Islam, like other religions, distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate acts of violence. The Qur’an does not advocate or condone illegitimate violence or terrorism. The Islamic tradition places extensive limits on the use of violence and rejects terrorism, hijackings, and hostage taking. However, Muslims are permitted, indeed at times required to defend their religion, their families, and the Islamic community from aggression.

What about suicide bombers? What about violence against non-combatants? Since the late twentieth century, these issues have resurfaced in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, America and Europe as suicide-bombing has come to be equated with martyrdom, relinquishing one’s life for defense of Islam and the community.

Debates over legitimate vs. illegitimate violence have been highlighted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Prophetic traditions (narrative stories about Muhammad’s words and deeds) clearly and absolutely prohibit suicide because only God has the right to take the life he has granted. Historically both Sunni and Shii Muslims have generally forbidden religious suicide and acts of terrorism.

The issue of suicide bombing and the question of its legitimacy or illegitimacy crystallized in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the second intifada. Increased Israeli military violence and targeted assassinations reinforced the belief among many Palestinians that suicide bombers were committing not an act of suicide but one of self-sacrifice, the only option for resistance and retaliation against an enemy with overwhelming military power and foreign support. As student posters at universities in the West Bank and Gaza declared: “Israel has nuclear bombs, we have human bombs.”

Suicide attacks, especially those that target innocent civilians or noncombatants, have precipitated a sharp debate among prominent religious authorities in the Muslim world. Their advice and fatwas (religious legal opinions) of prominent religious authorities illustrate the debate today. Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, the late religious leader and founder of Hamas, and Akram Sabri, the Mufti of Jerusalem, as well as many other Arab and Palestinian religious leaders, have argued that suicide bombing is necessary and justified when faced with Israel’s illegal occupation and overwhelming military power.

Others condemn suicide bombings, in particular those that target civilians, as terrorism. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia condemns all suicide bombing as un-Islamic and forbidden by Islam. Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt and current Sheikh of al-Azhar, and thus a major religious authority, draws a sharp distinction between suicide bombings that are acts of self-sacrifice and self-defense to defend one’s land and help the oppressed and the killing of noncombatants, women, and children, which he has consistently opposed. As he says: “Attacking innocent people is not courageous, it is stupid and will be punished on the day of judgment. ... It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom; it is courageous to defend oneself and not to attack.”

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whom many regard as the most preeminent and influential religious authority in the Arab and Muslim world, condemned the 9/11 terrorist attacks and other acts of terrorism. His opinions stress that Muslims are not allowed to kill anyone except those fighting Muslims directly and that it is immoral to kill innocent civilians for their government’s actions. However, he was also one of the first religious scholars to approve suicide bombings in Israel.

A key issue that has emerged in these debates is that of proportionality, that the response or retaliation must be in proportion to the crime committed. Those who seek to justify the killing of civilians argue that in Israel there are no innocent civilians both because Israeli society is a military society (men and women have to serve in the military and continue to serve in the reserves) and because Israeli occupation and policies indiscriminately kill Palestinian civilians.

The debate, what some call the war of fatwas, among religious leaders, is reflected in Qaradawi’s harsh criticism in the Arab media of Shaykh Tantawi who condemned the suicide attack that killed 26 Israelis in December 2001:

"How can the head of Al-Azhar incriminate mujahedin (Islamic fighters) who fight against aggressors? How can he consider these aggressors as innocent civilians?...Has fighting colonisers become a criminal and terrorist act for some sheikhs? …I am astonished that some sheikhs deliver fatwas that betray the mujahedin, instead of supporting them and urging them to sacrifice and martyrdom."

Qaradawi also criticized Shaykh Muhammad bin ‘Abdallah as-Sabil, the imam of the grand mosque in Mecca, for declaring that killing Israelis is not permissible. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Qaradawi rejected the term "suicide operations,” maintaining that ‘martyrdom’ operations should not be attributed to suicide. Distinguishing between terrorism and "martyrdom," Qaradawi declared:

"The Palestinian who blows himself up is a person who is defending his homeland. When he attacks an occupier enemy, he is attacking a legitimate target. This is different from someone who leaves his country and goes to strike a target with which he has no dispute.”

In contrast, Timothy Winter (Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad) of Cambridge University in “The Poverty of Fanaticism”, says "this kind of targeting of civilians, for instance, the aberrant use of terrorist violence is something that really is very new.… It hasn’t gained much inroad into the leadership of the religion, but in the masses on the streets, as it were, particularly in very tense, unnatural places like Gaza, the slums of Baghdad and other places, it does have a certain standing unfortunately. And this is the great challenge of the leadership of the religion – how to reassert orthodoxy in the face of a growing groundswell of fundamentalist revolt.”

The point is this. Islam, like other religions, distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate acts of violence.

In fact, Muslims are at least as likely as Americans to condemn targeting civilians as morally wrong. A recent study shows that 46% of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24% believe these attacks are “often or sometimes justified."

Contrast this with data taken the same year from some of the largest majority Muslim nations, where 74% of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86%; in Bangladesh, 81% , and in Iran 80%.

But what do Muslims across the world think about extremism and terrorism?

A Gallup study of some 40 majority Muslim countries, “Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Think,” reveals that Muslims everywhere are deeply concerned about extremism. Gallup also found that the primary driver for sympathy for terrorism was not piety, but politics.

Similar trends have been identified by other studies on suicide bombers.

The Qur’an does not advocate or condone illegitimate violence or terrorism. The Islamic tradition places extensive limits on the use of violence and rejects terrorism, hijackings, and hostage taking. However, Muslims are permitted, indeed at times required to defend their religion, their families, and the Islamic community from aggression.

Throughout history, given the power of religion to legitimate and inspire, the Quran like the Bible has been interpreted and misinterpreted to justify resistance and liberation struggles, extremism and terrorism, holy and unholy wars. The Qur’an and the Bible contain verses about fighting and warfare. Both their prophets (Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon and Muhammad were also warriors) and scriptures reflect the violent contexts in which their communities developed.

The Quran provides guidelines for conducting war: who is to fight and who is exempted (Quran 48:17, 9:91), when hostilities must stop (Quran 2:192), and how prisoners should be treated (Quran 47:4). Most important, verses such as 2:194 emphasize that warfare and the response to violence and aggression must be proportional: “Whoever transgresses against you, respond in kind.” According to Islamic law, for a war to be morally justifiable it must be fought in defense of the faith; cannot be waged primarily for material gain and possession; must respect the rights of non-combatants (lives, freedom, property); must not harm women, children, old people and invalids or torture prisoners of war or demolish places of worship and kill religious leaders.

John L. Esposito is University Professor and Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Georgetown University and author of What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam and Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. He also is founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service