Does Islamic law authorize nuclear jihad?
If it didn’t before, it does now. In theory, writes Noah Feldman, the Koran forbids attacks on Muslims, women, and children. Those strictures have been relaxed, however, as warfare — and popular opinion — have evolved. Shari’a, no less than man-made law, tends to follow the facts on the ground, God’s will be damned: The equivocation by Muslim scholars with respect to the technique of suicide bombing reflected the reality that throughout the Muslim world, Palestinian suicide bombers were by 2001 identified as martyrs dying in a just cause. This, in turn, was the natural outgrowth of the decades before suicide bombing, when Palestinian terrorists were applauded for killing Israeli civilians, including women and children. Given that embracing Palestinian suicide bombing had become a widespread social norm, it would have been essentially unthinkable for an important Muslim scholar to condemn the practice without losing his standing among Muslims worldwide. In the Islamic world, as in the U
