and the suicide bomber. However, he did not elaborate on the ideology of heaven and whether the suicide bomber has an ideology.
In the commentaries, some readers came forward with the idea of hell, perhaps, in contrast to heaven, as a reward for people's deeds in their earthly lives. As regards the suicide bomber, a reader was wondering what's going on in his mind as he performs what he is tasked to do.
We are no ideologue or theologian, but we shall simplify the complex issues of ideology and what motivates a suicide bomber by asking simple relevant questions:
What and where is heaven?
What and where is hell?
Does a suicide bomber have an ideology?
As far as I know as a Bible translator, heaven and hell are Christian concepts. Jews and Muslims and other faiths must have their own versions of heaven or paradise and hell.
The suicide bomber is a phenomenon created by Osama bin Laden, an Islamist, who vowed to fight the West and destroy America. A recruit or volunteer would be strapped with explosives hidden in a vest and let loose after saying the ceremonial vow. He goes to a specific target, usually a place teeming with people, and detonates the device, killing himself and those within reach--men, women, children. The usual objectives are mosques, churches and houses of worship. Needless to say, the suicide bomber is a weapon of mass destruction that is easily available in the Muslim world.
Bin Laden was killed several years by American operatives in his hideout in Abottabad in Pakistan. But his idea lives on and suicide bombers, motivated by Islamic ideology, have killed and maimed thousands of innocent people, mostly in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
As for heaven, it is supposed to be the dwelling place of the Deity or God. From His throne, God judges His people and decides where they should go in the afterlife. If they did good, obeying His laws and commandments, Peter will give them the key to heaven and they will be with Him forever in Paradise. For transgressors, they will be thrown and punished in hell, the abode of eternal sulfur and fire.
Honestly, we don't know whether this God is the Allah of the Muslims and that he resides in this kind of heaven. All we know in our readings is that thousands of years ago, the ancestors of these desert people who were not Jews, worshiped a lot of deities and idols, one of whom they called Allah.
For Muslims who die as martyrs for their cause, their reward is Paradise. Even suicide bombers who are reduced to body parts after killing people in their mission, believe they will be accorded reception by Allah and will be met by seven virgins in Paradise. (In one incident recently, a suicide bomber worked his way through a busy marketplace in Baghdad and detonated his explosive, killing himself and 74 people.)
Did heaven exist on earth in Biblical times? Was it Eden? Or was it in a beautiful garden East of Eden, where the snake tempted the first man on earth?
And hell? In a domed area above the heavens? Fly an airplane to go there?
Hell is everywhere on earth. Hell is where Eden was. That is, it begins there, and it is growing in area and territory, now a big hell created by the followers of a totalitarian, barbaric ideology.
The Kingdom of Heaven. Versus the Hell of sulfur and fire--the eternal threat to wipe out Mankind and the many gods. Bloody political horses are now riding high in the wide scorching deserts where were born the Christ and the Anti-Christ and the Muslim prophet.
Fight the murderous, brutal ideological forces now rampaging in the lands that gave birth to many religions? There is a choice. Fight or let pass the chaos and mayhem, the horror, the brutalities, the burning and the killing.
But for Christians, there should not be another choice, but resist to the end. They, too, like the Jews and non-Muslims have been marked for annihilation. This order of liquidation is enshrined
in the Koran, the aggressors' holy book where their God speaks in the first person.
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