Suicide terrorists: Careful what you wish for!

In our continued effort to poke fun at terrorism, not in a dismissive manner that ignores the death, destruction and suffering that violent extremists cause, here is another Borealis piece that shows some of their ideas to be, well, stupid.

Jihadis have this obsession with the afterlife. They believe not only that they are doing Allah’s work but that they will be rewarded by gaining admission to jannah – Paradise. In this sense they are no different than any other believer of any other faith who hopes that after the trials and tribulations of this world they can relax in the next.

But jihadis‘ obsession goes further. They are convinced that when they die in a terrorist attack – which may involve blowing themselves to smithereens! – they are going to enjoy the pleasures of 72 houris – black-eyed beautiful women. In other words, they are going to have a lot of sex in Heaven!

This conviction/hope has led to some seriously funny practices as well as some excellent satire over the years.

Read on!

In 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was sent from Yemen to detonate a bomb on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. He decided that sewing explosives into his underwear was a good idea – this is why he is called the ‘Underwear Bomber‘. It did not go well and he is serving a life sentence in the US. If you are going to want to enjoy sexual relations in the hereafter it is probably not a good idea to burn your genitalia off first!

It is also said in the Quran (Surat Ma’arij verse 4) that one day is the same as 50,000 years. I recall reading a jihadi scholar – sorry I can’t find the source – who went into painstaking detail on what this meant for sex in jannah: you would be engaged in sublime physical pleasures for 1,000 years at a go. Now, I don’t know about you but 1,000 years ‘doing the dirty’ EACH TIME?? Yeesh!!

Then there’s this idiot in the UK who actually wrote a to-do list for paradise that included, and I am NOT making this up, ‘meet all wives and pick 2 main ones’. He would then choose and decorate his palace and go look for other forms of ‘entertainment’. Luckily for the virgins he was convicted in 2020 of preparing an act of terrorism after an undercover police operation that lasted five months. Oh and I think his palace hunting trip has been put off a tad…

And what if the virgins are not virgins but…raisins??

I came across this piece some time ago and found it hilarious! Apparently there is some scholarly disagreement on the meaning of the Arabic word hur. Rather than ‘virgin’ it could be an Aramaic word that means ‘white (grape)’. Hmm, blow yourself up, got to jannah and be given a bowl of raisins?? Can I get a do-over??

But the best satire on jihadis and virgins goes to two people: Steve Martin and an unnamed writer for The Onion.

In a 2007 article in the New Yorker Martin listed a sentence from each virgin upon meeting her ‘date’. Here are a few of those:

• Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen!

• Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first?

• Virgin No. 11: First you’re going to have to show me an up-to-date health certificate.

• Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?

• Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus.

• Virgin No. 21: I hope you’re not going to sleep with me and then go sleep with seventy-one others.

• Virgin No. 32: I’m a virgin because I’m so ugly.

• Virgin No. 35: By the way, here in Heaven “virgin” has a slightly different meaning. It means “chatty.”

• Virgin No. 40: I’m Jewish. Why do you ask?

• Virgin No. 47: Get your own beer, you nitwit.

• Virgin No. 55: That was terrible. I should have listened to the other virgins.

• Virgin No. 59: Did you know that “virgin” is an anagram of Irving?

• Virgin No. 63: Dang. George Clooney was being reckless on a motorcycle, but instead I got you.

• Virgin No. 67: I’m just Virgin No. 67 to you, right?

• Virgin No. 72: It was paradise, until you showed up.- –

Lastly, we have The Onion piece. It is a mock interview with Mohamed Atta, one of the lead hijackers who now finds himself in Gehenna (hell) rather than jannah. Hence his confusion. A few excerpts:

I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers…but instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?

And, in more detail…

I was told that these Americans were enemies of the one true religion, and that Heaven would be my reward for my noble sacrifice…but now I am forced to suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal, until I burst from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile. This must be some sort of terrible mistake.

Underworld officials noted that, “eventually, we’ll settle on an eternal and unending task for them, but for now, everyone down here wants a crack at them. On Sunday, Satan gets them all day. I can’t even imagine what he’s got cooked up for them.”

The lesson in all this? Islamist terrorist fascination with sex is both misogynous and worthy of ridicule. Go ahead – laugh!

Read More on Islamist Terrorism