Whenever the mainstream American media, especially television, reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it gives the impression that Palestinian suicide bombers are the main cause of the violence and bloodshed that blight the land. Every Palestinian or Arab interviewee is asked what he or she thinks of suicide bombers and how one can put a stop to them. Even when a news commentary attempts to analyse Israeli invasion (incursion is the word CNN uses) of Palestinian towns and villages, the question that is posed at the end is whether the Palestinian National Authority has the will to curb suicide bombing.

It is a travesty of justice to blame suicide bombers for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For we are talking of young men and women from a community which has been dispossessed, disinherited and disenfranchised. We are talking of a people who have been driven out from their land by Israeli aggression and occupation  the latter is the violence of the oppressed, the victim. There is no moral equivalence in the two types of violence.

Besides, how can one compare the violence perpetrated by one of the most well-equipped armies in the world with the violence of a largely unarmed, defenceless people relying upon a small catchment of smuggled weapons? This tremendous asymmetry in fire power — if nothing else — makes a mockery of any attempt to equate the violence of the Palestinians to the violence of the Israeli state. It is utterly immoral in such a situation to focus upon the violence of the suicide bomber.

As the Jewish American intellectual, Marc Ellis, once put to me, "It is like complaining about a little boy biting the ankle of one of his 10 big sized assailants after they had robbed him and beaten him to pulp."

No antecedents in Muslim history

By pleading for some understanding of the suicide bomber in the context of Israeli occupation, aggression and violence, one is not condoning suicide bombing. This is the fourth article I have written in the last eight months where I have directly or obliquely expressed my reservations about this particular method of fighting oppression. My reservations stem from religious ethics, on the one hand, and political considerations, on the other.

Suicide, needless to say, is anathema to Islam. No human being has the right to terminate his life, however noble the purpose may be. Similarly, the deliberate targetting of civilians in a war is odious. The Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him) had exhorted his followers not to harm those who are not combatants in a battle.

Children, women, the old and infirm should be spared in war. Any and every house of worship should be protected. In the course of combat, one should ensure that animal life and vegetation are not destroyed. These principles underlying the conduct of war enunciated by the Prophet were later elaborated by the first caliph, Abu-Bakr as-Siddiq.

In the light of these principles, suicide bombing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is not only directed against soldiers but also civilians, is clearly in discordance with Islamic teachings. It is a technique of war which has no antecedents in Muslim history. Even as a contemporary phenomenon, the suicide bomber owes his genesis to the Japanese Kamikaze pilot. And, until very recently, the majority of suicide bombers were not Muslim Palestinians but Hindu Tamil Tigers!

Flawed argument

There are Muslim theologians of some repute who have argued that suicide bombing is legitimate since Palestine is an occupied land and the entire Israeli population stands condemned as aggressor and oppressor. One cannot, in such circumstances, distinguish between military personnel and civilians.

The argument is seriously flawed. As in any other society, there are in Israel today, sizeable groups of people who are totally opposed to occupation. Some have suffered and sacrificed a great deal campaigning for total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Is it right to regard them also — the human rights organisation, Gush Shalom for instance — as 'the aggressor'?

Isn't it unconscionable that Israeli peace activists should also die at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers? How can one justify in moral terms the suicide bombing that killed the Israeli teenager, Smadar Elhanim, in Jerusalem — Smadar whose mother, Nurit Peled-Elhanim and whose grandfather, Mattiyahu Peled, a former Israeli Air Force Commander, are distinguished peace activists?

Incidentally, in the midst of her inconsolable grief, Mrs Elhanim continued to condemn Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and pleaded for peace, justice and reconciliation.

What this also shows is that suicide bombing does not make much political sense. Every time a suicide bombing takes place in Palestine or Israel, the political stock of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shoots up. In the eyes of the majority of Israelis, suicide bombing is a heinous crime that justifies and legitimises the harsh and inhuman measures taken by the Sharon regime against the Palestinian people.

Besides, almost every suicide bomb attack has resulted in swift, often brutal Israeli retaliation. Israeli retaliation is often accompanied by the incarceration or assassination of key Palestinian grassroots leaders which over the years has emasculated the liberation struggle. At the same time, Palestinian institutional infrastructure so crucial for constructing a viable Palestinian state, is decimated and destroyed.

Ideology of a defeated civilisation

One should also take into account the impact of suicide bombing upon people outside Israel-Palestine and the Arab world, especially non-Muslims. In Europe, for instance, where there is some sympathy for the Palestinian cause, every time a suicide bombing wipes out a dozen or so Israeli citizens in a restaurant or a shopping mall, the level of public support decreases significantly. This is what one should expect when an 18-month infant or an 80-year-old woman is one of your victims.

If the political cost of suicide bombing is high and its religious legitimacy is low, why do Palestinian freedom fighters persist with this method of trying to end Israeli oppression?

Desperation and frustration in a situation where there does not seem to be any other way out, would be part of the answer. In fact, this psychology of despair is innate to an entire ideology that has evolved in various Muslim lands over the centuries. Elsewhere in my writings, I have described it as the ideology of a defeated civilisation: the two decisive moments of defeat being the Mongol invasions of the leading centres of Muslim civilisation in the 12th and 13th centuries, and even more important, the colonial conquest and subjugation of almost the entire Muslim world beginning from the 16th century.

The despair of a defeated civilisation manifests itself in many ways. Violence, sometimes senseless and mindless, becomes a substitute for serious conceptualisation of the monumental challenges confronting the ummah (the Muslim community). Rash, reckless reaction triumphs over careful, systematic, intelligent planning and strategising aimed at achieving feasible objectives. Short term, ad-hoc action is preferred to long-term thinking and analysis.

Indeed, senseless, mindless violence is sometimes endowed with religious legitimacy by theologians who are not averse to distorting the fundamental principles of the faith. This is how jihad , for instance, which in the early centuries retained its original, all-embracing Quranic meaning of "striving in the path of God" has come to be equated solely with war and the battlefield.

Likewise, war itself which occupied a small portion of the Prophet's blessed life has been elevated and glorified to such a degree that it is viewed in some circles as the defining trait of a victorious civilisation of yesteryear. The tendency to legitimise suicide bombing, it should now be obvious, is part and parcel of the same mindset.

Alternatives

If suicide bombing, and its correlatives, war and violence, will not work, what other alternatives are available to the Palestinians today? How are they to respond to Israeli occupation and defeat Israeli aggression? Given the dark and dismal situation confronting the Palestinians, perhaps the time has come for a major paradigm shift in their struggle for freedom.

Are there enough Palestinians who have the courage and the integrity to offer non-violent, peaceful resistance to Israeli power and arrogance? Noting that "suicide bombers may rain pain and fear on Israel, but suicide and mass murder are not a means towards salvation", a Muslim American peace activist, Ramzi Kysia, suggests that Palestinians should start publicly burning identity cards and peacefully marching through checkpoints and 'closed military zones' — even when they come under sustained fire. When asked for their names, they should give the names of political prisoners in Israeli jails. And throughout the West Bank and Gaza, there should be a massive campaign of 'illegal' home construction and land development.

"There are thousands in Israeli prisons. Let's flood those same prisons by the tens of thousands, and shut them down once and for all. All of this already happens in small degree, but it must be encouraged, organised, massively increased, and sustained.."

Kysia emphasises that "Palestinians must refuse to be occupied and resist with a righteousness that provokes love in their enemies. They must resist with life, not death. The uproar this will cause in Israel, and the massive, worldwide pressure it will put on Israel, will bring down Sharon, and it will bring peace. The Israeli government can be overthrown — but only through a resistance that provokes the Israeli people to overthrow it for themselves".

Non-violent resistance to tyranny and oppression, it is seldom realised, is a vital dimension of Muslim history. One of the most outstanding examples was Imam Husayn's opposition to the wayward Ruler, Yazid, in 680 CE in Karbala. Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, led a band of 72 unarmed men and women in a peaceful protest against a thousand heavily armed soldiers of Yazid. Though Husayn and his supporters were massacred, the tragedy of Karbala has been immortalised in Muslim history as the noblest instance of resistance to injustice, motivated by principle and conscience.

In recent decades the Muslim world produced another leader dedicated to non-violent change. This was the Pathan chieftain, Abdul Ghaffar Khan (died 1988) who mobilised a hundred thousand people in the peaceful struggle against British rule in India. Through acts of civil disobedience and peaceful protest in the Northwest Frontier region of India, Ghaffar Khan, together with Mahatma Gandhi and other apostles of non-violence forced the British to quit their motherland.

It is interesting that Ghaffar described his non-violent approach as "a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it".

There have been other more recent examples of the triumph of non-violent change in the Muslim world. The people's revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979 was a largely peaceful one where unarmed women and men confronted the might of the Emperor's armed forces and police. The Indonesian dictator Suharto was also brought down by a non-violent mass movement in 1998.

Of course, the Israeli situation is different. Methods that may have succeeded in one setting may be ineffectual in another. Nonetheless, there are certain inherent strengths in non-violent resistance which remain untapped. The Palestinians and others committed to justice and freedom should harness the potential — and the promise — of this alternative.

For, in the ultimate analysis, a struggle that celebrates life and love offers more hope than one that is mired in death and destruction.

Dr CHANDRA MUZAFFAR is president of the International Movement for a Just World

(Just), an international non-profit citizens' organisation which seeks to create public awareness about injustices within the existing global system.