Mick Hartley

Another Muslim cleric extols the glories of martyrdom:

In Islam, one of the goals of Jihad, one of the goals of fighting is for there to be martyrs. We used to think that when people are martyred, it is a disaster, but they are martyrs… One of the goals of the Muslims is to attain martyrdom. This is very important. Why? Because a Muslim harbors the love of martyrdom. Of course, Western thinking does not understand this. They think this is a kind of suicide, despair, and so on. Absolutely not. The martyrs are the ones who have changed the course of history. They are the ones who have changed the course of human life. The course of human life proceeds this way, until a martyrdom-seeker collides with it, changing and diverting it. Whenever a martyrdom-seeker collides into it, he restores the course of humanity to the path planned by Allah. Men march towards evil this way, unless they encounter a mujahid who strikes at them, and diverts their course to what Allah had wanted. Therefore, for Muslims, martyrdom embodies hope, not disaster. […]

The [martyr] does not lose anything. He does not die. All of a sudden he ascends to the angels and lives next to Allah. He pleads on behalf of 70 of his family members. When a martyr is next to Allah, he has an important role and is greatly rewarded. He pleads on behalf of 70 of his family members. In his death, he feels no pain beyond a mosquito bite. That’s it. Allah removes from him the marks of death and its torments. The martyr is not tested in his grave. He is not asked about his god or religion. The glitter of the sword over his head suffices. The Crown of Honor is placed on his head. The gem in this crown is more precious than the whole world. He is married off to 70 black-eyed virgins. If one of these virgins were to descend to this world, her light would extinguish the light of the sun and the moon. That’s how beautiful she is.

So – let’s see – he’s encouraging mass murder as a way of keeping people like himself in power. The UN Human Rights Council is on the case though, and they’ve hit on the obvious solution: a global prohibition on any criticism of this kind of rhetoric:

Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion — a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a “campaign” against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The resolution, which was opposed by European and a number of other non-Muslim countries, “expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.”