Before the hour of his jihad, on the very page where he had copied the summons to love d**h, Mohammed Atta acknowledged that it was a call to perform acts unnatural to men. “Everybody hates d**h, fears d**h,” he wrote, but then explained why men should love it nonetheless. “Only the believers who know the life after d**h and the reward after d**h, will be the ones seeking d**h.” Mohammed Atta had found a cause that was greater than life itself
But was Mohammed Atta right? Did his martyrs sign up for d**h to gain a greater return? This presumes that the only reason people would seek to end their lives in this world is the hope of reward in another. Do they not also run towards what they fear? When we have guilty secrets to hide do we not find ways to end the awful wait before judgment by leaving the clues that betray us? Especially if we are withholding secrets from those we fear and love. Are we not all guilty in the eyes of God, and did not Mohammed Atta fear and love Him?
What if martyrs hate life more than they love d**h? If we look at the scanty record of Mohammed Atta's time on this earth, it suggests that escape was always on his mind. “Purify your heart and clean it of all earthly matters,” he wrote in his instructions to his martyr team. “The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived.”