The difference between suicide in Islam & the West
02-08-07
There are similarities in the West
and Islam regarding suicide and there are differences. This foundation must be
established first amongst the Muslims before they even start discussing the
issue of Martyrdom Operations or as known in the Kaafir media, “Suicide
Bombings.” They must realize that there is a major disagreement between the two
on the issue of suicide. Let’s start with what’s similar without going into
details.
It is shared in both Islam and the West that if a person kills himself for any
worldly motive, then he has committed suicide. The keyword here is “worldly
motive.” This would imply that he hates his life (i.e., he hates what Allah has
given him), he is overly depressed, he became bankrupt, and so on.
This is where the West stops and Islam continues. The West stops here and says,
“In any incident where one kills himself, no matter for what motive it may be,
it is suicide.” They do make the exception for a soldier that puts his life on
the line to save the lives of others; otherwise, everything else is suicide.
Now let’s discuss where we differ from the West. For Islam, it has three
concepts of death which have specific implications: (1) Al-Intihaar (Suicide),
(2) Ash-Shahaadah (Martyrdom), and (3) a normal death. When we say “specific
implications,” we are saying that each of these 3 classifications of death have
a meaning beyond its surface unlike the West. For the one who commits suicide,
he gets Hellfire. The one who dies as a Martyr, goes to Paradise. And the one
who doesn’t die in any of these two states is a question mark because we don’t
know what his end will be. That’s why we, as Muslims, must ask Allah to make our
end Shahaadah since there is no other way to die more nobly; and there is no
other death which can guarantee us Paradise except Shahaadah.
That’s why our beloved Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wassallam, wished for
Shahaadah. In the West, they wouldn’t be able to grasp this concept since it’s
like asking for death; and to them, this only seems like suicide. That’s where
we differ with them heavily. The Kaafir would never desire Shahaadah the way a
Mujaahid would, or even the way the Prophet sallallahu ‘alayhi wassallam showed
us how to (desire it). He, sallallahu ‘alayhi wassallam, said,
“By [Allah] in Whose Hand is my soul! Verily, I would love to be killed in the
Path of Allah, then brought to life, then killed [again], then brought to life,
then killed!” [Al-Bukhari (36, 2797, 7226), Muslim (1876); Saheeh]
And any Muslim who doesn’t desire Shahaadah, will for sure die on a branch of
Nifaaq (hypocrisy) since the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wassallam, said,
“He who dies without having gone out for an expedition [Jihad], nor ever thought
of going out, will die guilty of a kind of hypocrisy.” [Muslim; Saheeh]
And it is impossible to desire Jihad without desiring Shahaadah; and vice versa.
The issue of suicide goes more
deeper than this
In Islam, we have many examples where an event will appear as suicide to
Westerners, but martyrdom to the Muslims. Let’s mention one example, and this is
story of the boy and the king. We will assume our readers know this story of how
the boy tells the king on how exactly to kill him after the king attempted
various ways in trying to get rid of the boy such as throwing him off of a high
mountain peak. The King wanted to kill the boy because the boy was a Muslim and
it was Islam that threatened his throne.
So the King was only able to kill the boy after the boy told him exactly how to
do so whilst knowing that his life would be on the line. In other words, it was
as if the boy was giving away the secret. In the West, this would appear as
suicide. But in Islam, this is Martyrdom. Now the question arises: Why did the
boy do such a thing? Why did he kill himself?
The answer is that if he were to do it, then he would know that the people that
were watching would become Muslim as they would experience a miracle in front of
their eyes. That miracle is that he was thrown off a mountain, and wasn’t
killed. Then he was supposed to be thrown off a boat into the ocean but the boat
overturned and sank. And now he is telling the King on how to kill him. And
the boy is killed. This was the miracle that made the entire crowd come into
Islam.
So the boy killed himself, not because he was sick of his life, but he wanted to
die for a greater deed for the sake of Allah Ta’aala. He wanted to make a major
change for Islam; and that’s exactly what happened.
The Muslim must muse over this and study this with a careful eye. He will come
to know that what may appear as suicide in the West, is martyrdom for us. To get
killed for nothing is suicide; but to get killed in order to bring destruction
to the enemies of Islam, is martyrdom.