Introduction

This book took shape in response to the widespread use of the word ʻmartyrdom ʼ in contemporary discussions of terrorism, and especially of suicidal bombings carried out in the wake of ʻ 9/11ʼ. The Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament (CCADD) had earlier produced The Crescent and the Cross: Muslim and Christian Approaches to War and Peace (Macmillan, 1998), which was a product of consultation, between scholars of both faiths, about the ethics of modern warfare. The present study follows this work by deploying a similar group of scholars in an attempt to reveal similarities and differences in the interpretation of the concept of martyrdom in the two religions. It is hoped that our study will encourage greater understanding of this subject, as well as probing the deeper theological and ideological implications of the concept itself. It is also hoped that it will discourage the misuse of the word ʻmartyr ʼas a tool of misunderstanding or fanaticism on either side of the debate. From the following chapters, a striking similarity may be detected in the history of the concept of martyrdom within each tradition. For Islam and Christianity are both religions ʻ of the bookʼ, with deep roots in the Abrahamic world. Both inevitably begin, therefore, from the concept of a martyr as a ʻwitness ʼwithin an ancient legal framework. Asma Afsaruddinʼs study of early Islam (Chapter One) emphasizes that in the Qurʼan the Arabic term shahı¯d refers only to a witness, more specifically a legal or ʻeye-witnessʼ. Similarly, as Anthony Harvey, Richard Finn and Michael Smart make plain, a martys was a simply ʻwitness ʼ in the Greek, Roman or Jewish legal tradition. But in that framework a witness was valued not so much for his (and it nearly always was his) account of facts as for a certain reliability of character. The key question was: can we trust this manʼs word? Is he the kind of person who can be relied upon to tell the truth? In the early stages of Christianity, as is pointed out, being a witness to God – that is, a ʻmartyr ʼ-did not necessarily involve dying, or being killed, for the faith. You could witness to it simply by the way in which you lived. It was some time before the term ʻmartyrʼ involved the question ʻCan we trust this personʼs claim to be a witness to Godʼs truth – that is, to things which cannot be verified by visible or tangible evidence? ʼ so that the witnessʼs whole manner of life and death became the primary ʻevidence ʼof the truth of what he was claiming. Hence the development of the specialized meaning

of the word ʻmartyr ʼ to refer to someone willing to be killed for the faith. But it was not until the death of St Polycarp in 155 CE that this specialized meaning of martyrdom began to take hold. By the time of St Augustine, in the late fourth century CE, after the Diocletian persecutions, it had become the norm. Eventually, in the thirteenth century, in discussing martyrdom St Thomas Aquinas concluded, with some qualifications, that ʻthe perfect idea of martyrdom requires one to endure death for Christʼs sakeʼ.1 Similarly, in the first Meccan phase of Islam, the Qurʼan permitted only non-violent resistance to persecution by the pagan Meccans. It was not until the Medinan phase that permission was given to fight, but even then only after other, peaceful, means had been exhausted. But in both the Meccan and Medinan periods, Muslims continued to engage in their daily struggle (jihad) to uphold what was right and forbid wrongdoing in myriad ways, as an important part of affirming their faith and service to God. But in Medina the faithful were also exhorted to resort to armed defence of their community and of their faith against those who wished to cause them harm. Thus jihad acquired a new, military dimension in the Medinan period. Yet the term shahı¯d itself would not acquire the primary meaning of ʻmartyr ʼ until some time in the second century of Islam (eighth century CE), possibly under the influence of Christian terminology, as Dr Afsaruddin suggests. In the early period, martyrdom could be won in multiple ways, as attested in early hadith literature. Thus, an individual who met his or her death while living and behaving in a suitably devout manner could be regarded as a martyr, as could the valiant warrior who fell on the battlefield in defence of Islam. Unfortunately, some modern translators have muddied the waters by consistently translating the Qurʼanic term shahı¯d as ʻmartyrʼ, thus imparting to it a certain colouring which it did not have to begin with.2 And now, of course, the recent use of the term ʻmartyr ʼ (in English or other Western languages) by Islamic militants themselves, to promote their campaigns, has been fed back into Muslim discourse itself. In both traditions, then, the concept of witnessing to the faith originated in a non-violent context, but later, as a result of persecution of the faithful, became specialized into dying for it. One can conceive of circumstances in which this development need not have happened. If Christians had been recognized earlier as full, reliable citizens of the Roman Empire, and thus as reliable witnesses, and if Muslims had not been attacked so soon by enemies who threatened to destroy their community, things could have turned out differently. Of course, given the nature of each faith in its early stages, and the context in which each emerged, it would have needed a miracle for these persecutions not to have taken place. But the point remains: witnessing and dying are two different things, and it is only human oppression that makes them so difficult to keep apart in practice. A further point, related to what I have just said, is worth noting. DrAfsaruddin mentions the role of the theory of ʻ abrogation ʼ(naskh), as articulated by some exegetes, in developing the specialized meaning of shahı¯d in the later practice

of Islam. According to this theory, where there is a potential difference in meaning between two Qurʼanic verses on some point, the later verse is assumed in some cases to have superseded, or ʻabrogatedʼ, the earlier verse. Hence, according to Dr Afsaruddin, the exaggerated importance, in certain historical circumstances, or even misinterpretation in much of post-Qurʼanic discourse, given to the so-called ʻsword ʼverses (9:5, 9:29), which are dated to the Medinan period.3