As for the practice adopted by certain people—suicide operations in which a person straps explosive devices to his body, advances toward the unbelievers, and detonates them while among them—this is nothing but the unlawful taking of life, and we seek Allah’s protection from it.

Whoever takes his own life will dwell forever and ever in the Hellfire, as stated in the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ. He has killed himself without bringing any benefit to Islam. Even if, by doing so, he eliminates ten, a hundred, or two hundred others, Islam gains nothing: the people do not embrace the faith. This stands in stark contrast to the story of the boy, through whose sacrifice many entered Islam—everyone present on the plain believed. The death of ten, twenty, a hundred, or two hundred enemies does not lead them to accept Islam; on the contrary, it may only harden them, inflaming their hostility so that they strike the Muslims with even harsher blows.

Look at what the Jews have done to the people of Palestine: when one Palestinian dies in such an explosion and kills six or seven of them, they retaliate by seizing sixty people or more in response. No benefit reaches the Muslims from this, nor is there any gain for those in whose ranks the explosives were detonated.

For this reason, you can see that these suicide attacks, in our view, amount to nothing but killing