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Tag: Suicide

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Can You Choose To Be A Martyr?


By G. Willow Wilson
Posted on Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 05:20:40 AM EST
Tags: Islam, Law, Martyrdom, Suicide (all tags)

The cant of the suicide bomber is now familiar: Die for Allah and instantly attain paradise by becoming a shaheed, a martyr, who in death witnesses the face of God. Today, one need not be a warrior, a saint, or a brilliant dissenter who dies in pursuit of a noble cause to achieve this state; on the contrary, there is a simple formula. Strap a bomb to your chest and walk into a crowded market, with a philosophy first articulated by the architects of the Inquisition: Kill them all, God will recognize His own. Endless fatwas have been issued declaring this kind of 'martyrdom' murder and apostasy because of the number of innocents who are inevitably killed, but little attention is paid to the act of suicide itself. Suicide is defined, both in Islamic law and in common English usage, as "the intentional taking of one's own life." Which begs the question: can one really choose to be a martyr?

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