Would you blow yourself up for a cause?

The number of suicide bombers in the news this week seems to have risen sharply (see Bulgaria yesterday for the latest of these).

All well and ... not so good.

Well, I know the economy round the world is not in good shape, poverty is round the corner for many people even in the Western world, and reason to hope disappears by the minute, so maybe at the absolute limit the "suicide" part of this is understandable (just about).

But fastening an explosive to yourself and blowing yourself to smithereens?

It takes guts?

It takes CHRONIC STUPIDITY!!!!

They're nearly all Muslim fanatics. I see - in the Koran it says that this is a guaranteed way of getting to wherever you go when you die? Does it? Quote me chapter and verse, and even then I will dismiss it as a load of superstitious, unprovable nonsense anyway - like the rest of that (and all other religious) text (s)!

WHERE IS THE GUARANTEE?????

I will personally guarantee that it will take you one place and one place only - to the morgue! (In about 219 parts). Even if it were painful getting there, you will know nowt about it either. You will be the past tense. A dead criminal, end of story! Like Al Capone, Timothy McVeigh, Reginald Christie, Peter Kürten usw!

And this will help your cause? Your life was worth next to nothing, but at least people will benefit? OK, consider Palestine. These fanatical actions have been going on for seemingly ever - blowing up Israelis for "the cause". How much further has it got the Palestinian people? In many respects their lives have become worse not better as a result of these actions. Look at the embargo forced upon the people of Gaza as a result of the mixture of suicide bombings and rockets launched into Israel.

No chance of any settlement while that is going on, just more misery and suffering.

Imagine for a second that instead of suicide bombs and the like you adopted (as a movement) the sort of peaceful non-cooperation that the likes of Gandhi or Aung San Suu Kyi adopted.

International sympathy usually is reserved for the underdog. Rightly or wrongly the British were seen as being on the wrong side of history in India. The regime under the junta in Burma was seen as a pariah state.

So maybe, just maybe, the world at large might start to appreciate the plight of the Palestinian people.

But you won't get that by blowing yourself and several others up by violent means. And I hate to disappoint you, but as there is no after-life either, there will be no reward in "Heaven" or wharrever you choose to call it!