Islamic Debate Surrounds Mideast Suicide Bombers

CAIRO — Haitham Nasser is very happy with his life in Lebanon. The 30-year-old has three children, a university degree in journalism and a comfortable home. But Nasser is every Israeli's nightmare: a man who wants nothing more than to strap explosives on his chest, slip into the Jewish state and blow himself up, taking with him as many of the enemy as possible.

Nasser's motivation is political, but his justification is religious. A devout Muslim, he believes that his sacrifice would be an act of martyrdom assuring automatic entry to heaven, and so he is frustrated that the military leaders of the radical Hezbollah militia have allowed him to fight but not become a bomber.

"I am ready now, tomorrow and every time because we have territory occupied by Israel," he said in a telephone interview arranged by Hezbollah. "We are believers, deep believers."

But even believers disagree on whether such acts lead to salvation or damnation. Although the concept of martyrdom is promoted by many religious and hard-line political leaders as they recruit bombers, two of the region's highest religious authorities have recently issued statements that question the legitimacy of the practice. One called it haram, or a sin, and the other said it is only permissible when aimed at combatants, not civilians.

"As for the method by which a person kills himself among the enemy . . . I do not know it to have justification in the Sharia," said the supreme religious leader of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Sheik, speaking of Islamic law. "I fear that it is considered suicide."

That fatwa, or religious edict, printed in a Saudi newspaper at the end of April, was followed a few weeks later by comments from one of the most influential doctrinal authorities in the Sunni Muslim world, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi.

"If a person blows himself up, as in operations that Palestinian youths carry out against those they are fighting, then he is a martyr," Tantawi said in comments published in Egypt's semiofficial newspaper, Al Ahram. "But if he explodes himself among babies or women or old people who are not fighting the war, then he is not considered a martyr."

The distinction is an especially emotional point for Muslims because their faith is unforgiving about suicide. Those who take their own lives are cast out from the religion, denied burial in a Muslim cemetery and condemned to eternal damnation.