A reporter traveled to the West Bank city of Jenin to meet with Ahmed, a 23-year old Palestinian man who volunteered to become a suicide bomber for the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. A few telling excerpts from the interview:
KLEIN: What was your main motivation for becoming a suicide bomber?
AHMED: Allah gave Muslims the possibility to gain their prize and payment in different ways. There are those who pray and fast only and respect Allah’s commandments, and there are those who wish a higher prize. And the highest prize is given to those who sacrifice themselves, their lives, their bodies and everything in this world.
KLEIN: You talk about so-called martyrdom being divine. About being rewarded in the next world on supreme spiritual levels for what you say is a gift to Allah. And yet you tell me that what awaits you after a suicide operation is an eternity of sex with virgins. This is the most baseline physical pleasure imaginable. This is your religious version of heaven?
AHMED: Let me explain something to you. The world, the lower one we are in now, it is temporary. Allah examines the loyalty of human beings, asking you in this materialistic world to avoid all that is tempting, all that pleasures you on earth, and to dedicate yourself to Allah. I will go, I pray that Allah accepts, to heaven, and there I will do and will enjoy what you did during your life. The difference is that after these years you will burn in hell forever, and I will, after my years in this world of faith, restraint and patience, enjoy Allah’s pleasures forever.
KLEIN: Let’s say your concept of heaven is accurate. You are indeed rewarded with 72 dark-eyed virgins for living the kind of life you describe. Do you really think you will go to heaven for killing innocent civilians during a suicide operation?
AHMED: You are treating in a ridiculous way this issue, but this is in the Quran. Go and, Allah forbid, ask Allah about this point. We are promised in the Quran to have the dark-eyed virgins and that’s it. The Quran is full of verses glorifying the shahid, the martyr. This is the important part of our mission – fulfilling Allah’s commandments and hoping to receive the prizes we were promised in the Quran.