Boreal

Holy Warriors in the Making

The Good Life After Death

A child is not born a holy warrior. The process of creating suicide bombers and willing executioners for the likes of Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Boko Haram begins with rote-learning by millions of children, even younger than the one pictured here in another flattering misleading juxtaposition of innocence and the most appalling mainstream piece of religious text ever revealed.

Muslim children in traditional Islamic societies or families are expected to have read and more or less understood the Koran, in Arabic, from cover to cover before they reach the age of seven. The ceremony of Khatmi-Qur’an celebrates this achievement.

As teenagers, in madrassas (Islamic schools) around the world, and as young men attending Friday prayers at a mosque and listening to vitriolic sermons, they will be reminded of the good life after death for those who kill and die for Allah and the superiority and greater rewards of those who join the fight in His Cause over the homebodies.

3:157 And were you to be killed or to die in the Way of Allah, forgiveness and Mercy from Allah are far better then what they (the unbelievers) amass.

3:158 And were you to die or to be killed, it is unto Allah that you will be gathered.

3:169 And do not think those who have been killed in the Way of Allah as dead; they are rather living with their Lord, well provided for.

----

4:95 Those of the believers who stay at home while suffering from no injury are not equal to those who fight for the Cause of Allah with their possessions and persons. Allah has raised those who fight with their possessions and persons one degree over those who stay at home; and to each Allah has promised the fairest good. Yet Allah has granted a great reward to those who fight and not to those who stay behind.

They will be told of the Prophet's praise of self-immolation, a death so wonderful, he preached, that if a martyr could, he would leave his opulent martyr's home in the sky to return to earth to do it again, over and over.

Narrated Samura:

The Prophet said, "Last night two men came to me (in a dream) and made me ascend a tree and then admitted me into a better and superior house, better of which I have never seen. One of them said, ‘This house is the house of martyrs.’"

Bukhari 52.49

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

The Prophet said, "Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's Cause)."

Bukhari 52.53

Bernard Payeur

The Anthropological Impact of the Hajj