What is the ruling on suicide operations?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The Shaykh : This issue is connected to another issue that is occurring today, and I have been asked about it repeatedly, which is what they call... what do they call it... blowing oneself up
The questioner : suicide
The Shaykh : Yes.
The questioner : suicide operations
The Shaykh : Are suicide operations permissible? This is a reality, and I must give an answer. I say: this is permissible and not permissible. What is happening today is not permissible, because these are individual actions driven by uncontrolled emotions, constrained by neither the Shari'ah nor reason. There is no difference between this Muslim who commits suicide and that communist or Japanese person, as happened when the battle took place between them and the Americans. This and that are the same, because this does not stem from his religion or from a fatwa from the scholars, so it is not permissible. However, if there is a Muslim ruler, and consequently a Muslim army commander, and a jurist who studies the military aspect and the battlefield, and so on, who estimates the gains and losses, and works out what they call the equation between the gain and the loss, and then finds that the gain in this suicide operation exceeds the loss of this young Muslim, then at that time we say it is permissible. Because such things happened in some of the early Islamic battles, like the conquest of Damascus, for example, in the Levant, the land of the Levant, and the like. Some suicide operations took place where the soldier would ask his commander for permission, saying that he wants to die as a martyr and attack that horde, meaning the Romans and the like, and he would keep killing them until they killed him, and the commander would allow him. And indeed, his end would be that he would be martyred in the path of Allah the Exalted. So let us gain understanding in knowing the rulings for what happens, and let us postpone the research into matters that have not happened.
The questioner : Shaykh, this is close to the departure of some of the youth from Jordan for, for example,
The Shaykh : Yes, exactly.
The questioner : for Palestine.
The Shaykh : That is correct.
The questioner : suicide
The Shaykh : Yes.
The questioner : suicide operations
The Shaykh : Are suicide operations permissible? This is a reality, and I must give an answer. I say: this is permissible and not permissible. What is happening today is not permissible, because these are individual actions driven by uncontrolled emotions, constrained by neither the Shari'ah nor reason. There is no difference between this Muslim who commits suicide and that communist or Japanese person, as happened when the battle took place between them and the Americans. This and that are the same, because this does not stem from his religion or from a fatwa from the scholars, so it is not permissible. However, if there is a Muslim ruler, and consequently a Muslim army commander, and a jurist who studies the military aspect and the battlefield, and so on, who estimates the gains and losses, and works out what they call the equation between the gain and the loss, and then finds that the gain in this suicide operation exceeds the loss of this young Muslim, then at that time we say it is permissible. Because such things happened in some of the early Islamic battles, like the conquest of Damascus, for example, in the Levant, the land of the Levant, and the like. Some suicide operations took place where the soldier would ask his commander for permission, saying that he wants to die as a martyr and attack that horde, meaning the Romans and the like, and he would keep killing them until they killed him, and the commander would allow him. And indeed, his end would be that he would be martyred in the path of Allah the Exalted. So let us gain understanding in knowing the rulings for what happens, and let us postpone the research into matters that have not happened.
The questioner : Shaykh, this is close to the departure of some of the youth from Jordan for, for example,
The Shaykh : Yes, exactly.
The questioner : for Palestine.
The Shaykh : That is correct.
Source
www.al-albany.com
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.