Yesterday a British court convicted the wife of a failed suicide bomber for failing to tell police about his plans for an attack on the London underground system. A jury in London found 32-year-old Yeshi Girma guilty of failing to provide information before her husband Hussain Osman and others attempted to set off explosions on the transport system on July 21, 2005. The bombs failed to explode fully and no one was injured.
This prompted me to take another look at the virgins. While Yeshi Girma will probably spend at least seven and a half years of her 15 year sentence separated from her children in a jail, he, according a popular understanding, would have been (if he had been successful) enjoying a great big orgy in the sky.
In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness.” Wardeh was in fact shortchanging his recruits since the rewards in Paradise for martyrs was 72 virgins.
Although suicide is not referered to in the Koran, it is expressly condemned in the Traditions. However, according to the understanding of some, the suicide bombers are not committing suicide by blowing themselves up, but are dying in the noblest of causes, Jihad, which is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Koran and in the Traditions as a divine institution, and enjoined for the purpose of advancing Islam. While suicide is forbidden, martyrdom is everywhere praised, welcomed, and urged.
The rewards in Paradise are graphically spelled out both in the Koran and in the Traditions. “They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds… We created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand…” (Koran sura 56 verses 12 -40 ; sura 55 verses 54-56 ; sura 76 verses 12-22.) The number of ‘houris’ is not mentioned in the Koran, but 72 appears in the Traditions.
Ibn Warraq in an interesting article in the Guardian notes that modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions. However, as Warraq goes on to write:
the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash’ari (died 935 CE) have “admitted sensual pleasures into paradise”. The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: “Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas.”
Most translations of the Islamic sources translate the Arabic words ‘Abkarun’ as ‘virgins’ and ‘houris’ as ‘virgins’ or ‘maidens’. However, some embarrassed Muslims claim that words should be translated as ‘angels’ or ‘heavenly beings’. According to philologist Christoph Luxenberg, many obscurities in the Koran disappear if you read certain words as being Syriac rather than Arabic. According to his translation the doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins become ‘white raisins’ - literally food and drink - for the successful murderers.
We could, of course, spend years debating Arabic and Syriac philology, but apart from these technical details, the whole issue of reward with virgins raises several fundamental moral issues for me, and I am surprised that these moral issues are not being more discussed by the Muslim faithful as a way of combating the myths surrounding the terrorist murders. For me, these bigger moral issues are:
- The immorality of being enticed to murder with anticipation of sexual reward. How can such a religion which, to an outsider, appears as even more paranoid about sexual behaviour than Christians (and that really is saying something) use sex to encourage indiscriminate murder of innocent victims? It doesn’t add up.
- The sexism and denigration of women. What about women suicide bombers? Do they get male virgins too? If not, why not? Are women second class citizens? What about the virgins themselves? Are they happy to sleep with anyone who just happens to get blown through heaven’s door (presumably reunited with their heads)? Do they get a say, or are they just raped, repeatedly? And does this religion condone this rape?
- The implicit heterosexuality. Do secretly gay bombers - there must be at least one - get gay virgins in heaven?
- The polygamy and/or adultery. Are the virgins happy to share this hero, even if they are willing to sleep with the murderer? What about the wives left on earth facing prison? Are they happy to share their spouse with the virgins? Isn’t adultery condemned in Islam? What happens when the wives themselves arrive in heaven?
Being encouraged to commit acts of terror for a reward of some ‘white grapes’ is bad enough, but for ‘72 virgins’ is obscene.
The problem is that the argument, good though it is, is not needed in order to convince rationalists but will not convince believers who always claim that anything is possible - and permissible - where God is involved. While we atheists may enjoy a giggle or two at what we consider adolescent sexual fantasies, the faithful will not only cling to them but will also criticize us for daring to call them into doubt.
We may point out the flaws in the logic and groan over the perceived injustices in the picture but this cuts no ice with the believer. The duty of the believer, after all, is to believe and the more absurd whatever it is s/he must believe, the greater the kudos that attaches to belief.
This will never be settled by debate and argument. After all, Muslims have many objections to our moral codes and our way of life and the arguments which they present seem to them as watertight as our arguments seem to us.
We have to understand and accept, I think, that what we have here is not an intellectual argument but a clash of cultures, cultures that are largely incompatible with one another and unable to compromise with one another.
What is the purpose of debate? Is it to denigrate and condemn the other, in a word to defeat the other? If it is, then it will fail and at best stoke the flames of enmity and militancy. Or is it to try to find a way forward and achieve understanding on both sides?
Of course, we condemn what we see as the abuses and exploitation practised by some Muslim communities on their weaker and oppressed members. Of course, we wish to bring maltreatment and disinformation to an end and rescue their victims. But this is at best a form of first aid, something we do along the way. It cannot be an end in itself.
I wish I knew what that end could be. I do not, nor do the many others shrieking their opprobrium on all sides. As things are going at present, the only way to resolve the conflict is by a sustained campaign of violence which will wreak terrible damage on both sides.
Perhaps I am foolish but I would like to think there is another way forward. The question is whether we have the intelligence, the will and, yes, the compassion, to seek it. On the present showing, both communities fall down on all three.
I can see what you are saying here. Tongue -in -cheek and being completely naughty with my medical knowledge, all I can say is that if the erection is eternal, then the guy in heaven has got big problems. In the end, it is not going to be comfortable or good physically for him. Perhaps, that was not thought of.
I would like to say that, with this particular discussion, I agree with the first comments made by Silver Tiger who has raised some excellent points.
Good post.
I had been wondering about some of the questions you raised, myself.
Where do all the virgins come from? Someone is going to have to be very busy up above ensuring a ready supply if each martyr is entitled to 72. A production nightmare really.
I’m sure though that suicide bombers do not choose to become martyrs because they think they are going to get a shagging bonanza on “the other side.”
I don’t know if it’s something odd about my head, but whilst I cannot ever see how I would ever murder a named individual, I do see that I could do that - ie become a terrorist if I really believed in a cause. Luckily I never have but I did at one point in my life (when I was 16 or 17) have a rather romantic view of the IRA and the idea of “belonging”, having a very clear goal in mind, the thrill of working in an outlawed organisation, having supportive people around me was something that appealed. I know it sounds sick but well, I did. I think sometimes when there appears to be no real hope in your own personal life, then anything is better. Fortunately I soon grew out of it.
Maybe I should delete this. I’ll have MI5 at my door before the day is out!
thank u for ur post