Preface
Introduction Body-Tenancy/Soul-Tenure ‘Canon
Fixed ’Gainst Self-Slaughter’
The Veto Rescinded
‘Eyeless in Gaza’
The Masada Mind
Suicidal Christian Martyrology
The Kiss and the Suicide of Iscariot
Understanding Gethsemane
The Suicidal in Contemporary Islam
Suicides and Shares
Faith and the Bond with Life
These Unbelieving Believers
Notes
Index of Names and Terms
Index of Themes
Biblical References
Quranic References
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“Bishop Cragg offers a comparative
study of suicide in the Abrahamic religions, and deep theological
reflection. The second is largely rooted in religious studies, drawing
on insights from critical theory and post-colonial studies. It is
informed by a hermeneutics of suspicion. The author criticises Samson’s
commendation in the NT, presents Judas’s suicide as no justification
for anti-Judaic prejudice, and argues that some early Christians
translated a readiness to suffer into a warrant for self-slaughter
– a misreading, he holds, of Gethsemane. Samson’s legacy
is taced through Milton and the Zionist Jabotinsky (d. 1940), who
uses the saga to justify violence. Cragg then argues that Muslim
suicide bombers are different in kind. Cragg’s study does
not offer a genealogy of contemporary Muslim suicide bombing –
which would track its incidence to Shi’ites in the Iran-Iraq
war, to its adoption by Hezbollah in Lebanon, then Hamas and radical
secular groups in Israel-Palestine. Instead, he worries that suicide
bombers appeal to elements of Islamic scripture and early history
which can be read to justify violent conflict. As ever, we are led
back to exploring the nature of God as it is understood in Christianity
and Islam, and how his victory is to be understood. Cragg believes
that Muslims are possessed of resources and religious perspectives
that could de-legitimise the zealotry of the suicide bomber –
especially if they draw on the first Meccan phase of the Prophet’s
life, when the commendation of truth was not yet wedded to the military
pursuit of power. The urgency of the task and what is at stake is
captured in a neologism, ‘fideocide’.” Church
Times
“Kenneth Cragg has been at the forefront
of Islamic studies and dialogue during his long lifetime. In his
latest work we are again in his debt. The cult of the suicide bomber
within modern Islam perplexes many Western minds and Cragg helps
the reader to explore the theological issues.
… Cragg points to the great contradiction when a faithful
Muslim chooses the path of faith-suicide. God says to Adam in the
Qur’an: ‘Be and you shall be.’ This gift of being
is to be expressed in faithful obedience, islam, to the will of
the creator. Those created are to be at the disposal of their maker.
God’s sovereign will alone can decide the moment when breath
will be withdrawn in death. To violently un-make the self in faith-suicide
represents the very denial of that faith. It utterly fails to bear
witness to the sovereignty of the God whom it claims to represent.
… How then can such a dire act be approved by the perpetrators
and their supporters? Cragg points to the particular circumstances
in which Islam originated. The Prophet’s years of preaching
in Mecca were ended by the Hijrah, the great withdrawal of his followers
from Mecca to Medina. The message was deemed to have been rejected
by the rulers of Mecca. The only way forward was deemed to be by
jihad, holy war to bring about the rule of God. The House of Islam
must confront the House of the Unbeliever.
… The Qur’an warns the followers of Muhammad against
fitnah, meaning ‘pressure on faith’, especially faint-heartedness
in the issue of war. They must not shirk from battle through reluctance
and fear. The word ‘fitnah moved in meaning from the sedition
in a Muslim’s heart to rebellion and secret plotting by the
enemies of Islam. Muslims were required to use constant vigilance
and pre-emptive strikes in order to thwart sedition. Faced with
overwhelming power from the House of the Unbeliever, then the Muslim
must seek desperate measures to surprise and undermine it. So a
case can be made for suicide-bombing as the only way for Muslims
to even the odds against the enemies of Islam.
Reverting to the premise that such acts undermine the faith of Islam
itself, Cragg hopes for a renewed understanding of the Qur’an
by Muslims. The Qur’an, like any sacred text, is capable of
differing interpretations. In India, not long after 9/11, the Muslim
scholar, Wahiduddin Khan, based his Islam, a Religion of Peace on
Muhammad’s saying: ‘Avoid being angry at all times.’
He wrote: ‘Never being angry is the essence of Islam. All
disputes should be resolved by dialogue. Violence has no place in
Islam. Islam means peace.’
… In the 19th century, asserting pan-Arabism, ‘Abd al-Rahmin
al-Kawakibi argued that the Ottoman caliphate was an example of
shirk, an idolatrous act that supplanted the sovereignty of the
creator. Cragg believes the same argument could be applied to al-Qaeda’s
assertion of their cause. The vital thing, Cragg says, is to give
priority to the preaching of the Prophet at Mecca over those surahs
enjoining war in the later context of Medina. Islam’s best
way forward in the modern world is through pleading, argument and
persuasion, which means to be truly in the path of the Prophet of
Mecca.
… Cragg sets all this in a wider canvas that explores suicide
within faith and apparent non-faith. We are reminded of Samson slaying
more Philistines at his suicidal death than in life; and of the
Zealots of Masada (according to Josephus), who preferred taking
their own lives to captivity under Rome. Judas might be understood
in similar terms, a Zealot whose hopes that a captured Jesus might
behave like a victorious Messiah were dashed to pieces. What of
Jesus himself, choosing to put himself in the path of death? Or
of Christian martyrs, like Ignatius of Antioch, earnestly desiring
to be ground by the lion’s teeth into pure bread for Christ?
Empedocles on Etna desired to be reunited with the element of fire.
Primo Levi could not endure the burden of being a survivor of the
Shoah. Virginia Woolf despaired at the return of war.” Anvil |
