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Suicide bombers in heaven? Imam Rauf won't say no
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
When you detonate explosives attached to your torso, simultaneously decapitating people on a bus or disemboweling little children at a kindergarten, do you go to heaven or to hell? Are you a martyr or a murderer? Heroic or heinous?
While the answer might seem straightforward to some, it clearly flummoxed Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, he of the Ground Zero mosque controversy, when it was asked of him by Barbara Walters in her 2006 TV special on heaven.
In response to the question as to whether suicide bombers go to heaven, Imam Rauf said, "One of the things that we are taught is never to say somebody will go to hell or somebody will go to heaven. It is up to God to decide."
Hmmm. Then allow me to play G-d for a moment.
Suicide bombers go to hell where they burn forever and ever. Period. There. That's settled. Their souls are driven to the darkest reaches of the blackest netherworld where they suffer for all eternity in the anal cavities of the universe.
As President Obama might say, let me be clear. I bear no animosity to Imam Rauf, but I find his piety in refusing to speculate as to the final celestial resting place of a cold-blooded mass murderer both amoral and disingenuous. If men and women who blow up children and defenseless civilians end up in heaven then heaven is nothing but a meaningless euphemism for hell. If G-d would reward those who dismember innocent passengers on a bus with high explosives by delivering them eternal bliss then the Creator is in league with the devil. He deserves not our worship but our ridicule, not our praise but our contempt.
Fortunately, the G-d that I as a Jew worship, and which is the same G-d that my Muslim brothers and sisters worship, is not the G-d Imam Rauf discussed. My G-d is merciful to the innocent and compassionate to the forlorn. But He judges the truly wicked and punishes the heartless and the cruel. A protector of women and children, He will visit eternal damnation on cowardly assassins who make them into widows and orphans.
Refusing to disassociate the G-d of Abraham and Muhammad from suicide bombers makes a mockery of those who purport to represent the Islamic faith. Islam is a moral religion. It believes in right and wrong. Like Judaism and Christianity it condemns murder. Like any moral system, it champions life. And it is incumbent upon Imam Rauf to state unequivocally that suicide bombers will receive the retribution that's coming to them.
The foremost sin of any religious leader is moral relativism, a failure to lead in the face of ethical anarchy. A rabbi, priest, or imam has a responsibility to impart definitive moral direction about events, people, and places that must fall under the rubric of either right and wrong. If we were to ask Imam Rauf whether unrepentant pedophiles go to heaven, would he be ambivalent?
A preparedness to criticize one's own community when some of its members are guilty of serious moral lapses is the hallmark of courageous leadership and religious integrity. When in February, 1994 Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 innocent Muslims in Hebron in a mosque, some rabbis shamed themselves by finding mitigating circumstances for murder. They shunned any comparison between Goldstein and an Islamic suicide bomber. He was a doctor whose friends had been stabbed, they said, and so he snapped. He saw too many Jews murdered, so he became unhinged and sought revenge. He was privy to secret intelligence that the Muslims were about to slaughter the Jews of Hebron, so he struck a preemptive blow. Every one of these cowardly excuses was a betrayal of a Rabbi's responsibility to teach and enforce the Ten Commandments, among which the most serious is, 'Thou shalt not murder.'
Goldstein lost his mind when he saw too many Jews murdered in terror attacks? Really? Then why didn't the Jews of Hitler's Europe, immersed in a cauldron where 15,000 of their brethren were gassed and cremated every day for four years, ever blow up a German kindergarten? Why didn't the Jews of Soviet Russia who lived for generations under the brutal boot of the KGB ever detonate a Russian bus? Because the Torah commands us to punish only the guilty and never the innocent.
There is no excuse for murder. Under any circumstances. Ever. Killing is justified only in self-defense. Goldstein, whatever virtue he accrued as a doctor who saved lives forfeited all when he decided to become a mass murderer and an abomination to Judaism.
But having said this, let's be fair. There have been precious few Baruch Goldsteins and all too many Islamic suicide bombers. And if high-profile moderate Islamic leaders like Imam Rauf fail to condemn them in the harshest terms then Islam risks becoming an accessory to murder. The suicide bomber is an abomination and an affront to every truth Islam represents. That a Western imam, who enjoys the freedoms and liberties of the United States, is undecided on the question of whether suicide bombers are currently frolicking in heaven is deeply troubling. And if Imam Rauf feels he has been misquoted or misunderstood, then let him immediately explain himself or correct the quote. Better yet, let him apologize for his appalling lack of judgment and the unfortunate desecration he has brought to a great faith.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts 'The Shmuley Show' on 77 WABC in NYC. He is the founder of This World: The Values Network, and is the author, most recently, of 'Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.' Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
By By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach |
August 27, 2010; 11:53 AM ET
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Posted by: scotchpak1 | August 29, 2010 11:15 AM
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One wonders whether Boteach also wishes to rewrite the theology of Eastern Orthodoxy (which similarly disclaims knowledge of the will of God), Roman Catholicism and the Church of England (which now teach universal salvation), and every other faith neglecting to suit his whims.
As for why he exhibits such a peculiar and ahistorical obsession with suicide bombers (to the exclusion of F-16 bombers, Tomahawk bombers, etc.), presumably we may safely reach our own conclusions.
Posted by: jncatron | August 29, 2010 2:15 AM
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i thought that jews didn't believe in hell?
anyway i really wish that the good rabbi here and many like him would stop with the "my god is so tolerant!" bullsh*t. your god killed off all firstborn sons of egyptians for the sins of their fathers. and that isn't an isolated incident:
"Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants." Isaiah 14:21
he is a total d*ck.
and "islam is a moral religion"? you've gotta be kidding me. like the other two abrahamic religions, it is based off of a vile, cruel, egomaniacal god who demands subservience above all else. wake up, rabbi. i don't believe that suicide bombers go to hell either, because i don't believe that hell exists.
and to mary cunningham above... i was actually raised on the other side, as a catholic in belfast during the troubles, and i too can see the parallels. certainly a lot of blame to go around, hate on both sides, generation after generation of violence and desperation fueling horrible acts. belfast has (mostly) calmed down by now, but it took hundreds of years, slavery, mass murder, colonialism, starvation, and guerrilla warfare for it to happen. i wonder if palestine/israel will follow the same sad trajectory.
Posted by: lakira | August 27, 2010 5:52 PM
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Well, Rabbi, I was a London schoolgirl when the IRA first began to bomb the (British)mainland and—some 30 years later—a middle-aged professional when Islamists hit us the second time round. And I can tell you—suicide bomber or not—doesn’t really matter. Bombs are deadly. Oh! the IRA never bombed the Tube but there were lots of closures and alerts and FWIW I was a lot more scared of the IRA because the Irish in London were just invisible—indistinguishable from the general London population. (I should know—I’m Irish myself.) At least if you see a Pakistani young man with a knapsack sitting opposite you, you can get off at the next stop.
Now I dislike like being bombed as much as the next person but I wouldn’t say the IRA bombers are going to hell because bombing civilians is evil. After all, British troops sent a lot of Irish civilians to kingdom come and no one is damning them (except some Irish maybe), and—come to think of it—Israelis bombed and killed Palestinian civilians,in Gaza about 1/3 of them children and you would justify that.
Catholic Northern Irish took up bombing innocent civilians because they had lived in an occupied state for fifty years or so and the British gov’t had not been able to guarantee either their civil rights or their very safety. So they rose—something the Irish did many times throughout some three centuries of occupation. The IRA didn’t practice suicide bombing because suicide is a very grave sin in our Catholic theology. So, of course, is murder, but then they didn't see it as murder.
There are a lot of parallels between Northern Ireland and occupied Palestine. I am exceedingly pessimistic about peace in the region whilst good men like yourself damn Palestinian bombers. There are reasons they act as they do.
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | August 27, 2010 1:09 PM
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Imam Rauf really has some re-thinking to do, if he has me agreeing with Shmuley Boteach.
Posted by: WmarkW | August 27, 2010 12:34 PM
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I too was quite disturbed by the new "suicide bomber phenomena". I found that hard to believe that anyone who conducts a suicide bombings could reach heaven. So I consulted the Quran and I found what I was looking for:
In surah Al Isar verse 71 - " [but] one day We shall summon all human beings [and judge them] according to the conscience disposition which governed their deeds [in life]: whereupon they whose record shall be placed in their right hand- it is they who will read their record [with happiness]. Yet none shall be wronged by as much as a hairs breadth."....
Imam Razi interprets the start passage as "We shall summon all human beings by mentioning their "leaders" or "guides"....
Someone will have to be answerable the bomber or his guide