Martyrs, brave or stupid?

[MetalHeadz]

But if someone is willing to die for what they believe, what if that belief is irrational or meaningless? The problem is we all see this through our cultural perspective. I believe killing yourself in the name of your God(s) is wrong but many people, not just in Islam, would agree that at least dying and sometimes killing in the name of their God(s) is justified, brave/honor worthy.

This is the best point made so far.

[milosh]

In Arabic, a martyr is termed "shaheed" (literally, "witness"). The concept of the shaheed is discussed in the Hadith, the sayings of Muhammad; the term does not appear in the Qur'an in the technical sense, but the later exegetical tradition has read it to mean martyr in the few passages that it does appear in. The first martyr in Islam was the old woman Sumayyah bint Khabbab[2], the first Muslim to die at the hands of the polytheists of Mecca (specifically, Abu Jahl). A famous person widely regarded as a martyr - indeed, an archetypal martyr for the Shia - is Husayn bin Ali, who died at the hands of the forces of the second Umayyad caliph Yazid I at Karbala. The Shia commemorate this event each year at Aashurah.

Muslims who die in a legitimate jihad bis saif (struggle with the sword, or Islamic holy war) are sometimes considered shahid. This usage became controversial in the late 20th century (due to the Islamic strictures against suicide), when it was sometimes applied to suicide bombers by various groups. There a huge controversy about the meaning of jihad in Islam, since Muhammad never claimed that suicide is equal to jihad; Jihad is an act of fighting for the Dar al Islam, either to defend it against an aggressor or to bring about its expansion. Where Muhammad explained, in hadith, that those who commit suicide are forbidden to even smell heaven. Many contend that these murders are contrary to the spirit of Islam.