Ihsanic Intelligence, the think tank behind a highly controversial study, have spent two years studying suicide bombings by Islamist terrorists and their conclusions are both timely, controversial and intended for a global readership.

Titled ‘The Hijacked Caravan: Refuting Suicide Bombings as Martyrdom Operations in Contemporary Jihad Strategy’, the study systematically analyses al-Qaeda’s literature for recruiting the potential suicide bomber, refuting the Islamic evidences used in their favour and provides greater evidences from fourteen centuries of the Islamic legal tradition to refute the suicide bombings as a whole.

The study concludes on the landmark ruling, to be presented at the United Nations Social and Economic Council, which Islamic scholars worldwide are being urged to become signatories to: “The technique of suicide bombing is anathema, antithetical and abhorrent to Sunni Islam. It is considered legally forbidden, constituting a reprehensible innovation in the Islamic tradition, morally an enormity of sin combining suicide and murder and theologically an act which has consequences of eternal damnation.”

Some of the major findings of the study into suicide bombings are:

• ‘The Hijacked Caravan’ is the first and only Islamic legal ruling which unequivocally condemns suicide bombing in all circumstances.
• Suicide terrorism has no precedent in fourteen centuries of Sunni Islamic tradition
• Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qa’eda have adopted the use of suicide bombings from the Hindu-Marxist terrorist groups like the Tamil Tigers and kamikaze pilots from Japan
• Islamist terrorists killing Muslims are considered to be in the tradition of the khawarij, an ancient Islamic heretical sect which also assassinated Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Imam Ali
• Suicide bombings invoked under the rubric of Islamist terrorism, outside Israel and the Palestinian Territories, grew three-fold within the space of three years after 9/11, killing twice as many people as had been killed over two decades.
• Within the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a case often given global exception by some scholars for using this tactic, suicide bombings doubled as did the number of people killed in the three years after 9/11 compared to the previous seven years of suicide terrorism. Worldwide, in merely three years after 9/11, the number of suicide bombings had increased three-fold than it had over two decades, whilst the number of people killed had doubled.
• Worldwide, for every person who undertook a suicide bombing prior to 9/11, 18 people were likely to be killed. After 9/11, this figure fell to killing of 14 people on average, which was only as a result of the disproportionate rise in the “export” of this practice to groups worldwide.
• Suicide bombing in the name of Islam has occurred in more than 20 countries: Lebanon [1981], Kuwait [1983], Argentina [1992], Panama, Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories [1994], Pakistan, Croatia [1995], Saudi Arabia [1996], Tanzania, Kenya [1998], Yemen, Chechnya [2000], USA, Kashmir, Afghanistan [2001], Tunisia, Indonesia, Algeria [2002], Morocco, Russia, India, Iraq, Turkey [2003], Uzbekistan and Spain [2004] - and possibly United Kingdom [2005].

If you would like more information about Ihsanic-Intelligence or provide feedback for The Hijacked Caravan, please email us at info@ihsanic-intelligence.com

Definitive articles and statements within the Islamic tradition, condemning suicide bombing:

1. "Examination of an article claiming to legitimise suicide bombings" Bookwright, Denmark
http://www.bogvaerker.dk/suicide.html

2. "Bombing Without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism" Abdal-Hakim Murad, UK
'http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/moonlight.htm

3. "RE: Accusations on Shaykh Hamza Yusuf" Gibril Haddad, SunniPath.com
http://www.sunnipath.com - Ask'"RE: Accusations on Shaykh Hamza Yusuf"

4. "America’s Tragedy- An Islamic Perspective" [transcript] Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, zaytuna Institue,
www.zaytuna.org, 30 September, 2001. Formerly at http://www.zaytuna.org/tragedy.html

5. "Recapturing Islam From the Terrorists" Abdal-Hakim Murad, UK
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/recapturing.htm

6.Wide Angle. Suicide Bombers | PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/suicide/transcript.html

7. Conference for Civilisational Dialogue held at University of Malaya,
15-17 September, 1997
Professor Syed Hussein al-Attas, Malaysia “Such suicide bombings are unIslamic. How does anyone justify throwing a bomb into a bus filled with people who are non-belligerent, let alone kill oneself in the process? And we know from the primary sources [Qur’an and Hadith] that women and children, the old and the sick are to be spared during battle. These suicide bombers are different from the Japanese kamikaze, [whereby] the latter would commit an act of selflessness, brought about by desperation against legitimate military targets.”

8. Tenth Session of the OIC, Putrajaya, Malaysia, October 16, 2003, Dr Mahathir bin Mohammad, outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister “Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?”

10.Fatwa on Suicide as a Tactic
Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir As-Sufi, UK

"Suicide bombing is a terrorism."

A comprehensive fatwa from an eminent Islamic leader condemning suicide bombing by Muslims against all.

http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art001_17022004.html

"Every terrorist act and every self-exploding suicide is the licence for the continued fascistic control of the world’s masses in the name of democracy."

http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art035_02022005.html

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