There is no one size fits all characterization for the moral character of willful suicide.
I think people who applied one size fits all description of courageous or cowardly to the act of suicide mostly do so to further their own selfish agenda, and not based on any sincere interest in the motivations and the factors involved in the consideration of the person contemplating suicide
For example, it is obvious why the Japanese military of WWII and radical Islamists, both characterized by an imperial desire to domibate others coupled with inability to do so through superior resource, economics, technology, organization, or planning, would find it expedient to glorify suicide as a Way to make up for systemic inadequacy by extracting greater sacrifice from the hapless. It is also obvious why Christianity, which aggrandize itself by converting human beings capable of mastering their own destinies into prostrate drooling supplicants, would abhor the loss of its own control whatever the consequence of that control upon the controlled.
I think people who applied one size fits all description of courageous or cowardly to the act of suicide mostly do so to further their own selfish agenda, and not based on any sincere interest in the motivations and the factors involved in the consideration of the person contemplating suicide
For example, it is obvious why the Japanese military of WWII and radical Islamists, both characterized by an imperial desire to domibate others coupled with inability to do so through superior resource, economics, technology, organization, or planning, would find it expedient to glorify suicide as a Way to make up for systemic inadequacy by extracting greater sacrifice from the hapless. It is also obvious why Christianity, which aggrandize itself by converting human beings capable of mastering their own destinies into prostrate drooling supplicants, would abhor the loss of its own control whatever the consequence of that control upon the controlled.
