2000: Radical London Cleric and Informer Gives Followers OK for Martyrdom Operations

During a question and answer session after a speaking engagement in Blackburn, London-based radical imam Abu Hamza al-Masri, an informer for the British authorities (see Early 1997), tells his followers that suicide bombings are okay. A young man in the audience asks if it is permissible to blow oneself up in the cause of the jihad. Abu Hamza replies: “It is not called suicide, it is called shahid operation. It is not called suicide, this is called Shahada, martyring, because if the only way to hurt the enemies of Islam except by taking your life for that then it is allowed.” He adds: “If he is a person who actually wants to go to paradise, if he’s sincere about the beautiful women of paradise which one day, insha’Allah, he will go to paradise and she will tell him ‘I used to watch you‘… This religion quenches this thirst with the blood of martyrs. This religion fires the people with the blood of its sons and if it wasn’t for those minority few, the weak in their armoury, strong in their blood and their faith, without them the world wouldn’t have shook.” [O’Neill and McGrory, 2006, pp. 58]