Islamism and Suicide bombing

Shia Islamists were the pioneers of modern (post-1980s) suicide bombing. Started with the case of Hossein Fahmideh, a 13-year-old boy who on October 30, 1980, detonated a grenade beneath an Iraqi tank during Iraq-Iran war. It was followed by suicide attacks in Lebanon, and from there Tamil Tigers brought this trend to Sri Lanka. Then in 1990s, Hamas and Islami Jihad used this tactic in Palestine.

Also interesting to note that there was no incident of suicide bombing during Afghan war, and not even Taliban during their rule in Afghanistan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_attack#Post-1980_attacks
"The Islamic Dawa Party's car bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in December 1981 and Hezbollah's bombing of the U.S. embassy in April 1983 and attack on United States Marine and French barracks in October 1983 brought suicide bombings international attention. Other parties to the civil war were quick to adopt the tactic, and by 1999 factions such as Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, the Ba'ath Party, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party had carried out around 50 suicide bombings between them. (The latter of these groups sent the first recorded female suicide bomber in 1985."


http://ibcurdu.com/news/40153
خود کش حملوں کی شرعی حیثیت







http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/04-May-2008/book-reveiw-the-strategy-of-suicide-bombing
"Suicide bombing was initially embraced by only a couple of Islamist groups: al Dawa, an Iraqi Shia group, and the Lebanese Shia organisation, Hezbollah. Later, it was copied by others moved by nationalism and, more frighteningly, ethnic sub-nationalism. Toward the end of the 1980s, suicide terrorism began to spread beyond Lebanon and Kuwait in the Middle East: first to Sri Lanka but then, as the 1990s unfolded, to India, Argentina, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Apart from the Eelam Tigers of Sri Lanka, most of the stuff has been motivated by religion. From 2001 to 2005, 78 percent of all the suicide terrorist incidents were religion-driven. Indeed, of thirty-five terrorist organisations employing suicide tactics in 2005, 86 percent were Islamic. These movements have been responsible for 81 percent of all suicide attacks since 9/11. By 2005, more than 350 suicide attacks took place in at least twenty-four countries — including the United Kingdom, Israel, Sri Lanka Russia, Lebanon, Turkey, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Argentina, Kenya, Tanzania, Croatia, Morocco, Singapore, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq.
But the mechanics of suicide-bombing is not religious at all. It is adopted because it makes terrorism so easy. If you don't use 'martyrdom' based on religion you have to arrange for the getaway of the terrorist you have sent out to do the job. The terrorist must know that he would definitely make his escape after the act of terrorism or he will not do the job. In the case of suicide-bombing, the terrorist knows he is going to his death and therefore seeks to do the utmost level of damage possible. The organisation that uses him benefits from the fact that no trace of the perpetrator is left for the victim state to make out who has done the job."


https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/irrc-869_munir.pdf
"On 18 April 1983, the Lebanese Shiite organization Islamic Jihad (the precursor of Hezbollah5 – the Party of God) carried out suicide attacks on the US embassy in West Beirut, killing sixty-three staff members....."The suicide attack on 13 April 1994 at the central bus station in Hadera was probably the first such attack by Hamas. Another took place on 25 February 1996 on bus no. 18 in Jerusalem.12 Other Palestinian groups followed suit. Ramadhan Shellah, a leader of Islamic Jihad in the Occupied Territories, acknowledged that the tactic had been taken over from the Lebanese Hezbollah. In an interview given to Al- Hayat newspaper on 7 January 2003 he was asked whether the organization had borrowed the idea of ‘‘martyrdom operations’’ from Hezbollah. ‘‘Of course’’, he said."


https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=11101
While Shia organizations, such as Hezbollah, pioneered the use of suicide bombings as “self-sacrifice operations” in the early 1980s, Shia groups have abandoned the practice since the 1990s, while Sunni organizations like Hamas and Al  Qaeda  in  Iraq  have  not  only  exponentially  increased  the use of “martyrdom operations,” they have expanded the target set to include civilians, and now primarily target other Muslims.  By first analyzing the historical tradition of martyrdom within Shia and Sunni Islam and then conducting case studies on Shia Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas and Sunni Al Qaeda in Iraq, this thesis seeks to discover whether there are historical factors that can help explain the differences in the contemporary expression of martyrdom between the two main sects of Islam.  The main findings of this thesis are that the less prominent role martyrs play in the Sunni tradition, contrasted against the consistent 1,400-year history of  venerating  prominent  Shia  martyrs,  allowed  Sunni  extremists  to  essentially  rewrite  their  history  and  reinvent  “martyrdom”  to  suit  their  own  contemporary  political  goals.    Additionally,  the  thesis  reveals  that  in  the  vacuum  of  restraint from the Sunni theologians, Sunni Salafi-Jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda have pushed the boundaries of the religious justification that supports martyrdom operations so far that they are now primarily killing Muslims and non-combatants – a practice that is not only forbidden, but one of the greatest sins in Islam

..............
The Shia ulama revival and revision of martyrdom and jihad was firmly solidified by the spectacular success of the Iranian revolution. It was this new martyrdom ideology that  helps  explain  how  and  why  the  religious  scholars  of  the  Iranian  government  sent  thousands of Iranian children on suicidal missions to clear mine fields or overrun fortified positions  during  the  Iran-Iraq  war  as  Bassidj  martyrs.  In  one  assault,  the  Iranian  government  called  “Karbala,”  more  than  23,000  Iranian  boys  aged  twelve  to  thirteen  swarmed  across  minefields  towards  Iraqi  machine  gun  emplacements.    They  rushed  forward with keys to unlock the doors to paradise dangling from their necks and cries of “Ya  Karbala,  Ya  Husayn,  Ya  Khomeini!”  spouting  from  their  mouths,  but  all  of  them  were  slaughtered  in  less  than  a  day.69  As  the  Iranian  government  exported  this  extreme  revision of martyrdom ideology, it is no surprise then that suicide bombing would first be developed as a modern tactic among Iran’s Shia protégés in Lebanon in the early 1980s.  If  the  Shia  ulama thought  sacrificing  thousands  of  children  to  defend  the  homeland  against  Iraq  was  acceptable  to  Allah,  then  Hezbollah  sending  individual  adult  suicide  bombers to die a glorious death defending against Israeli aggression in southern Lebanon was  an  easy  step  in  the  evolution  of  contemporary  martyrdom  ideology.    Because  the  Hezbollah  is  credited  with  pioneering  “self-martyrdom  operations”  in  Lebanon,  it  is  worthwhile  to  study  the  genesis  of  Shiite  fundamentalism  in  Lebanon,  specifically  the  political and religious context under which Hezbollah was conceived.       



http://www.timesofisrael.com/al-qaeda-behind-95-of-worlds-suicide-bombings-study-finds/

"From the 1980s, when suicide bombings first came on the scene, until 2000, the majority of the approximately 200 such bombings were carried out by the Lebanese Shiite terror group Hezbollah.

Since 2000, however, around 3,500 suicide bombings have been recorded. The turning point came following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

In all, al-Qaeda and jihadist groups have tallied more than 85 percent of the total suicide attacks worldwide, but in 2013 that figure rose to nearly 95%, the INSS study found.

Despite the relatively low number of suicide bombings compared to other tactics employed by terror groups, they resonate strongly thanks to both the number of lives they claim and their attack on public morale.

In the past year, terrorist groups launched 291 suicide attacks in 18 countries, killing around 3,100 people — a 25% rise in attacks compared to the year prior.

In a conversation with The Times of Israel, Schweitzer said that 2013 marked a significant rise in suicide bombings in Iraq, which constitutes a third of the global total with 98 attacks — a rise of 280% compared to the year before (only 35).

Suicide bombings in Iraq only began after the US-led coalition invaded in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein. To date, attacks of this kind, spurred by tension between ethnic and religious groups, have claimed the lives of 1,500 in the country.

Close to half of the suicide attacks in Iraq were directed at the civilian population (45%) — mostly restaurants, markets and mosques, as well as funerals and mourners’ tents — and most of the remainder were directed at security forces and police (48%). The majority of the suicide bombings targeting civilians occurred in Shiite areas — that is to say, they carried out by Sunnis.

According to the INSS study, several other factors are behind the rise in attacks apart from traditional Sunni-Shiite tensions: the intelligence-gathering and operational remnant of the US military presence; an increase of global jihadists — willing suicide bombers in Iraq — in the region as a result of the Syrian civil war; and perceived corruption by the Shiite-majority government, whose apparent discrimination toward the minority Sunni population deters them from aiding Iraqi security forces in the prevention of terror activity.

Today, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, a rebranding of al-Qaeda known locally as ISIS or ISIL, is behind most of the suicide violence in the country.

The researchers pointed out that there is a steep decline in female involvement in suicide terrorism and, contrary to popular belief that suicide attacks are typically carried out in countries occupied by a foreign military, this in fact only applies to 32% of all cases. Most attacks target local representation of state infrastructure, especially in countries with low regime legitimacy. The most obvious example is Syria, where researchers count at least 27 suicide attacks executed by Jabhat al-Nusra, another al-Qaeda offshoot, and ISIS.

This phenomenon has even trickled down to Egypt, where in the last year there were six recorded suicide attacks, four of them in the Sinai Peninsula.

Afghanistan and Pakistan traditionally suffer a high number of suicide attacks, and 2013 was no different: 65 were carried out in Afghanistan and 35 in Pakistan. Since the turn of the century, 1,150 have rocked the two countries combined."

http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345802576&view=printexcerpt 
https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=AJtCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false 
https://twitter.com/SAMRIReports/status/1074043547547025409 
Steve Coll, the journalist and longtime observer of Afghanistan, writes that in the 1980s, when Afghan warriors were battling Soviet occupation, the CIA was desperately seeking someone to set off a massive vehicle bomb inside the 1.6-mile-long Salang Tunnel. The tunnel is a crucial north-south link running beneath a difficult pass in the towering Hindu Kush mountain range, and blowing it up would have cut the main Soviet supply route. In order to be effective, the bomb would need to go off mid-tunnel, meaning certain death for its operator. In effect, the CIA was looking for an Afghan suicide bomber.8 No one volunteered. Suicide, said the Afghans, was a grievous sin, and quite against their religion. And yet, fast-forward to 2009, and there had been more than 180 suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan



Theological support

http://www.meforum.org/5320/islam-suicide-bombings
"Between the end of World War II and the Iranian revolution, there were no suicide attacks in the world. Yet only months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini solidified power and formed the Pasdaran and Basij, suicide attacks began to appear in conflicts involving Shiites (Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war) and then took root among Palestinian Sunni groups.[3] It eventually became the preferred tactic of Islamist terror organizations."

Khomeini selected specific passages from the Qur'an and hadith (canonical collections of Muhammad's alleged sayings and actions) to craft his suicidal version of radical Islam. His two-part rhetorical plan necessitated convincing Muslims that suicide is not suicide and that death is not death. Capitalizing on—or perhaps fabricating—the case of Hossein Fahmideh, a 13-year-old boy who on October 30, 1980, allegedly crawled beneath an Iraqi tank and exploded a grenade, Khomeini built a culture of martyrdom. Thousands of children were conscripted for his new invention—the "human wave attack"—and spread the tactic of suicide bombing. Khomeini had a special monument dedicated to Famideh, intended to appeal to children. He then used Famideh's image on book bags, murals, posters, and stamps to inspire children to follow him and drink "the nectar of martyrdom."[4] The tactic spread quickly to Lebanon where the Iraqi embassy was struck on December 15, 1981, in what is generally considered the first documented suicide attack of the modern era. As terrorism expert Matthew Levitt points out, Iran's influence was greatly increased in 1982 when "1,500 IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] advisers set up a base in the Bekaa Valley as part of its goal to export the Islamic revolution to the Arab world."[5] Then in 1983, U.S. interests were subjected to suicide terrorism for the first time when the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed in April, killing sixty-three. Later, on October 23, 1983, the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut were bombed with a loss of 299 lives."

http://www.meforum.org/2478/suicide-bombing-as-worship
"It was a real-life Shi'i fanatic, a thirteen-year-old boy called Hossein Fahmideh, who set things moving in 1981 when he died with a grenade in his hand, throwing himself under a tank during the Iran-Iraq war. He was followed by thousands of young Iranians carrying "keys to paradise," who walked and ran across minefields, ripping their bodies apart for God and the Islamic regime.[1] Two years later, the first suicide attack occurred against a Western target when a bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut. Apart from himself, he killed 63 people: 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors."

http://www.meforum.org/2743/suicide-bomber-sunni-shii-hybrid
"One major trajectory for martyrdom's importance within the Muslim tradition derives from the Shi'i narrative that developed following the death of Muhammad's grandson Hussein in 680 CE. Hussein and his followers did not choose martyrdom at the Battle of Karbala in the manner of most other Islamic martyrs in successive generations. Nevertheless, Shi'i tradition embellishes his death with prophetic foreknowledge of the outcome. It also embodies the model of a woefully small force of true believers arrayed against an overwhelming army of "evil-doers." As a result of his death, the role of martyrdom would forever serve as a basis for the distinction of Shi'ism from Sunni orthodoxy."

"A second, significant trajectory is that of the dominant, Sunni perspective on jihad and the Sunni understanding of martyrdom. While always present, Sunni martyrdom within the framework of jihad remained mostly stagnant for hundreds of years as Sunnis largely enjoyed the power of the majority. This began to change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Western dominance over territory formally under Islamic control (Dar al-Islam) and most significantly with the influx of mainly European Jews into Palestine. Their arrival was often perceived as a challenge to Muslim hegemony by local Sunni leaders."

Fadlallah explains religious justification for suicide attacks against Israel:
http://www.lebanonwire.com/0206/02060802DS.asp
"In analyzing the theological arguments legitimizing suicide attacks, Fadlallah said that Allah did not identify a certain procedure to fight the enemy and defend the rights of the nation.
“If achieving victory means that we have to go through a minefield, which necessarily and definitely means that many are going to be killed, then we would go,” he said.
Fadlallah said that the Palestinian perpetrators of “martyrdom operations” do not target civilians, but rather aim to defend their people by inflicting damage and losses on the Israeli side to maintain a kind of equilibrium with the high-tech arsenal used by the Israeli Army." 


http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/sacrifice-and-self-martyrdom-in-shiite-lebanon/

Lebanon’s Shi’ite clerics provided the legitimation of this balancing mechanism. They assured the “self-martyr” and his sponsors that his sacrifice enjoyed the highest sanction. According to one of Hizbullah’s leading clerics,

those who blew up the [U.S.] Marines headquarters and the Israeli military governate in Tyre [Ahmad Qasir] did not martyr themselves in accord with a decision by a political party or movement. They martyred themselves because the Imam Khomeini permitted them to do so. They saw nothing before them but God, and they defeated Israel and America for God. It was the Imam of the Nation [Khomeini] who showed them this path and instilled this spirit in them.⁹

In addition to the role of the clerics in reassuring the “self-martyrs” themselves, the support of the community depended largely upon the verdict of clerics on the admissibility of the operations. And since Hizbullah and Amal entered the sacrificial competition also to win a larger share of Shi’ite allegiances, both valued the sanction of the clerics. It was widely understood that the “self-martyring” operations were religious acts, but only in an emotional sense. Religious feeling had helped to generate them, but in a raw and dangerous form with strong sacrificial overtones. They could be made Islamic only by sanctification, which takes the form of reconciliation between the act and abstract principle, done by those qualified to interpret sacred law.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/lebanon/1400406/We-could-provide-a-million-suicide-bombers-in-24-hours.html

"I was not the one who launched the idea of so-called suicide bombings," Fadlallah went on, "but I have certainly argued in favour of them. I do, though, make a distinction between them and attacks that target people in a state of peace - which was why I opposed what happened on September 11.

"The situation of the Palestinians is quite different, because they are in a state of war with Israel. They are not aiming to kill civilians but, in war, civilians do get killed. Don't forget, the Palestinians are living under mountains of pressure.

"They have had their land stolen, their families killed, their homes destroyed, and the Israelis are using weapons, such as the F16 aircraft, which are meant only for major wars. There is no other way for the Palestinians to push back those mountains, apart from martyrdom operations."


http://www.wnd.com/2004/06/25025/
http://web.hurriyetdailynews.com/iran-group-thousands-ready-for-suicide-raids.aspx?pageID=438&n=iran-group-thousands-ready-for-suicide-raids-2004-06-07 
5 June 2004:

Thousands of Iranians have signed up for suicide attacks on Israel, U.S.-led forces in Iraq and British author Salman Rushdie, a recruiting group said.

...

"Some 10,000 people have registered their names to carry out martyrdom operations on our defined targets," said Mohammad Ali Samadi, a spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign.

But he said the group would need the green light from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to launch the attacks.

The independent group said it started to register Iranian men and women prepared to carry out the attacks after Friday prayers last week and sent forms to religious universities.

"Our targets are mainly the occupying American and British forces in the holy Iraqi cities, all the Zionists in Palestine, and Salman Rushdie," he said.

"It is not our fault that the Zionists have brought their wives and children to the occupied territories and have turned them into shields for themselves," he added, when asked about the killing of civilians.

"Salman Rushdie is the only non-military target for us, because we believe his attack against Islam was much worse that a military assault," the spokesman said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/15/20041215-115559-8086r/ 
http://www.goupstate.com/news/20041129/iranian-group-recruits-suicide-bombers 
29 Nov 2004: The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.
... presence of two key figures -- a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards -- lent the meeting more legitimacy and was a clear indication of at least tacit support from some within Iran's government. 


http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Iranian-group-recruiting-thousands-of-suicide-bombers-for-Iraq-and-Israel-2030.html 
2 Dec 2004: Mohammed Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Iran-based 'Army of Martyrs', announced that his organisation would soon begin operations in Iraq against US troops in Iraq once training for the more than 20,000 volunteer suicide bombers recruited since June is completed.

The first company named after Yahya Ayyash, a member of the Palestinian group Hamas killed by the Israelis, will begin operating in mid-December "in sympathy with the oppressed people of Fallujah".

Set up by the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, the Army started recruiting terrorists in June of this year. Registration forms for volunteer suicide commandos appeared on Tehran's streets and university campuses. Would-be shahids (martyrs) are asked to choose their martyrdom operations: against the occupiers in Iraq, against the occupiers in Jerusalem (i.e. Israel), or towards implementing the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. ...

Speaking in a room decorated with photos of Israeli soldiers' funerals, Samadi said the Army's purpose was to fill the gap "between revolutionary Iranians and other Muslims in other parts of the world, especially those fighting the Israelis in Palestine. He claimed that "30,000 volunteers have signed up— at least 4,000 in November—, and 20,000 of them have been chosen for training".

Training is held "in open spaces outside cities" but more often inside, away from prying eyes. "Among those recruited," Samadi claims, "there are at least 500 minors, the youngest one being seven years old who joined with eight other members of his family".

Khomeini himself had encouraged young people to volunteer as martyrs (shahids) in the war against Iraq offering their lives clearing minefields for advancing Iranian troops.

"Our targets are mainly the occupying American and British forces in the holy Iraqi cities [Najaf, Karbala, Kufa, among others], all the Zionists in Palestine, and Salman Rushdie," Samadi said. "Volunteers had already carried out suicide operations against military targets inside Israel," he added, but "the U.S. has not really recognised that we have successfully transferred a good method of resistance to other countries".

According to London-based Arabic daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat, the Army of Martyrs was founded on June 4, anniversary of Khomeini's death in Tehran. At the founding there were Zahra Mustafai, Khomeini's great grand daughter, and Sardar Salamati, head of operations for Iran's Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), who played an important role in the war against Iraq. In the Army's first week, 10,000 people signed up.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said recently that the group's campaign to sign up volunteers for suicide attacks had "nothing to do with the ruling Islamic establishment" adding that if "some people do such a thing [it] is the result of their sentiments. It has nothing to do with the government and the system".

The Army's first meeting was held in the offices of the Martyrs Foundation, a semi-official organisation that helps the families of those killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war or those killed fighting for the government on other fronts. It drew hard-line lawmaker and former Pasdaran member Mahdi Kouchakzadeh.

...

Samadi has denied that the Army of Martyrs has any ties with the Iranian government or al-Qaeda. However, he added that it is a religious obligation for devout Muslims "to defend themselves through all possible means [including] sacrificing life and property." As Khomeini said, "if an enemy invades Muslim countries, [. . .], we don't need anybody's permission to fight an enemy that has occupied Muslim lands". (LF)

http://fp.brecorder.com/2005/04/20050422237730/
22 April 2005:
Around 400 volunteers signed up in Tehran to sacrifice their lives in "occupied Islamic countries" on Wednesday night, inspired by a fatwa from a top conservative cleric giving religious backing to suicide missions. Wednesday's registration session was the latest by a group called the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which says it has enrolled 35,000 volunteers nation-wide for possible attacks since last year.

Iran's pro-reform government has repeatedly said it would not allow groups to carry out such attacks and no Iranians are thought to have directly executed suicide bombings in Israel or elsewhere in recent years.

But the presence of President Mohammad Khatami's adviser on women's affairs and a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leant some official backing to Wednesday's event.

In a dark hall decorated with pictures of female Palestinian suicide bombers, dozens of men and women queued to fill out registration forms.

"As a Muslim, it is my duty to sacrifice my life for oppressed Palestinian children," said Maryam Partovi, 31, a mother of two.

A banner hanging over the main entrance quoted Khamenei as saying: "Sacrificing oneself for religion and national interest is the height of honour and bravery."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4687897.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1494133/Bombers-should-not-be-regarded-as-martyrs.html
http://www.arabnews.com/node/270319
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1443871/posts
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/84269_Muslim-scholars-condemn-London-attack--but-not-all-suicide-bombings

15 July 2005: Muslim leaders and scholars met at London's largest mosque Friday to condemn the terrorist attacks in the British capital, saying the perpetrators had violated the Quran by killing innocent civilians and that no one should consider them martyrs.

But the 22 imams and scholars stopped short of condemning all suicide bombings, saying that those that target occupying forces in countries such as Israel and Iraq are sometimes justified.

"There should be a clear distinction between the suicide bombing of those who are trying to defend themselves from occupiers, which is something different from those who kill civilians, which is a big crime," said Sayed Mohammed Musawi, the head of the World Islamic League in London.

"The media in the West are mixing the difference between these two, and the result is that some of our Muslim youth are becoming more frustrated and they think that both are the same, even though Muslim law forbids killing any innocent lives," Musawi said. He spoke at a news conference at the London Central Mosque after the leaders and scholars read a statement condemning the July 7 attacks.


http://www.meforum.org/1059/irans-suicide-brigades
On June 5, 2004, the reformist daily Shargh granted Mohammad-Ali Samadi, Headquarters' spokesman, a front page interview.[7] Samadi has a pedigree of hard-line revolutionary credentials. He is a member of the editorial boards of Shalamche and Bahar magazines, affiliated with the hard-line Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God) vigilante group, as well as the newspaper Jomhouri-ye Eslami, considered the voice of the intelligence ministry.[8] Samadi said he had registered 2,000 volunteers for suicide operations at a seminar the previous day.[9] Copies of the registration forms (see Figure 1) show that the "martyrdom-seekers" could volunteer for suicide operations against three targets: operations against U.S. forces in the Shi‘ite holy cities in Iraq; against Israelis in Jerusalem; and against Rushdie. The registration forms also quote Khomeini's declaration that "[I]f the enemy assaults the lands of the Muslims and its frontiers, it is mandatory for all Muslims to defend it by all means possible [be it by] offering life or property,"[10] and current supreme leader Ali Khamene'i's remarks that "[m]artyrdom-seeking operations mark the highest point of the greatness of a nation and the peak of [its] epic. A man, a youth, a boy, and a girl who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the interests of the nation and their religion is the [symbol of the] greatest pride, courage, and bravery."[11] According to press reports, a number of senior regime officials have attended the Headquarters' seminars.[12]



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2944:iran-opens-garrison-to-recruit-suicide-bombers-against-west&catid=9&Itemid=114

22 July 2005: A military garrison has been opened in Iran to recruit and train volunteers for 'martyrdom-seeking operations', according to the garrison's commander, Mohammad-Reza Jaafari.

"Jaafari, a senior officer in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), told a hard-line weekly close to Iran's ultra-conservative President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the new 'Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison' (Gharargahe Asheghane Shahadat, in Persian) would recruit individuals willing to carry out suicide operations against Western targets.

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5850:iran-recruits-suicide-bombers-to-fight-global-blasphemy&catid=9:terrorism&Itemid=114 
19 Feb 2006: – A group affiliated to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps launched a new recruitment drive for suicide bombers in Tehran to fight against “Global Blasphemy”, state-run news agencies reported. 

The Mehr news agency carried a report on Saturday saying that an event entitled “Analysis of ways to act against the offensive of Global Blasphemy” was held in Tehran to mark the anniversary of the fatwa, or religious edict, by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for the murder of the Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie. 

The conference agenda was dominated by the row over the publication of cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. 

Mohammad-Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Headquarters to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a government-orchestrated campaign to recruit suicide bombers, told the meeting that more that 52,000 “volunteers for martyrdom-seeking operations” have been registered by his organisation, which also calls itself “Estesh’hadioun”, or martyrdom-seekers. 

The group was set up by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 2004. Those who join have three choices: To carry out suicide attacks against “the infidels occupying Iraq”, against Israel, or against Salman Rushdie. 



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7328
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/19/iran.israel
19 April 2006:
Relations between the west and the hardline Iranian regime are set to worsen after a Tehran-based group claimed yesterday it was trying to recruit Iranians and other Muslims in Britain to carry out suicide bombings against Israel.

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which claims to be independent but has the backing of the regime, said it is targeting potential recruits in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders can enter Israel.

The claim came hours after nine people were killed by a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv, and days after a prediction by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Israel would be blown away in a "storm". President George Bush refused to rule out a limited nuclear strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Mohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, told the Guardian that striking at Israel was the priority of his recruitment drive. "The first target is Israel. For us, that is the battlefield," he said. "All the Jews are targets, whether military or civilian. It's our land and they are in the wrong place. It's their duty to pay attention to safety of their own families and move them away from the battlefield," he said.

Mr Samadi's group was participating in a recruitment fair for "martyrdom seekers" being held in the grounds of the former US embassy in Tehran. Several hundred volunteers have signed up for missions in the past few days.

Volunteers attracted to his group were asked to complete forms specifying whether they prefer to carry out operations against "the Quds occupiers" [Israel], the British author Salman Rushdie - subject of a death sentence passed by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, over The Satanic Verses - or "the occupiers of Islamic lands", the US and Britain.

Mr Samadi was standing at an exhibition stall festooned with portraits of Palestinian suicide bombers, including pictures of the aftermaths of attacks. It also featured a tribute to Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza three years ago. A banner outside the fair read: "There is no voice higher than intifada." Nearby stood a mock model of the Statue of Liberty, with iron bars cut into the torso to symbolise a prison cell.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3323778,00.html
5 Nov 2006:
Some 1,300 Iranians have already volunteered to carry out suicide bombings against "the Israeli occupation of Palestine", this according to the administrator of the suicide bombing recruitment center to Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet.

Speaking with a reporter from the newspaper, Afrusa Rajafar, who runs the recruitment center, said that 1,300 people have already signed up for the once in a lifetime experience. Recruits go through relatively easy training says Rajafar: "all they have to know is how to push a button".

.....

According to the Iranians the objective of suicide bombings is to defend Palestinians from Israelis, protect holy sites in Iraq and murder author Salman Rushdie.

When asked how the murder of innocents can be justified Rajafar answered: "We see the situation in Palestine as a war where one side is armed with tanks and every type of weapon and the other side only has explosives belts."

Rajafar emphasized that the organization is an independent one and is not sponsored by the state. However the state doesn't interfere with their work she says. "I believe that the regime loves us," says Rajafar.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Prime Minister Sayid Abbas Argaci said in response: "We don't encourage the organization, but it isn't forbidden either."

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/29/iran.suicide/
2 Nov 2007: An Iranian naval commander Monday said his forces are willing to carry out suicide missions when facing enemy forces in the Persian Gulf, according to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency.  "If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.
  

https://www.memri.org/reports/iranian-womens-magazine-shut-down-publishing-investigative-article-martyrdom-movement
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/archives/3228.htm

In late January 2008, the Media Supervision Committee of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance ordered the closure of the women's movement monthly Zanan, which had appeared in Iran for 16 years. The order came after the magazine published an investigative article on istishhad (i.e. martyrdom) operations. The conservative news agency Fars reported, citing a knowledgeable source, that the magazine had been shut down for "breaking the law and defaming military and revolutionary institutions, including the Basij," and for "publishing reports and [raising] issues that undermine [society's] spiritual security, morale, and ideological strength, and that create a sense of insecurity in society and discredit the status of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran." [1]

The Zanan article in question dealt with the Iranian "martyrdom movement," which has been registering Iranian men and women for suicide operations and training some to carry out these operations. Zanan focused on the women volunteers, quoting Firooz Rajai-Far, a leader of the martyrdom movement and secretary-general of the World Islamic Organization Headquarters for Remembering the Shahids, as stating that some 20,000 women have already signed up for martyrdom operations, constituting a third of the volunteers. Rajai-Far stated that because martyrdom was a "religious duty," women did not require the permission of their fathers, their husbands, or "even of the ruling jurisprudent" - currently Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - to volunteer for martyrdom operations. She also stated that she approved of sending even seven-year-old children on suicide missions during a war. Rajai-Far herself has signed up for martyrdom operations, and has threatened the U.S. with suicide operations against its interests in the Gulf. [2]

In addition to presenting interviews with Rajai-Far and with women martyrdom-seekers, the article also described the controversy among religious scholars, clerics, and experts in Iran regarding martyrdom operations.

http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/8055
13 July 2009:
حسن رضا کمپلیکس پولیس لائن راولپنڈی میں جہلم،اٹک،چکوال اور راولپنڈی سے آئے ہوئے 150 سے زائد علمائے دیوبند اور دیوبند مدارس کے مہتمم حضرات کی میٹنگ میں خودکش حملوں کی روک تھام اور انسداد کیلئے مشترکہ لائحہ عمل تیار کیا۔ علمائے کرام نے خودکش حملوں کو حرام اور گناہ کبیرہ قرار دے کر خودکش حملہ کرنے والے کو دائرہ اسلام سے خارج قرار دیا ہے۔
...
تمام شرکاء علماء دیوبند اس بات پر متفق تھے کہ خودکش حملہ گناہ کبیرہ ہے اسلام میں حرام ہے اور ایسا کرنے والا دائرہ اسلام سے خارج ہے علمی بحثوں کو عوامی بحث نہ بنایا جائے۔ دوران خطاب متنازعہ باتوں سے پرہیز کیا جائے،مدارس کی انتظامی کمیٹی بنائی جائے جو سرپرائز وزٹ کر کے ان کے تمام مدرسہ میں کسی اجنبی کو ٹھہرنے کی اجازت نہ دی جائے،مدرسہ کے تمام اساتذہ اور طلباء کے کوائف ان کے ریکارڈ مرتب کر کے باقاعدہ رجسٹر مرتب کئے جائیں۔ مدارس کے دروازے کھلے رکھے جائیں گے۔ یہ کمیٹیاں کسی وقت بھی ان کے معاملات اور طلباء کی سرگرمیوں کی پڑتال کریں گی مساجد اور مدارس کے باہر حدیث مبارک تحریر کر کے آویزاں کی جائے مسلمان وہ ہے جس کی زبان اور ہاتھ سے دوسرے لوگ محفوظ رہیں۔ مدارس سے کہا گیا ہے وہ طلباء کو موبائل فون رکھنے کی اجازت نہ دیں۔ 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3928443.ece

22 Nov 2013: A senior Iranian cleric who boasted of being the godfather of suicide attacks during the 1980s has been injured by a bombing in which the attackers killed themselves in Lebanon this week. Reports in Iran suggest that Issa Tabatabai was among those wounded by the blasts at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on Tuesday. The double suicide bombing, claimed by a militant group affiliated to al-Qaeda, killed at least 23 people, including an Iranian diplomat, and injured more than 140.

... 

In the past he has championed suicide bombing, or “martyrdom operations”. The cleric has bragged that he helped to give birth to the instrument of terror and was linked to a number of lethal attacks during Lebanon’s civil war, including the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy that killed 63 people and marked the beginning of Islamist attacks on American targets . . .

Suicide is haram (sinful) under Islamic law. However, in a 2010 interview, Mr Tabatabai said he had urged the Supreme Leader to bend the rules after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

“A Lebanese Shia cleric issued a fatwa saying, ‘Under the present conditions, fighting Israel is like committing suicide and suicide is haram in Islam.’ I quickly hurried back to Tehran to see Imam Khomeini and told him about the fatwa,” Mr Tabatabai said.

To fight back against the Israelis, the cleric asked Khomeini if suicide bombing could be justified under Islamic law. “Imam Khomeini said, ‘No, this is not suicide, this is martyrdom, this is jihad [holy war], this is definitely permissible.’ This is how I got the fatwa on suicide bombings from the imam and how everything changed in Lebanon ever since,” Mr Tabatabai said.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cleric-iran-will-use-suicide-operations-to-send-its-message-to-the-world/
17 Nov 2014: "A hardline Iranian cleric affiliated with the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Iran has used “suicide operations” in the past and will use them again “to send its message to the world,” according to a translation of his original Farsi remarks.  Iranian cleric and political leader Mehdi Taeb issued these threats as negotiations between Tehran and the West enter their final stages."


http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/5061/10Dec_Kafeyan.pdf?sequence=3
Prior to 1994, martyrdom operations were almost exclusively employed by Shiites, and only when their homeland was threatened. This Shia exclusivity was understandable based on the 1,400-year historical tradition of martyrdom within Shia Islam. However, since that time, almost the exact opposite has been true with Sunni radicals not only greatly expanding the number of suicide attacks, but expanding the target set for the attacks to include non-combatants and specifically targeting Muslims as well. This shift occurred despite there being little historical basis for the veneration of martyrs in Sunni Islam since the Umayyad dynasty. One of the primary reasons for this paradigmatic shift lies with the differences in the religious clergy between Sunni and Shia Islam and the relationship with their respective populations. Where the hierarchal Shia ulama were able to restrain and then effectively end Hezbollah’s use of suicide attacks, once the results were deemed not to be worthy of the sacrifice of the martyr, the Sunni ulama are far too fragmented and fearful of becoming even less relevant in the face of growing Islamic revivalism. Another reason for the difference seen in contemporary martyrdom operations is Sunni Islam’s lack of a contiguous historical tradition of martyrdom. This lack of contiguous tradition has allowed radical Sunni elements to effectively rewrite their history concerning martyrdom, and create a culture of martyrdom to suit their contemporary political ambitions. With a fragmented and impotent Sunni ulama at the highest levels of scholarship, radical Sunni Salafi-Jihadists have now expanded the target set of martyrdom operations to include not only innocents and civilians, but even other Muslims, all of which is forbidden by the Quran."


Anti-suicide bombing fatwas

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1607.htm  
Sheikh 'Abd Al-Mun'im Mustafa Halima, known as Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, a Syrian expatriate living in London, is considered to be a prominent theoretician of the Salafi jihadist trend in Islam. On August 24, 2005 he posted, on his eponymous website, an article that included a fatwa against suicide attacks.

In his article, Al-Tartusi wrote: "These actions are closer to suicide [intihar] than to martyrdom [istishhad], and they are forbidden... The jihad fighters who wisely ambush and lie in wait for the enemy get at the enemy and cause him greater damage and loss, in terms of quality and quantity, than what is achieved by the dubious suicide bombing operations - which sow discord between Muslims and their 'ulama…"

  
Secular suicide bombers

http://www.meforum.org/1826/contrasting-secular-and-religious-terrorism
"Suicide bombing was never and still is not as frequent a tactic for secular agenda terrorists as it is for Islamist groups. While a few secular agenda terrorists starved themselves to death in prison in Germany or Ireland,[35] their suicides were not part of operations but came only after capture. However, there have been three secular terrorist campaigns that have embraced suicide terrorism: pro-Syrian secular groups in Lebanon in the early 1980s, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kuridstan, PKK) in Turkey.
Between 1983 and 1986, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party was responsible for ten suicide bombings; Syrian Baath Party members conducted seven, and the Socialist Nasserite party executed two suicide bombings.[36] Although the LTTE was founded in 1972, it did not launch its first suicide attack until 1987, four years after Hezbollah pioneered such tactics in Lebanon. The change in Tamil strategy came when the Sri Lankan army forced their collective backs against the wall, arresting most of the LTTE leadership in 1981 and making significant military inroads. While the Tigers initially provided their fighters with a poison capsule in order to enable them to avoid interrogation, between 1981 and 1987, they began to attack targets with explosive-laden trucks, the driver exiting the vehicle moments before the explosion. Such attacks were imprecise and so, between 1987 and 2000, some 200 Tamil terrorists, 30 percent of whom were women, conducted 168 suicide bomb missions.[37]"
The PKK only began using suicide-bombing tactics in 1995, targeting government and military installations rather than populated areas. Suicide bombing was never a major component of its terrorist operations; it launched only fifteen suicide attacks between 1995 and 1999, some of which were particularly deadly; [38] gunfire, land mines, and delayed fuse bomb attacks account for the majority of its operations, which have killed thousands since 1984. Again, suicide attacks have been the exception rather than the rule. "

LTTE inspired by Lebanese groups

http://www.meforum.org/5320/islam-suicide-bombings
"a fuller picture is revealed by the LTTE's contact with Islamist groups, including translation of their manuals into Tamil,[33] and by the fact that the LTTE did not engage in suicide terrorism prior to its contact with Hezbollah.[34]"

http://www.crono911.net/docs/CST.pdf
"LTTE was very much aware of the phenomenon of suicide attack, even before they began to use this modus operatndi. In fact, the LTTE has translated many of the training manuals of the Middle Eastern terrorist groups into the Tamil language, and many of its activists are intimately aware of the tactics and the strategies used by the Middle Eastern groups. Other than that, this particular group trained in the Beka’a Valley in the 1970’s. It had extensive links with the non-Islamic groups."


Barelvis' fatwa on suicide bombing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4556619.stm

17 May 2005: Leading Islamic scholars in Pakistan have issued a decree against suicide attacks, describing them as forbidden if carried out in a Muslim country. The decree has been authorised by 58 religious leaders, representing all schools of Islamic thought in Pakistan including the minority Shia community.

The move is an attempt to stop suicide bombers carrying out attacks on places of worship in Pakistan.

But the decree does not apply to bombings in Kashmir or Palestine.

Leading Islamic scholar Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman told the BBC the decree had been issued because attacks on places of worship in Pakistan have been blamed on suicide bombers in recent years.

......However, the head of a well-known seminary for mainstream Sunni Muslims in Lahore, Sarfraz Naeemi refused to sign the decree.

He says it is a government-sponsored move which could be used by the United States to justify its propaganda against suicide attacks.

"There is a need to issue a decree against the Americans who have been slaughtering Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I have serious reservations about the present move," Mr Naeemi said in an interview with the BBC."

http://web.archive.org/web/20070330081850/http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007/02/25/story_25-2-2007_pg3_1
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/25-Feb-2007/editorial-our-clerics-favour-suicide-bombing
25 Feb 2007: "Maulana Amir Hamza of Jamaatud Dawa is quoted as saying that a suicide attack is an act of terrorism and that someone who kills himself to kill others also accounts for the sins of those killed. But he also added (found on website) that "no suicide attack is justified in a country which has Islam as the state religion, ruled by a Muslim ruler and is not under occupation by infidels". This means that Iraq is excluded from this definition because it is occupied by infidels. In other words, Maulana Hamza would justify suicide bombing in Iraq against the occupying infidel.

This also means that suicide-bombing is not okay in Pakistan — because Islam is the state religion, the country is not occupied by infidels and General Musharraf is a Muslim ruler — but okay in a non-Muslim country like the United Kingdom, for instance. The scholar is clearly worried about Muslim suicide-bombers killing innocent Muslims. But what may become moot at any time is whether even Pakistan can qualify as an Islamic state and whether General Musharraf can be denounced as a bad Muslim for allying with an infidel like the USA.

The second cleric included in the survey is Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, formerly of the JUI, who actually allows suicide-bombing while alluding to Palestine!

Then there is a former minister and Sunni cleric, Dr Mehmood Ahmad Ghazi, who says that suicide-bombing is wrong but he too imposes the condition of the Islamic state, implying that it may be okay to kill innocent people in a non-Muslim state. Dr Anis of Jama'at-e Islami says he can't be sure if suicide-bombing is wrong, but he too refers to Palestine without noting that Al Fatah condemns suicide-bombing while Hamas actually does it.

Our morose-looking Barelvi mufti, Munibur Rehman, says nothing new, as expected, but also maintains that suicide bombing in an Islamic state is not legitimate. This implies that one may suicide-bomb innocent non-Muslims and even target a non-Muslim state with impunity. Thank God, the shia scholar, Allama Qamber Abbas Naqvi, says that even a non-Muslim can't be killed in this manner.

Therefore a re-reading of the views of these gentlemen leads to the conclusion that they have outlawed suicide-bombing only in very specific conditions and not generally at all.

In fact our clerics have confirmed that Al Qaeda, which began the trend on 9/11, can go on doing it. It is not clear if killing the Shias in Iraq is wrong because the ulema did not explain if they thought Iraq was being ruled by Muslims. It is quite possible that they may eventually disqualify Iraq as an Islamic state because the Americans are in occupation there. All of them cunningly ducked the question whether Al Qaeda's killing of the Shias of Iraq — and the killing of innocent Sunnis by thugs like Muqtada al Sadr — was okay.

Tragically, they all allowed suicide, expressly forbidden by the Quran, under the condition of jihad. They also abstained from explaining what jihad was: war initiated by the Islamic state or by private parties posing as pious entities pursuing amr and nahi? In short, was jihad an 'official' function or a private one? They also did not adjudicate the global trend of dubbing private jihad as terrorism. Can the Muslims pursue private wars in the face of international law that recognises legitimate war only when it is conducted by a state?

What were the clerics driving at? If they wanted to outlaw suicide-bombing in Pakistan, why did they refer to Palestine where suicide-bombing is done to kill innocent people as legitimate collateral damage?"


http://nation.com.pk/Politics/15-Oct-2008/Ulema-Council-warns-govt-of-jihad
15 Oct 2008: "LAHORE - The Muttahida Ulema-Council on Tuesday issued a fatwa (decree) declaring suicide attacks in country haram (illegal) and najaaiz (unlawful).
'Suicide attacks in Pakistan are illegal and unlawful, but apparently it seems to be that the govt is behind this violence so that patriotic Pakistanis could not launch movement for country's solidarity, and gather at one point in millions.
In view of the present circumstances, the govt must immediately stop supporting US war on terror, and if it would not do so, then we will announce Jihad against the present rulers'.
The unanimous decree was announced at the conclusion of the Council's meeting, attended by ulema of Jama'at Ahl-e-Sunnat, Ahl-e-Tashee, Ahl-e-Hadees, and the Deobandi and Barelvi schools of thought.
Prominent who attended were Dr Sarfraz Naeemi, Engineer Saleemullah Khan, Mufti Muhammad Khan Qadri, Maulana Muhammad Khan Leghari and Mufti Safdar Ali Qadri.
On this occasion, Dr Sarfraz Naeemi said that it seems that the govt was backing the suicide attackers to sabotage any movement launched by the people."


No Shia suicide bombers in Iraq and Syria

Since mid-1990s, Shias have largely shunned suicide attacks and Salafi-jihadis have claimed the lion's share of suicide attacks across the world.

http://insct.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Moghadam-Assaf.2008.Motives-for-Martrydom.International-Security.pdf

For example, there are no Shia suicide bombers in Iraq:

https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-absence-of-shia-suicide-attacks-in-iraq
"Contrary to the Hizb Allah-Amal conflict in Lebanon during the 1980s, when suicide attacks were used as a way for the factions to outbid each other to gain more popularity and legitimacy within the Shi`a community, the Iraqi case of Sadr-ISCI rivalry has hardly given way to the emergence of suicide military campaigns. This is primarily because the nature of Sadr-ISCI competition within local Iraqi politics differs greatly from that of their Lebanese counterpart: while Iraqi militias already held relative political power within the Iraqi state in the post-war period, the two Lebanese groups lacked political authority due to a weak state and the highly marginalized and then-minority status of the Shi`a community within Lebanese society."
"By avoiding certain discursive arguments in favor of suicide attacks within the framework of classical Shi`a traditions of martyrdom, Shi`a clerics, along with various non-clerical leaders of Shi`a militias, have successfully prevented the Muharram narratives of self-sacrifice to attain a suicidal military significance. Unlike the Iranian martyrdom operations by the Basiji militias during the Iran-Iraq war, largely inspired by the story of Husayn’s martyrdom in Karbala narrated by mid-ranking clerics in the early years of the 1979 revolution, Shi`a Iraqis have focused more on the narrative of Muharram in the medium of ritual commemorations of Ashura, with its performances made legal after 2003."

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/suicide-bombing-increase-shiite.html#ixzz42DLtgAs7
Dec 2013: In a Dec. 1 interview in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut, a source close to Shiite militias fighting in Syria informed Al-Monitor of two Shiite suicide attacks that took place during the last week in November. Civil activists inside Syria confirmed the events, which were launched during clashes in Ghouta, near Damascus, against opposition militants.
Al-Monitor's source said, "A small Shiite group of 20 militants was fighting against 500 opposition militants in the Ghouta region, near Damascus. The chances of winning the battle were very slim, and there was no way to withdraw from the battlefield. A heroic young man had wrapped explosives around his waist and rushed toward the enemies and blew himself up, killing and wounding about 100 combatants."
This was not the first Shiite suicide attack, referred to as "martyrdom operations." Such attacks have proven to be a successful means of unorganized fighting on the part of various groups affiliated with Shiite political movements. For instance, the Islamic Dawa Party exploded a car bomb at the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut in 1981, killing more than 60 people including diplomats, employees and Lebanese visitors. Scores were, of course, wounded. The party carried out a number of similar operations in Iraq.
A number of young men volunteered for suicide operations during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. Among them was Mohammed Hussein Fahmida, 13, who became a hero of the Islamic revolution when he blew himself up in front of an Iraqi tank to stop it from reaching the Iranian city of Khorramshahr at the beginning of the conflict.
Nevertheless, the magnitude of suicide attacks on the part of Sunni groups is significantly higher when compared with those carried out by Shiites. This is in part because Shiites and Sunnis have fundamentally different views about targeting civilians. Whereas Sunni scholars have issued fatwas permitting the killing of civilians to eliminate the enemies hiding among them, there has thus far been no Shiite fatwa justifying suicide attacks on the battlefield or in any other situation.
A Hezbollah field commander was asked In an Al-Monitor interview how the party justifies the suicide operations in Syria. He replied, “[Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah had gone to Iran before he officially declared the party’s intervention in the war raging in Syria. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, told him that Syria is the second Karbala. This means that we must sacrifice our lives for this cause, as did Imam Hussein in Karbala,” he said."