Do Female Islamic Suicide Bombers Get 72 Virgins As Well?

There is no belief which is not logical and complete for its believers – or if even so, we “believe because it is unbelievable”. But you can hardly find a belief which wouldn't be bizarre, strange and sometimes terribly inconsistent for the outsiders.

Just an example, on the occasion of the attached video: the 72 virgins in the heaven, whom the Koran writes about. Let's think about it for a while, without preconception (if we can do so).

If we try to take it word by word, the ironic questions of the video will be understandable, and we laugh at the scene with the would-be terrorist girl… But let us admit that a huge number of any other belief can be similarly strange if we try to find out its “realistic details”. You know Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain, don't you? In the moment when we try to calculate (to mention the simplest point) the area and population of the heaven as we should do this in the case of a “real world” country, the style turns ironic.

But if we take the “72 virgins” as the symbol of “measureless beauty”, “inexpressible happiness as an award for the best”, “more and better than one could imagine” or anything what “heaven” can mean: it is nothing else but a trial to express something in a language understandable to anybody.

So I try (as an outsider) to be keen to understand this symbol, accepting that it is a legend for me but some of the basics of world view for others. And I try to be keen to believe that these “others” will understand my beliefs or non-beliefs by the same way, having learnt the lesson that not the words but the values are worth to fight for; and life is one of the greatest values, as we all know from the ten commandments, in respect we all are brothers and sisters to.

By Garth Vader