In a poem published Saturday in London’s al-Hayat daily, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain glorified suicide bombers.

“May God be the witness that you are martyrs … You died to honor God’s word. (You) committed suicide? We committed suicide by living like the dead,” Ghazi Algosaibi wrote in “The Martyrs,” a short poem published on the front-page of the London-based daily al-Hayat.

In an apparent reference to Arab leaders looking to the United States for help in ending Israeli-Palestinian violence, Algosaibi, who has served as ambassador in London for more than a decade, wrote: “We complained to the idols of a White House whose heart is filled with darkness.” …

In his poem, Algosaibi referred to 18-year-old female suicide bomber Ayat Akhras, who detonated explosives strapped to her body at a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29, killing two Israelis and wounding 25.

“Tell Ayat, the bride of loftiness … She embraced death with a smile while the leaders are running away from death. Doors of heaven are opened for her,” Algosaibi wrote.

Algosaibi is a well-known poet and writer who was once quoted as saying: “Poetry is the soul of the Arabs.”

And paeans to murder? What part of the Arabs is that, Mr. Ambassador?

This AP story concludes with another demonstration of the peaceful nature of Islam:

In Egypt on Friday, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, grand imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, mainstream Islam’s top seat of learning, declared: “One who blows himself up among those (Israeli) aggressors is a martyr, martyr, martyr, and whoever says otherwise is a … liar.”