.they fight in Allah’s cause so they kill (others) and are...

.they fight in Allah’s cause so they kill (others) and are killed*** ” sunni scholars say this implies that there are only two states of dying in the battlefield. The Muslim either kills or is killed. It does not include the third option; killing oneself in the purchase of the Muslim’s life by Allah. A number of fatwa (rulings) pertaining to the legality or otherwise of suicide bombings have been made by these sunni scholars.

Attention has been drawn to the distinction, which they believe has been ignored by the proponents of suicide bombing, between the martyr who immerses himself in the enemy and is killed by them and the person who kills himself by his own hands. They have methodically analyzed and broken apart those evidences in the Qur’an and the hadiths used to legitimize suicide bombing.

Regarding the story of the boy who was killed by the king and the people thrown into the ditch of fire, they died not fighting the unbelievers but were killed because they refused to apostate and they died not by their own hands but were killed by the king. To use their story to justify suicide will therefore be an erroneous analogy.

Moreover, their situation occurred before the time of the SAW and the establishment of shari’a and cannot be used to guide Muslims in present times on matters which have been already dealt with by the shari’a. The man who goes into the enemy without armor and is killed did not die by his own hand but is killed by the enemy. By its very nature, suicide bombing necessitates the suicide bomber to, in a premeditated fashion, blow himself up with his own hand in order to have a successful mission.

The martyr goes to fight the enemy accepting his death but also hoping to survive. The suicide bomber hopes not to live at all. Allah SWT says “ and spend of your substance in the cause of Allah, and make not your own hands contribute to your own destruction” [^29] It must be noted that in most situations, the aim of the suicide bomber is to kill as many people as possible, apart from himself.

Hence the detonation of the bomb in populated areas, thus constituting it as not only a suicide but also a murder or multiple murders. Even when the war was at its hottest with the unbelievers, the SAW forbade the killing of women, children, the infirm or non-combatants. The suicide bomber has no consideration for this and most of the victims are women, children or non-combatants possibly because these are the least protected.