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From 9/11 (actually 11th September, 2001) onwards suicide bombers appear regularly in the news. Newspapers write about them and TV channels speak about them. Suicide bombings happen almost every day in Baghdad, Iraq as a whole and Afghanistan, killing scores and wounding hundreds. Recently it was reported that in Pakistan 600 suicide bombers are already prepared and ready and are waiting to go on their mission.
These people take this extreme step of blowing themselves up because they are motivated by their religious faith. They believe that through suicide bombing they become martyrs and gain immediate admission to heaven and a glorious reward.
Allah, they believe, is pleased with what they do. They believe that they are warriors of Allah and defenders of Islam, the religion revealed by Allah.
As every one knows, their zealous faith is inculcated in them systematically in their madrassas by their religious leaders and teachers.
In Christianity too we find teachers exhorting people boldly to go forward and embrace death, promising them immortality and a glorious reward after death.
St. Cyprian, writing to the Christians who were put in prison for their faith, says: "Let there be nothing in your hearts and minds now except God’s words. It is by these that the Holy Spirit has all along strengthened you for suffering. Let no one think of death, but rather of immortality; do not think of the passing pain but of everlasting glory (Letter 6: 1-2 [The Roman Breviary, Office of Reading, Common of Martyrs]). Instructed by teachers like St Cyprian, hundreds and hundreds of Christians died as martyrs during the Roman persecutions.
Looking at today’s suicide bombers and at the Christian martyrs from the beginning of Christianity one might wonder what difference there is between the two.
There is a world of difference.
The suicide bombers die with their hearts full of hatred towards fellow human beings who they think are enemies of Allah and so their enemies too. The more the deaths and sufferings they cause, the happier they are. They do not care who these people are, innocent children or defenceless civilians.
They do not realize that the same God—Creator—created all human beings, that He is the Father of all and loves all.
A loving father is never, never pleased at the massacre of his children. How blind these people are who think they please God by killing His children!
The Christian martyrs, on the contrary, died with their hearts full of love for God and for their fellow beings. They knew that love of fellow beings has to go along with love of God, that they cannot love God their Father and hate their fellow beings, their brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, at the same time. So we see the martyrs pardoning their persecutors and executioners and praying for them. They would not cause even the smallest harm to any one. They would rather die a hundred more deaths than act as a suicide bomber.
The suicide bombers are mere pawns and tools in the hands of their unscrupulous leaders and organizations whose sole aim is to destroy their enemies who may be governments or people or countries. These leaders brainwash the gullible youth and send them forward armed with the most potent weapon of religious fanaticism. No wonder they are ready to blow up themselves. In the case of the Christian martyrs neither their teachers nor the martyrs themselves had any earthly goals to achieve. What the teachers exhorted the people to do, the teachers themselves did. St. Cyprian died as a martyr. So did all the Popes and most of the Christian leaders during the three centuries of Roman persecution.
Such is the difference between the apparently similarly-motivated suicide bombers and the Christian martyrs of every age and place. r
Fr Anselm Poovathani,SSP | 
