No matter how hard I try, I can’t see blowing myself up.
I freely admit it, I cannot understand the martyrdom mind. It doesn’t matter how much talking, reading, or thinking I do, there is just no chance that I could strap on an explosives belt, walk into a crowd, and detonate myself (along with as many people around me as possible). Zero, zilch, nada, zip.
It’s plainly not a problem, though, for some folks, and according to the Guardian, the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign (can’t they find a shorter name?) is hoping to find some willing martyr-wannabes in the UK:
Relations between the west and the hardline Iranian regime are set to worsen after a Tehran-based group claimed yesterday it was trying to recruit Iranians and other Muslims in Britain to carry out suicide bombings against Israel.
Mr Samadi’s group was participating in a recruitment fair for “martyrdom seekers” being held in the grounds of the former US embassy in Tehran. Several hundred volunteers have signed up for missions in the past few days.
That’s just surreal.
What does a recruitment fair look like, anyway? Do they have rides and cotton candy? Games for the kids? Maybe they line up to get tickets, or even camp out overnight, like we do to get good concert tickets?
Actually, I’ll bet it’s more covert than that — kind of a cloak and dagger, sneak up and whisper in somebody’s ear and do the secret handshake thing while walking along the midway.
::shudder::
All of that’s bizarre enough for me, but what’s this about?
Mohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, told the Guardian that striking at Israel was the priority of his recruitment drive. “The first target is Israel. For us, that is the battlefield,” he said. “All the Jews are targets, whether military or civilian. It’s our land and they are in the wrong place. It’s their duty to pay attention to safety of their own families and move them away from the battlefield,” he said.
Israel is now Iranian land? I know they can’t mean Arab (since we’re talking about Iran here), so that narrows it right down, doesn’t it?
But I thought it was all about the oil…..?
The best explanation I have read about the Moslem concept of death came from — who else? — Richard Burton. But I did not read this in his book about Al Medina and Mecca, but in his book about the Mormons in Salt Lake City. He said, in a throw-away line, that Moslems conceive of death as so little different from life that they hardly fear it. That explained a lot to me.