The concept of martyrdom is not exclusive to any distinct religion, faith, or society. Becoming a martyr is an idea that has been embraced by many different people with very different beliefs and ideas. A martyr by definition is “a person who willingly suffers death rather than renounce his or her religion. (Dictionary.com) Although this definition varies depending on who is asked, the basic idea is that martyrdom is influenced by religion. The act of giving ones life for a religious cause is what makes someone a martyr. Due to the many different beliefs of what a martyr is, becoming a martyr in different religions means different things and is achieved through different acts. Some people may give their life for others, some may take their own, and a few may take innocent lives in combination with their own.
Contrary to popular belief, martyrdom is not an idea exclusive to Islam. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, also known as the Semitic faiths, all believe in the concept of becoming a martyr. The only difference regarding martyrdom between these three religions is that the motivating factors and path to becoming a martyr changed over time to best fit each individual doctrine. (Hakam) Christianity itself is based on the belief that Jesus Christ gave his life to wash away the sins of man. This could be considered the greatest act of martyrdom of all time. In order to preserve the innocence of his followers and save their souls, Jesus was tortured and willingly crucified knowing that he was giving his life for a bigger cause. Jesus Christ hoped that by giving his life he would give mankind a second chance. This is why many Christians devote their lives to living a life free of sin with hopes of going to heaven after their time h...
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...e defending their faith.
Works Cited
Martyr. Dictionary.com. LLC. Retrieved October 27, 2011, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/martyr
Hakam, S. (n.d.). The concept of martyrdom and sikhism. Retrieved from http://www.globalsikhstudies.net/articles/The Concept of Martyrdom and Sikhism-Dr Hakam Singh.pdf
Greenberg, I. Israeli Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Tourism. (n.d.). Masada: desert fortress overlooking the dead sea. Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/Masada1.html
Zarick, A. (2007). Shades of martyrdom. Dean's Book Course, 2. Retrieved from http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:9vRoYLhK_6QJ:scholar.google.com/ shades of martyrdom Allison Zarick&hl=en&as_sdt=0,3
Pakin, Tern Toles. "Explosive Baggage: Female Palestinian Suicide Bombers and the Rhetoric of Emotion." Women and Language Fall 2002: 79-88
Sartwell, Crispin. "The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror." Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Custom, 2009. 252-54. Print.
Anson Rainey and R. Steven Notley are the authors of The Sacred Land Bridge, which is an Atlas of the biblical world and includes maps, pictures, and historical cementation as to the significance of this region. The biblical world that this atlas focuses on is defined as the eastern Mediterranean littoral, or more commonly called the Levant in modern archeological discussions. In my critique of this book I will be focusing on pages 30-34 which will define the boundaries and explain the importance of the Levant.
“ A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves.” ~Mother Teresa. Servicemen like firefighters, police officers, and military personnel sacrifice their lives every single day. Harriet Tubman made over a dozen trips to the South to help free slaves. Moche’ from the novel Night, went back to his home to warn his friends and family about what was about to happen to them. However, Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice. How much do people sacrifice? These people risk their lives, freedom, and safety. Not everyone is a selfish person, people like to help other people. That’s just humanity.
When describing a martyr or martyrdom one often thinks the terms within the ecclesiastical way in which a person dies for his or her religious cause often against his or her own desire. We must therefore look to the concept of dying for ones belief or cause by broaden...
In the world, there exist people who have beliefs strong enough that they are willing do die for them. Their convictions may be for their country, their family, or their religion. Some people chose to die for their beliefs while others are just objects of fate and die because of their beliefs while in the hands of others. For example, American soldiers don't often chose to die. They die because they are standing up for what they believe in and are killed because they are protecting what they believe in. They know they can potentially die but don't take their own lives. On the other hand, suicide bombers offer themselves fully as they kill themselves for their beliefs. People have been standing up and fighting for their beliefs for centuries in order to defend and protect their valued views. If they die protecting their sentiments, then they have died noble deaths. In Greek Literature, two women face their fates of dying by defending what they believe in. Ipheigeneia loves her father and in order to win the Trojan War, she must be sacrificed. She resists her fate at first but as expected she allows her father to do the necessary. Ipheigeneia is sacrificed. Additionally, Antigone faces her fate defending her brother Polyneices. He was murdered by his own brother; however, he was considered a traitor since he returned from exile and therefore was not allowed be buried properly. Antigone felt as his sister she must give him the proper burial. Kreon -the king of Thebes- was furious and sentenced her to death Later, he changes his decision but it is too late as she has taken her own life. These young, brave women are obviously similar while maintaining differences in their deaths.
In 2005, the Palestinian director and writer, Hany Abu-Assad, released his award winning motion picture, “Paradise Now.” The film follows two Palestinian friends, over a period of two days, who are chosen by an extremist terrorist group to carry out a suicide mission in Tel-Aviv during the 2004 Intifada. The mission: to detonate a bomb strapped to their stomachs in the city. Because the film industry seldom portrays terrorists as people capable of having any sort of humanity, you would think the director of “Paradise Now” would also depict the two main characters as heartless fiends. Instead he makes an attempt to humanize the protagonists, Khaled and Said, by providing us with a glimpse into their psyches from the time they discover they’ve been recruited for a suicide bombing operation to the very last moments before Said executes the mission. The film explores how resistance, to the Israeli occupation, has taken on an identity characterized by violence, bloodshed, and revenge in Palestinian territories. Khaled and Said buy into the widely taught belief that acts of brutality against the Israeli people is the only tactic left that Palestinians have to combat the occupation. In an effort to expose the falsity of this belief, Hany Abu-Assad introduces a westernized character named Suha who plays the voice of reason and opposition. As a pacifist, she suggests a more peaceful alternative to using violence as a means to an end. Through the film “Paradise Now,” Abu-Assad not only puts a face on suicide bombers but also shows how the struggle for justice and equality must be nonviolent in order to make any significant headway in ending the cycle of oppression between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Church, Kenneth. “Jihad.” Collateral Language. Ed. John Collins and Ross Glover. New York: NYU Press, 2000. 109-123.
In 1963, as protest to the authoritarian regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Buddhist monks began to go to public places in Vietnam and commit suicide, by drenching themselves in gasoline and setting themselves on fire. They did this as an act of civil disobedience, defined as an act of defiance of specific laws or policies of a formal structure which the individual or group believes to be unjust. The Buddhist civilization in Vietnam was not apparent to the Americans until the Buddhists began sacrificing themselves in Saigon’s public streets. The pictures of the monks engulfed in flames made world headlines and caused American intervention; and later the capture and killing of Diem and his brother. In contrast to these acts of civil disobedience, one can observe the actions of suicide bombers. In the Palestinian territories, those who support suicide bombing claim that it is merely a tactic of war in defense of their land and homes. Without superior weaponry, they see it as “a heroic act of martyrdom, a final act of resistance, stemming from desperation”(Suicide Bombers). Both the Buddhist monks and the “suicide bombers” in Palestine resort to self-sacrificial actions as their form of violent civil disobedience. Violent forms of civil disobedience should only be necessary to counter violence but never if it inhibits upon the liberties of the innocent. By this definition, the actions of the Buddhist monks are more justifiable than those of suicide bombers in the Middle East.
White, Matthew. Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres, and Atrocites Before the 20th Century. 1999-2010. Document. 30 October 2013.
Anyone willing to die for a cause is obviously wholly committed to it. Sincere, genuine belief is par for the course in martyrdom. Muslim radicals who martyr themselves for the sake of their faith are obviously committed to their beliefs. The difference in Christian martyrdom, however, is that the apostles died for a belief they claimed to have seen with their own eyes. “There is a massive difference between willingly dying for the sake of the religious ideas accepted from the testimony of others (Muslim radicals) and willingly dying for the proclamation of a faith based upon one 's own eyewitness account (apostles).”3
...awesome strength and believability. So while martyrdom may not actually say anything about the truth of what they say, it is very still very convincing.
Lila Abu-Lughod’s article titled, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” takes a closer look at the problematic ethnocentric approach many have when trying to gain an understanding of another culture that may be foreign to that individual. In this analytical paper, Lughod looks at women in Islam, specifically the treatment of women and how it might be utilized as a justification for invading into a country and liberating its people. The country Lughod refers to in her article is Afghanistan, and Lughod points out the misunderstanding from the people to the Bush administration like First Lady Laura Bush who believed that intervention was necessary to free women from the captivity of their own homes. It is important to consider the role that different lenses play into all of this, especially when one’s lenses are being shaped by the media. Depictions of covered women secluded from society leave a permanent image in the minds of many, who would then later support the idea of liberation. This paper will discuss that the practice of using propaganda when referring to the lifestyle in the Middle East is not exclusive to the U.S; rather it has been utilized throughout history. Additionally, we will take a closer look on the importance of symbols, such as veils in this case; help to further emphasize the cause to liberate. Finally, we will analyze Lughod’s plea towards cultural relativism and away from liberal imperialism.
In conclusion I think that it is wrong to die for your beliefs in any
Letter to Any Would-be Terrorists by Naomi Shihab Nye is protest literature, targeting possible would-be terrorists with the main goal of fighting the discriminatory injustice faced by Arab-Americans following the action of some individual Arabs after 9/11. In her letter Naomi Shihab Nye describes how proud she thinks Arabs should be about their origins and using that feeling and idea, exhibits as an example her own family’s living style to show to her audience the immensity and richness of the Arab community. She thinks Arab definitively should be proud of their heritage. She talks about her Palestinian father who has been defying the word terrorist from the Arabic community to her American mother, who as she stat...
A simple definition of sacrifice is to give up something for the sake of something else, whether it is for another human life, for an idea, or even for a belief. “She was 17 years old. He stood glaring at her, his weapon before her face. ‘Do you believe in God?’ She paused. It was a life-or-death question. ‘Yes, I believe in God.’ ‘Why?’ asked her executioner. But he never gave her the chance to respond. The teenage girl lay dead at his feet.” (DC Talk 17) This example of a sacrifice really happened at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, on April 20, 1999. In the story Iphigenia and in today’s society, justification can be found in favor of the sacrifice of life for the lives of others, for the sake of one’s country, and for one’s religious beliefs.