While we discuss whether Islam can be reformed, Palestinian mother Um Nadil is a true believer with no doubt whatsoever that her religion justified—no, demanded she encourage her son to become a suicidal mass murderer. Al Jazeera television broadcast her inspiring words to the Arab world on June 29, 2002.

We bring you a statement by Um Nadil, mother of Muhammad Farat, a Hamas operative who on 3 March 2002 managed to infiltrate the Israeli settlement of Atzmona and shoot to death five Israeli civilians in one of the community’s educational institutions.

“Our children are even more precious than we are. We believe that they are the most precious thing. Apart from Allah - who is the most sublime thing in this world as well as in the afterlife what value do our lives have if we do not dedicate them to Allah? - my son is more precious to me than myself. I give him the best but I also I sacrifice him. A good deed is found in this sacrifice. I served him [the good deed] and he [my son] is precious to me, yet [I sacrificed him] for the worthiest of causes, for the most sublime purpose. Our land is occupied, there are enemies, the Western world is behaving aggressively, and heresy is attempting to cruelly take control over the Islam and destroy it.

I gave him [my son] as a gift and we sacrificed him to Allah and to His religion [Islam] - in order to maintain His religion and to make sure that His slogan [the slogan of Islam] - “There is no God besides Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” - will be spread all over Palestine and all over the world

If we shall not fight the battle of the Jihad, heresy will rule the world with cruelty If I were to be stingy with my son [that is, were I not to sacrifice him by sending him on a suicide mission] or in another case [if some other woman] were to be stingy with her son, then who would protect Islam? When I said goodbye to him [my son] I knew about the mission. I knew everything. Nothing was unclear or left unsaid. This is the truth about life and about death. Our purpose is not to live. Our purpose is to seek Allah - this is our highest and most definite purpose from the day we are born and till the day we leave this lifetime. I bid farewell to my son and he is precious to me I weep and cry over him day and night, though thank God I do not regret what I did, I am not desperate nor will I lose any hope I wanted my son to have a better life this is the truth of our belief, which is calling us to do so and to sacrifice for Allah. This is the way it is for our lives and our happiness in this world and in the next. I swear by the name of Allah that our lives would not be happy without the Jihad - the Jihad is our lives. If our lives were not based on the values of the Jihad, we would not be alive. We would be dead.

I talked my son into sacrificing himself for Allah, and he was more than willing to do so. All the children of Palestine, the Palestinian youths and the teenagers are crying, consumed with passion and eager for Jihad, for Allah and for suicide terror attacks. It is not, at it has been said, out of desperation of [this] life, but out of an expectation for a better one.”