In Islam, are suicide bombings justified?

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The frustrating thing is this doesn't lend itself well to Google searches. The term doudecants shows up all the time in books but trying to Google when the system of dividing the sky into 72 sections began is trickier business.

Although Hamlet's Mill is one of the better known books on the topic of trying to pin down the sources of and understand the narrative for what people might perhaps consider the astrotheological argument of organized religion's basis it's really one of many places and this stuff shows up in what might be considered high pagan philosophy such as that of Greece and the fused Greco-Egyptian philosophies and cosmogonies. Incidentally if you ever have the chance to read the Corpus Hermeticum (it's between 60 and 70 pages as typically available) the flavor of the Hermetic writings is hair-raisingly reminiscent in flavor to Judao-Christian thought (especially John and Philos of Alexandria), just with particularly high-pagan base.

The claim I'd make is that the number seventy-two has too heavy an astrotheological implication not to mean what it symbolizes. It's not impossible that the writers of the Quran pulled a random number in because they liked it, just that in doing so they really went out on a limb. Similarly they showed a certain age-old preference in also claiming that Ismael progenated 12 tribes. The three numbers that seem like dead giveaways are 7, 12, and 72. Anytime you see those referenced a lot in a faith something particularly starry is in the mechanics (that and, outside of Mormonism it's also probably a religion that's a product of that same 500 BCE - 500 CE time frame where this kind of thinking about the universe was particularly seen as hot stuff).


A couple additional notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolatry - a general description from Wikipedia although I'm not particularly happy about how they skirted Christianity and Islam; they mentioned the prohibition of active astrolatry but didn't touch on their astrological imports.

One thing that I would like to find again is Flavius Josephus' analysis of the symbolism in the Temple of Jerusalem. He pretty much ran down the list of how it was a pagan star cult from what he was seeing and couldn't understand the chip that the particular people had on it's shoulder of being chosen above other races when as far as he could see it they were doing the exact same thing as everyone else.

Its not unbelievable that medeaval Islam would slice the sky up into five degree slices.

The European West got its astronomy from translating Arab books in Spain, in the Middle Ages. All of our modern terms for the positions of things in the sky (like Zenith, as Azimuth) are all Arab words. So it makes sense that the Arabs would have mystical notions about the sky in their religion that followed the same measurement system as their science at the time.

And we still measure the sky in degrees of arc based on a 360 degree circle because the ancient Sumerians counted in groups of sixty (we inherited that number from them via the Babylonians, Greeks, and Arabs).

Can't vouch for astrology being in the Bible:many modern investigators who make U Tube films do see underlying astrology in the Bible - though the Bible is supposed to forbid divination.

But numerology-the Bible is chocked full of that! That's indisputable, and rather obvious.

I don't support suicide bombing in any religion. And only a small minority of Muslims support bombings I've heard, I took a world religions class and learned that.

For starters, OP's question ignores the definition of its' second word...

There were a couple things I PM'd to 0ET:

Flavius Josephus' assessment of the tabernacle in Antiquity of the Jews Google bookmarked below:

https://books.google.com/books?id=tPyOg ... 22&f=false

An Astrolatry/Astrotheology debate on a web forum where it looks like the input (at least for the first several pages) came from particularly :

http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopi ... b66113b7a2


As for divination that's one of those where the line between divining vs. prayer and looking for answers from God in one's environment seems like it only made distinct by a straight-jacketing of form. How such obsessions over form has lead to millions of people killing each other through the years and plenty of people still doing so today a mystery I may never be able to wrap my mind around.

I am at least coming to see just how fast and loose a process synchretism is and how difficult it makes explaining the meeting of these kinds of concepts. Abrahamism is incredibly staunch about the worship of celestial objects and what the penalties are (Kings 1 & 2, Ezekiel, etc.) but it arranges its concepts along that basis! That's part of why the in-depth description of the Quran's 72 virgins and their voluptuous attributes doesn't seem particularly off-putting to the concept that they're highly embellished metaphors. Stories of Hercules, Samson by the same token, and the twelve labors are as patinaed in side-tracking description as the 72 virgins but very much symbolize the sun and the twelve months or twelve astrological signs when that patina gets washed off.

In the west these days we tend to be particularly Cartesian thinkers on what we read, even the best of us tend toward rather literal interpretation, and we're reading from a time frame where the best minds opened whole universes of poet licence with the details. It also doesn't really surprise me that people react to stuff like this as if it's straight from a David Icke blog, there's a lot of reasons why people don't commonly hear about it and I think it has far less to do with any sort of conspiracy than people in the know realizing that it's incredibly complicated to explain, equally nebulous and vulnerable in the explanation, and if they're getting funding for the kind of press their articles and writings get it's a third-rail kind of topic.

What is the point in killing civilians as well as yourself in the name of Allah? Blowing yourself up and killing civilians as a means of martyrdome? Crashing planes into buildings and killing several thousand civilian lives in the name of Allah?

the only time "72" is used (as far as i know) in islamic text is when Muhammed talks about how Jews split into 71 sects, and Christians split into 72 sects and then he goes on to say that Muslims will split into 73 sects.

In other words Muslims will be worse in their disagreements then their Abrahamic counterparts. Numbers are used in non literal ways in all cultures. The Koran was authored in Arabic so the Arabic people could actually understand it. Familiar figures of speech are used as well.

It would be a bit weird if it was a non-Arabic Koran with unknown figures of speech , no ?

I think, in defending religion, people often think of their own idea of religion, and not the reality that so many others face. To simply believe in a god, and follow what you believe is right, is moderately harmless. As someone who grew up in an overbearing, religious household, I can tell you that the brain washing and self hate runs deep. And it only takes a few moments of reading the stories of ex muslims, to understand the full picture.

If you are born in a muslim country, and you are brainwashed from birth that this is the way that things are, that you will receive reward in death, that you do not question your god, that you were put here to die for your god... and if you leave your religion, you will be put to death.. Then you actually don't allow yourself to question, and you do exactly as you are told.

Yes, these are extreme cases. This not the life of every muslim. But there are people who are raised this way. It is sad, and I see them as victims, too.

The muslim faith is far from the only one who has done this.

As for people stating that they're not real muslims, or not real christians, or whatever religion they claim to be.. I find that to be wrong. They are the religion that they state they are. If they can pull up scripture to justify their actions, then I don't see how they can be blown off as non-believers or not true to their faith. That's like stating that people of that faith are good, and those who aren't good, can't be of that faith. It becomes it's own form of bigotry when it is viewed that way. If you want to say that religion has no impact on the way that people behave, then why would you deny them their chosen faith, just because you don't agree with their actions? You can't have it both ways. The same as when my grandma would call a murderer or a rapist, a godless person. I'm godless, and I've never murdered or raped. Why are they being denied their chosen faith, and lumped in with me and people like me? Instead of stating that a killer is not a muslim, ask why the muslim killed.

they can be blown off as non-believers or not true to their faith if they are misquoting or misinterpreting words/sentences found in scripture.

the hadith about 72 virgins is not authentic and cannot attributed to Muhammad or the Koran..

There's nearly 2 billion muslims areound the world, and if they all believed that theyd get great rewards by blowing themselves, then this planet surely would be a blood bath.

It would be a blood bath. Which is why it's important to call it what it is, and pay attention to how some muslims branch off from their religion, making their own interpretations of it. The same as christianity has it's own denominations. If one's teachings become more dangerous than the others, I think it's worth noting and paying attention to.

72 comes from hadith. However virgins are mentioned in the Quran.



The virgin/companions are for believer not specifically martyrs.

What I find interesting is why some many interpretations describe them as transparent to the marrow of their bones, as if this is somehow sexy. Also hairless except on their hair and eyebrows.

the hadith that mentions "72" you is deemed inauthentic.

that's what i was talking about.

i'm well aware the Koran and many ahadith talk about reward for martyrs , which is ofcourse not the same as a someone that commits suicide.

On one hand I'd suppose the colloquialisms of the time it was written may not transfer across the centuries that well either in Arabic or other languages. On the other the challenge perhaps is being able to read it in English, French, German, Chinese, or whatever dialog it's been translated into (hopefully these days by perhaps a better translator than King James) and be able to parse out the places where certain things were meant to be literal and where they were meant to be metaphor. Other than that the choice to use metaphor or not seems at least like it would be pretty universal.

One of the interpretive challenges that the Old Testament has running through it is the issue of gemmatria. That's something that not only uses the numbers symbolically but employs dual use of alphabets for number as a sort of druidic way of coding documents and bridging concepts more abstractly. As far as I've seen it there's a lot of 'coincidences' in that regard that seem to have a particularly man-made flavor.

While Arabic might be one of the more poetic langues out there and there may have been a lot of complex wordplay the numbers to letters and back to numbers thing is one that they perhaps would have had less natural inclination toward as they gave us our decimal system.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 14 Nov 2015, 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Actually- isnt the number 49? And not 72?

Thats the tagline you always hear isnt it? That the martyrs each get 49 virgins.

And that number makes sense. The lucky number seven has LONG tradition that all of the Abrahmic religions inherited from pagan Mesopotamia. And 49 is seven times seven.


Also- dont forget that OTHER translation issue. That being that these "virgins" are really "grapes" mistranslated. Lol!

It won't transfer across centuries that well. That's why if you want to study the Koran (in depth) you'd have to learn the language it is written in (classical Arabic).

I love common sense.

If you see beings interpreted as translucent, or giant and translucent, it seems like a literary device - probably more of a giveaway than anything that they aren't talking about something skin and bone.