Islam teaches that when a person dies, prior to earning his or her stripes in Allah’s janna, the person must undergo a test, administered to the newly dead immediately after burial.
Suicide martyrdom is a path difficult for most Americans to comprehend. Some among us have attempted to ground such motivations in desperation and poverty, or in America’s supposed “depredations,” especially “war-mongering in Iraq.” While many reasons drive jihadi terrorists by the thousands to choose death in the cause, sanctioned as “martyrdom,” one impetus rarely discussed is the Islamic belief known as the torture of the grave.
Muslims teach that when a person dies, prior to earning his or her stripes in Allah’s janna (paradise), the person must undergo a test, administered to the newly dead immediately after burial. As explained to me by a senior Islamic official from a Middle East country, this brutal experience — which lasts for an unknown period of time — is administered by two wild-eyed, ghoulish “angels” called Nakir and Munkar. This deadly duo dispenses a battery of trials to determine the depth of the person’s faith in Allah and loyalty to Islam. They also dish out a smorgasbord of creative tortures — a sort of prelude to hell — to castigate those less valiant.
While the body lies in the grave, the sinner feels the weight of the earth pressing down upon his corpse until his rib cage collapses. Worms gnaw the flesh, adding to the already terrific pain. For grievous sinners, the torture is enhanced and extended in ways only Nakir and Munkar can fashion. Later, when these “angels” determine the trial is over, the person is sent either to heaven or hell, but only after the final judgment of Allah, which comes “some day.” In several polls conducted in Arab countries, more people stated they feared the torture of the grave than actually dying.
But do not despair. This excruciating trial offers an escape clause: Martyrdom in the Faith. When a person dies as a martyr for Allah, miraculously he bypasses this hellish ordeal, instead going straight to paradise, passing the angels who honor the martyr on his or her glorious journey to the blessed gardens, his promised 72 gorgeous, mute, “doe-eyed” virgins, and an eternal supply of tasty food and sweet drink. In heaven the martyr receives a new body, perfectly formed with “all parts and passions,” so he may enjoy the multiple pleasures of his dedication to Allah.
Such beliefs, while comforting to many Muslims, are also used by our enemies, including the leaders of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, to recruit and motivate young suicide killers. These extremists are manipulating a great world faith for their own gain, using religion to render chaos, plaguing millions, especially fellow Muslims, who have died in Iraq, for example, by the tens-of-thousands at the hands of these fanatics.
The jihadi militants will use any weapon or tool they can beg, borrow, or steal to defeat us. Does anyone actually believe this enemy will refrain from using a nuclear warhead on an American city, or against an American military base abroad or at home, if they gain access to such a weapon? We need help. We can’t do this alone. We need Islamic clerics and imams (Islamic leaders) to issue powerfully-worded fatwas (Islamic decrees or official statements) decrying the use of the torture of the grave in recruiting suicide murderers. We must ally ourselves with Islamic communities in many lands, building trust, demonstrating our respect, and most of all our dependability. Failing to do so, the death that will result could reach genocidal levels, the destruction, apocalyptic.
Some among us are harshly critical of Islam. I believe these often well-meaning souls are undermining America’s long-term security. If we insist upon a clash of civilizations — a war between the Christian West and Islam — we may get our wish. However, such a path is not only unnecessary, but has ramifications few yet comprehend, when considering the demographic realities of a shrinking Christian world and a burgeoning Islamic umma. Islam — 1.3 billion strong and 22 percent of the world’s population — is breaking all growth records while the Christian West is dwindling. The numbers are sobering (see the CIA’s World Fact Book, on-line).
Current, and soon to come war-technology and mass destruction weaponry available to an ever expanding audience, will end up in the hands of our enemies. It is inevitable. Add to that the published and stated goals, the covenants of death, of those tyrants and terrorists who use mayhem to capture and hold power and terrorize their victims. Simply, without the assistance, confidence, and loyalty of the greater Muslim community worldwide, we will lose this war. Rather than driving wedges we must be bridge-builders.
These modern-day Assassins, like those we faced on 9/11, must be prevented from exploiting Islam and attacking free societies. America must unite with her allies and stand against these “holy” killers. Ultimately either liberty or tyranny will prevail. As Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned expert on Islam, warned: “Unless we bring them (Muslims) freedom, they will destroy us.” If the zealots, and the tyrants who back them, are left unchallenged, chaos and death will haunt us for generations, spurred on by the wild-eyed Nakir and Munkar, who appear heavily invested in bringing, in this life, hell to us all.
Dear Mr Robison,
I have serious reservations about your assessment of the Islamic challenge.
To build a bridge, we need two solid banks on each side of the crevice we want to span.
How would you suggest we get the “assistance, confidence and loyalty” of the greater Muslim community? Either they abhor what is being done in the name of Allah, or they don’t. It seems to me that it is more a question of them getting out of the Islamic river before they go over the fall, than building a bridge to nowhere.
The fundamental difference between Islam and the West lies in the Koran at Sura 5:13 (substituting the first of the Five Pillars of Islam for the Ten Commandments), and the Muslims’ denial that man is created in the image of God.
Combine that with the whole thrust of Islam – that all the people of the world must submit to the will of Allah – and we end up with a bridge built on quicksand.
Your sentiments are indeed laudable, but I fear misplaced.
In the final analysis, either Muslims have to renounce what they regard as the literal word of Allah (the Koran), we renounce our freedom and submit to the will of Allah (as enunciated in the Koran), or we resolve the issue in the time-honored fashion – conflict.
You are right that such a conflict may well be one the like of which the world has never before witnessed, but that itself is something the Muslims expect and welcome as a prerequisite to the final judgment. Likewise, many Christians also anticipate Armageddon as a prelude to the Final Coming.
So as they say in sport vernacular – game on!
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Dear Mr Robison:
“We need Islamic clerics and imams to issue powerfully-worded fatwas decrying the use of the torture of the grave in recruiting suicide murderers.”
But it’s OK to use other recruiting techniques? While you’re at it, why don’t you ask for $2-a-barrel oil?
“We must ally ourselves with Islamic communities in many lands…”
Have you studied how such alliances have played out in the past?
This is one of the most intelligent articles I’ve ever read on this site. You lay out a very compelling problem that almost no one is aware of. Unlike commenter #1, I’m not quite ready for full scale war if it can be avoided – so, any ideas on whether there is enough of a moderating influence in Islam to begin such a dialog? And do the moderates in Islam also identify this doctrine as one that must be renounced in order to reconcile with Western thought?
Chasm,
My article Free Speech, The War on Terror and Islam (at http://www.freedomvrights.com)offers the solution you are seeking.
The difficulty is that the course suggested fell on deaf ears – both Western and Muslim.
When debate is not only suppressed, but those who seek to initiate it are even persecuted and prosecuted (as they are in most Western countries), we end up with no alternative than the time-honored fashion of resolving our differences.
The author of this article suggests building bridges etc, but offers few suggestions as to how we do that. Few in this world who know war want war. But then again, if there is to be war, it is best to get on with it while we have a good chance of winning.
As Churchill said: “If you will not fight when you can win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to a time when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of victory. There may be a worse case; you may have to fight when there is no chance of victory because it is better to perish then to live as slaves.”
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
The logic of this article is predicated on the fact that Muslims think, reason, and behave the way that Westerners do. This is self-induced ignorance for the sake of political correctness, or otherwise outright stupidity, which is no better. Muslims no more wish to be “liberated” from their beliefs than Pennsylvanians wish to be “liberated” from their guns and religion. A parliament and some US sponsored Social Security and Medicare isn’t going to stop suicide bombers or make the Islamic world want to be our friends. As incomprehensible as it may seem, some people just don’t view their world and process information the same way that we do.
Patrick Mulligan:
“The logic of this article is predicated on the fact that Muslims think, reason, and behave the way that Westerners do. This is self-induced ignorance for the sake of political correctness, or otherwise outright stupidity, which is no better.”
I agree with you, although this ignorance/stupidity might also be induced by big dose of wishful thinking.
According to the interviewee in this article http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26769, Islam is dualistic: “All of Western logic is based upon the law of contradiction – if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false. But Islamic logic is dualistic; two things can contradict each other and both are true.”
Another thing that Westerners can’t seem to grasp is that productive negotiations require both sides to have good will and a common goal. Negotiations between Israel and its neighbors is a perfect example where there is no common goal, so all the jaw-jaw in the world is not going to produce any results. Those committed to negotiations at all costs just refuse to recognize that, like most human endeavors, negotiation has a point of diminishing returns.
The West has also perhaps unknowingly adopted the position, “Here, have half our assets, and let’s have peace.” Negotiating is just bargaining, and those experienced in bargaining know that if a “buyer” offers X, he is usually willing to pay X plus Y. The only question is, what is Y? Once concession X has been paid by those of good will, it is a simple matter for their opposition to lie low for a while until things quiet down before proceeding with their plan of repeating the process of “crisis”/ negotiation in order to extract Y (upping the price for peace); and once the process is renewed, the previous X plus Y become the new X in his search of a new Y. At this point, those of good will who agree to renew negotiation (tacitly granting the next Y) have become appeasers.
I think Mr Mulligan and Sedonaman sum up the situation well.
We will pontificate, we will appease, we will fiddle, and the likes of Jimmy Carter will build bridges into the abyss.
But regrettably, when they all wake up to the fact that Islam is itself the problem, an ideology so at odds with rational behavior that those who subscribe to it seek the elimination of an entire people (the Jews), sever peoples’ heads in the name of their god, murder innocent women and children, fly civilian airliners into buildings, aim rockets at civilians, use their own children as media fodder and human shields, burn their own children and otherwise kill and mutilate them because they have acted ‘dishonorably’, it will be too late.
The inevitable conflict is simply being postponed to our detriment, and their advantage – and the sentiments expressed in the article will do nothing but weaken our position, and strengthen theirs.
Each day that passes makes the task we will have to deal with more difficult and more costly in the blood of our children and our grandchildren.
If there are Muslims out there who find what is happening offensive, they have had 6 years from 9/11 to express their revulsion, and umpteen decades before that to express their revulsion at the killing of innocent men, women and children in Israel, and the rest of the world, by those claiming to represent Palestinian and Islamic interests.
The silence has been deafening, but rewarded. I fear that today’s terror mongers will in the end be treated with the dignity that the terror mongers of the past, like Yasser Arafat, were ultimately treated.
All the rebukes of Islamic terror from Muslims are followed with a BUT …. And the BUT usualy refers to the Jews. ‘Help us get rid of the Jews (or Israel, when they are seeking to be less politically incorrect), and all will be well – as long as we all convert to Islam, of course. Because we’d only really want to get rid of the Jews if we converted to Islam, or sympathized with its extreme anti-semitism.
And I find it offensive when people refer to the 1.2 billion Muslims as justification for this appeasement. As I have said before, that’s like citing the number of smokers in the world to promote its beneficial effects. After all, billions of smokers can’t be wrong.
But yet, those who dare to criticize Islam, even in a constructive way, will be prosecuted in the West, never mind Muslim countries, for daring to ‘insult’ that quite hideous ideology.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
So, Mr McMillan, just to be sure, you don’t like Islam?
Wouldn’t want to misinterpret what you are saying after all.
Leigh, no, I don’t like Islam. I have spent over thirty years reading and studying the Koran and other Islamic writings; I have spent time in Islamic countries, including the Gaza strip; I have met many ‘educated’ Muslims, and as hospitable as many are, they lose all sense of rationality when certain topics are raised – the Jews being one; America being another – among many.
When the Marine Barracks in Lebanon was bombed, I happened to be lunching with a group of Muslims. They were all reading for Masters or Doctorate degrees at a prestigious British University, but when the images of dead and mutilated bodies of young Marines were displayed on the television, they went into a frenzy of delight.
You may recall that that massacre took place nearly twenty years before 9/11. Ever since, I have been warning of the danger of Islamic terror – because it is found in the Koran itself. Nobody listened.
Now I am saying that the only way this scourge will be removed from the earth will be conflict. I may well be a lunatic, in the way Churchill was branded a lunatic for his call for war with Nazi Germany, but time will tell.
If, of course, Muslims suddenly transform and reject verses in the Koran that call Jews “apes and swine”, condemn them for falsifying Scriptures, call for Islam to conquer the word and compel others to submit to Islam, then I shall be relieved and delighted.
But while we wait for that to happen, we ought to prepare our nuclear shelters, and hope that the Supreme Court doesn’t relieve the American people of what will become their only means of effective defence.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com