Hmm... regarding suicide bombing generally:
Islam comes out pretty strongly against suicide as a general concept however it also believes that it is ok to die in battle (providing you are fighting for a just cause). If you commit ordinary suicide then you will go to hell but if you die in battle (and death was the only likely outcome of you joining in said battle) then you will go to heaven, even though you knew it was a near certainty that you would die. For example, if a powerful army invaded my country and I decided to fight them by planting a bomb near one of their tanks, I would be pretty sure that I would get caught and shot. So by merely deciding to fight this army I was, in effect, committing suicide because I knew I would die.
Islam would define my action not as suicide but as fighting the enemy. So islam does allow for suicide bombing but only in certain circumstances. These circumstances are (strictly speaking) if you are defending your house. If the enemy soldiers are about to enter your house and you have no other means of fighting back then it would be ok to blow yourself up but ONLY if you think you will take some enemy soldiers with you.
This concept of defending your house is extended to mean your country. This is why many muslims are ambivalent (or even supportive) of suicide bombers in Palestine. They see them as defending their country. The Palestinian suicide bombers are not particularly operating outside of islam. The issue starts to get cloudier when they go into Israel to detonate a bomb but they can justify this (islamically) by saying that they consider Israel to be their land.
The issue starts to get cloudier still with suicide bombers in Iraq. Whilst Iraqis may have the right (islamically speaking) to suicide bomb the occupying american force it seems that most of the insurgents are from outside Iraq. These people are adhering to an even more extreme view that suicide bombing is ok not only to defend your house or your country but to defend your faith if you perceive it is under attack. This view would have islam as being a bit like NATO - an attack on one is an attack on all. This view is supported, to some extent, by comments made by Mohammed - that the ummah is like a body and if one part gets sick then the rest of the body feels it but generally it is a fairly outre view of islam and not mainstream. A true jihad would only be generated by a concerted attempt to eradicate islam. It is not encumbent on every muslim to go and fight every time a muslim country gets into a minor war. Thus there has not really been a true jihad since the time of Mohammed (when there were some attempts made to fight his tribe).
The whole issue gets even cloudier when one considers 9/11 and 7/7. These people are not defending their house, or even their country, or even their religion (except by a very tortuous line of reasoning). It's important to draw a distinction between Hamas and al Q. Hamas see themselves as engaging in defensive jihad but al Q are into the idea of offensive jihad - fighting to establish the true islam. Offensive jihad is a more controversial idea and not particularly a big part of islam in this day and age. Although it is a very old idea and the early muslims swept across North Africa in military conquest. Offensive jihad may still be within the boundaries of islam but only when islam is strong enough to be able to accomplish it.
Offensive jihad was most recently promulgated by
Abdullah Azzam, although they trace their ideas back to approx the 13th century. Azzam was a lecturer at a University in Jeddah and Bin Laden was a student there at the same time so this is where they probably first met. They fought together in Afghanistan but disagreed over some issues. Azzam wanted to concentrate on attacking "un-islamic" regimes in the muslim world whereas Bin Laden wanted to attack the west as well. Azzam was killed in 1989 by landmines which were detonated as his car approached. No one knows who killed him but one possibility was that it was Bin Laden. Many radicalist websites and organisations use the word Azzam in their name.
Anyway, the main point I wanted to make was that many people say that suicide bombing is a tactic of a desperate people who have no hope. I don't think this is entirely true. It may be true of the Palestinians to some extent but I think people need to realise that there is also an ideological justification for it which allows for it to used as a weapon of choice. Iraq, 9/11, 7/7 and others should really be enough to put this idea (that it is solely a tactic of the oppressed) to bed. The people that commit suicide bombings in lands other than their own think they are acting within the limits allowed by islam and thus will go to heaven.
Azzam's teachings have lots of flaws (even from a conservative islamic perspective) but I guess hotheaded youngsters that want to fight injustice rarely stop to actually think about what they are doing. Problem is though they only mix with people who agree with them. Classic terrorist cell mentality - they all reaffirm each others ideas. This cell mentality has been shown in all terrorist cells around the world, muslim or not (including IRA, Bader-Meinhof, Tamil Tigers etc).
The problem with cell mentality is - suppose I am in a cell with 5 other people and they all agree with each other. Do I agree with them because 5 people can't be wrong or do I form the conclusion that the other 5 are actually a bit dumb and I don't want to associate with them any more? I could find 5 other people who would all say different things to that group, or another 5 who would say yet different things. In fact, you can find lots of groups of 5 people in the world who will all say different things. I think as a general rule you should not listen to other people so much and only listen to yourself. Herds are for cows not humans.
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