The Perversion Of Islam

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/11/2006

The Enemy: 75% of suicide bombings in the past 25 years have occurred since 9/11. In one month last year, there were as many in Iraq as during Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. Now they're breaking out in the Afghan capital.

Last week, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy just 200 yards from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The blast killed 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers.

The emergence of a suicide bombing cell there reminds us again that Muslim "martyrs" are the most effective weapon (absent WMD) the terrorists have against the West.

The Rand Corp. predicts they'll pose a constant threat to us. So how can we stop them?

For starters, we need to find out what really makes them tick. Recently released "martyrdom videotapes" recording the last testaments of the London bombers and the 9/11 hijackers show their unshakable love of death. Why are so many Muslim men itching to die?
Some say they want to escape poverty. Others say it's the only way they can resist their more powerful "oppressors." But a controversial new documentary finds another reason: lust.

In the recently released movie "Suicide Killers," French filmmaker Pierre Rehov interviews the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to find out why they do it. What he learns is alarming: They actually believe Allah will reward them with a harem of virgins and other carnal pleasures in the afterlife.

Such a notion of heaven is often dismissed out of hand by Western analysts as a myth or fantasy of heretics. But Rehov found it's culturally accepted and deeply rooted in the Muslim world.

"People don't understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon," he said in a recent MSNBC interview.

He says sexual repression in Islam — young Muslim men are forbidden from dating or even swimming or dancing with girls — makes the idea of redeeming promised virgins in Paradise all the more appealing. Desire and death become one.

"It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy, but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil," Rehov said. "Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and promises virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution."

Even married men dream of the beautiful "dark eyed" virgins, rivers of wine and endless parties in Paradise, he says.

"We interviewed a suicide bomber who is living in Gaza — he's married with three kids and he's still dreaming of the virgins in the afterlife," Rehov said. One of the London suicide bombers was married and had a child. Some of the 9-11 hijackers had steady girlfriends. Yet before the attacks, they shaved and doused themselves with flower water in preparation for their weddings in Paradise.

"Know that the women of Paradise are waiting, calling out 'Come hither, friend of Allah,' " according to a four-page letter circulated among them titled, "THE LAST NIGHT." "They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing."

Such fantasies might be easier to understand if the killers were rubes. But they were well-educated men, some in their 30s. Complicating matters, most were deeply religious and students of the Quran — some had even memorized it. How could they be so mistaken?

They weren't — and aren't, asserts Rehov, who says the would-be Muslim suicide bombers whom he has interviewed have shown him passages in the Quran "in which it's absolutely written that they're going to get the girls in the afterlife" if they die fighting infidels in jihad.

"It's obviously connected to religion," Rehov stressed. "They really believe they are going to get the virgins."
But isn't suicide forbidden in Islam? Yes, but only selfish suicide, he notes. Self-immolation in the cause of Allah is actually the highest expression of love for Allah, rewarded by the highest honor in Paradise.

Muslim martyrs believe the first drop of blood they shed during jihad washes away all their sins instantaneously, he says.

It boggles the Western mind to think that anyone could believe that murdering people could wash away lesser sins, but this is what the enemy believes.

More astounding is how rare it is that you hear Muslim leaders in the West speak up and say this is wrong. Instead, many have actually condoned suicide bombings, and not just in London.

Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine's annual convention in Chicago, Council on American-Islamic Relations founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who "kill themselves for Islam," according to a transcript provided by terror expert Steve Emerson's Investigative Project.

"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide," Ahmad asserted. "They kill themselves for Islam."

And, apparently, for all its heavenly booty. We say "apparently" because we don't know for sure. We are not worshippers of or experts on Islam. But it is curious that Muslim clerics do not disavow the virgins-for-martyrs reward as a perverted interpretation of the Quran. Their silence leads one to think it is indeed an accurate interpretation.

Whether it is or not, Western leaders must stand up and denounce the perverted notion that God would reward killers with a harem of virgins in his heavenly domain. It must be a source of ridicule not just for late-night talk shows, but for press conferences and official speeches.

If this is what's getting our enemy worked up for jihad, then no one's feelings should be spared.