The Inventor Of Suicide Bombers

Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizbollah, is believed to have issued the fatwa that encouraged suicide terrorists to detonate truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. But as David Ignatius points out, he was among the first Muslim clerics to condemn the 9/11 attacks and he described Osama bin Laden as “profiteering” from misery in the Muslim world. The column by Ignatius provides an interesting look into the divisions within the ranks of Islamic radicals; these days Fadlallah’s attention is focused not on attacking the U.S. but on “this bizarre situation called Israel.”