Will there be a fatwa against suicide bombing?

Published in http://www.bangladesh-web.com/ on December 1 2005.

Will Muslim leaders come forward and issue a fatwa against suicide bombing? Palestinian militants mastered the art during their two intifada's against Israelis.

Many supporters of the Palestinian cause maintained that that was their only form of self defense and therefore was a legitimate form of warfare. Al-Qaeda took suicide bombing to new heights over the last few years globally, and now to an ugly level in Iraq where in the name of freeing Iraqis from American occupation, the organization has killed more Iraqis than those that died in the US led invasion itself!

This cancerous trend has now affected certain brainwashed thugs in Bangladesh. Believers of global Jihad against "infidels" and supporters of Islamic Sharia law in Bangladesh really ought to be put on notice by non-political Imams and Muslim scholars. If Islam prohibits suicide (which it does to my knowledge), how can suicide bombing be construed to be a legitimate form of warfare? Moreover, how is it morally acceptable to deliberately target innocent civilians?

Will there be a fatwa against this heinous trend that has permeated parts of the Islamic world? Will this give pause to those Muslims who constantly act like victims of global politics and tacitly support jihadis in principle if not their tactics? Will this once and for all awake those in Bangladesh who have been in coma for the last several years and who've been in denial about the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh despite clear alerts from the media (local and international)?

Moreover, will the heinous acts of barbarism in Bangladesh on November 29 give pause to those with authority to reflect on how they may have contributed to the environment of such savagery through either their political or religious beliefs, or both?