of Zionist lies.

Secondly- There is a great deal of evidence for such operations. You can use your body to fight the enemy even if it means you will lose your own life. Rationaly if you can't fight the enemy with weapons you have every right to fight them with your body. Textual evidences will be provided in the article that will be coming out shortly. I dont know any recognised Ulemas that do not consider the action of martyrdom not to be Halal and permitted. People are quoting verses with no relevance to Suicide or Martyrdom operation, out of context, and without offering legitimate explanation from the recognised sources and Ulemas. Scholars like Yusuf Al-Qardawi have also given support to this type of actions.

Thirdly : - There is no differnce beteween Hamas or a British subject carrying out martyrdom operation. We are one Ummah. They both target Israeli civilians and military. So if you condem the British subjects, you also have to condem the Hamas and JIhad in palestine. Perhaps you can also suggest how they should resist the Israeli Jews ! No one to date is addressing this point.

2) Israel Targets :-

Here is another misconception. People have fallen to the very Zionist propaganda that they are claiming to fight. Israeli civilian and Military are both legitimate targets. There is no such thing as innocent civilians in Israel. Why ? This is because Israel as an entity are occupiers and aggressors. Hence they should all be fought as a collective entity. Surat Mumthana makes this very clear and unambigious. I know people will be tempted to cite the earlier revealed verse in Surat Baqara, but those do not apply here. We recognise that it is far better (but no rstricted to) to target the military rather then civilian. The situation does not permit them and hence we see Hamaas targetting civilians. In case of offensive Jihad we do make distinction between military and civilian but that is not the case here clearly. This is well established also.

One may pose the question if a Muslims Palestenian may become victim as a bystander. Here this will be treated in Islam as "collateral" damage and there are evidence for this too. More importantly this is why the Martyrdom operations are carried out in selective places, where to date I know of no Palestenian casulty.

3) Media :- As for dealing with the media. We do need to be diplomatic but also firm. We should not resort to lying as that can mislead the Muslims as well. For example if they raise the subject of the British bombers we should counter it by citing Israeli operations. These bombing are retaliatory. If they ask us to condeming this bombing, we should refuse, as this would be an act of treachry, you would be condeming your brothers who fought against the enemies by sacrificing their life. This martyrdom action is a permitted action and no basis to condemn it. We should also counter it by asking them to condem the Israeli operations. As for the response from BNP they have their agenda but we cannot shape our ENTIRE response by their agenda only. Then we have become defeated and they will be dictating our activities. Ofcourse we do ensure that in our response to the media we are not reckelss, but here an element of individual judgement is required.

Please note, I did this fairly quickly and there may be errors with regard to the Islamic legal aspects, and may Allah(SWT) forgive me for them. A more comprehensive document will be coming out soon, detailing the position of Martyrdom operations with detailed references.

Yamin Zakaria