In an essay in his Facebook account, Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, an Ilokano writer and professor of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, mentioned the ideology of heaven and the suicide bomber.
Dr. Agcaoili did not elaborate on the concept of the ideology of heaven and whether the suicide bomber has an ideology. Some readers came forward with the idea of hell, perhaps, in contrast to heaven, as a reward for people's deeds in their earthly lives. As regards the suicide bomber, a reader was wondering what's going on in the mind of the suicide bomber as he does what he is tasked to do.
We are no ideologue, but we shall simplify the complex issues by asking simple questions, thus:
What and where is heaven?
What and where is hell?
What is the ideology of a suicide bomber?
As far as I know as Bible translator, heaven and hell are Christian concepts. That's where sinful people go after they die. Jews, Muslims and other faiths have their own versions of heaven and hell.
The suicide bomber is a phenomenon created by followers of Islam like Osama bin Laden. It is practically a weapon of mass destruction. Against the West. Against infidels. A recruit or a volunteer would be strapped with explosives concealed in a vest. After saying his vows or whatever is the ceremony, he goes to a specific target, and detonates the device, killing or maiming as many people as possible. The usual targets are mosques and churches and any house of worship.
Bin Laden was killed two or three years ago by American Navy Seals in his hideout in Abottabad in Pakistan. But his idea lives on and suicide bombers have killed thousands of people, mostly in the Islamic countries of Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Heaven is supposed to the the dwelling place of the Deity or God. From his throne, he judges the people and decides where they should go in the afterlife. If they did good, obeying His commandments in their earthly lives, Peter will give them the key and they will be with Him, needless to say, in heaven or Paradise. For those who transgressed His laws, they will be thrown in that hell of fire and sulfur and suffer forever.
This is the concept of God, at least among the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible that also contains the five books of the Torah of the present-day Jews.
As a Bible translator, we learned about the tetragramaton from an American, a certain Dr. Noel D. Osborn, who was our coordinator in the Ilokano Bible Project in Baguio City in the 1970s. This is a four-letter Greek word, theonym, transliterated into Latin as YHWH, a holy name that was too sacred to be pronounced or articulated that the ancient Jews made substitutions that included "Adonai" (The Lord) and "The Blessed One."
We don't know whether Allah resides in heaven, honestly. It must be a different God. In our readings, the ancestors of those who are Muslims by faith now, worshiped deities and one of them was called Allah. Their version of Paradise or Heaven can be gleaned by the phenomenon of the suicide bombers. Although they become body parts as they are killed in their attack, they are assured their place in Paradise as their reward as martyrs to the cause of Islam. They will be met by seven virgins in their eternal abode.(In one incident recently, a suicide bomber worked his way through a crowded marketplace in Baghdad and detonated his explosives, killing an estimated 74 people.)
From these beliefs in God, sprung the opposing religions of Christianity and Islam in mostly the desert lands of the so-called Holy Land.
And comes the eternal question: is religion good or evil? Is it stoking the horrible wars now raging in the countries of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon?
Heaven must be somewhere. Anyway, did it exist on earth in Biblical times? Was it Eden? Or was it in a beautiful garden East of Eden? In the original holy lands that include Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and Israel. there are place names here that existed in Biblical times. In Iraq, there is a province there called Nineveh mentioned in the sacred writing; and there is Palmyra, too, the ruins--temple, buildings and other artifacts- of which have been reduced to ashes by ISIS.
Heaven as a metaphor for good and pleasant place does exist. Or there is such a thing as a heavenly place or heavenly feeling. Or something close to heaven where there is peace and contentment, love, charity and understanding. where there are no suicide bombers. Hawaii? Japan? Singapore? Or somewhere in a corner of the Philippines, an island, perhaps? Is there a Shang-rila where there are no problems, where one is forever young?
Heaven is in the mind. You can live amidst the chaos, even in Manila's squatter areas or cardboard dwellings under the overpass. Heaven on earth does exist. Even in the troubled Middle East where the Caliph has established residence in Mosul and rule his people with heavy hands. And according to the strict sharia law that imposes punishment such as beheading, killing even innocent women and children, cutting of female genitals.
And hell? In a domed area in the sky above the heavens? Fly an airplane to go there?
Hell is everywhere on earth. Hell is where Eden was. That is, it begins there and it is growing in size, now a one big hell created by the followers of a totalitarian barbaric ideology.
The Kingdom of Heaven. Versus the Hell of Sulfur and Fire--the eternal threat to wipe out Mankind and the many gods. Bloody political horses are now riding high in the wide scorching desert where were born the Christ and the Anti-Christ and the Prophet.
Fight the murderous, brutal ideological forces? There is a choice. Fight or let pass the chaos and mayhem, the killing and the burning. But for Christians, there should not be another choice, but fight to the End Times. They, too, like the Jews and other non-Muslims are marked for annihilation--this is in the Qur'an, the sacred book of the barbarians.
