A Palestinian Mother: I am Proud to Send My Son on a Suicide Mission
IDF Spokesperson 24 September 2002

Um Nadil, a Palestinian mother, encouraged her son, a Hamas operative, to
carry out a suicide terrorist attack against an Israeli target. In an
interview on Al Jazeera television (29 June 2002), she explains her Islamic
perspective and her motives as a mother who "sacrificed" her child.
Following is a portion of the transcript from Al Jazeera:

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"

The original transcript of the mother's statement can be found on the Al
Jazeera television station's website for 29 June 2002:
http://www.aljazeera.net/programs/open_dialog/articles/2002/7/7-2-1.htm