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Sunday, April 21, 2002 Iyyar 9, 5762 Israel Time:  05:34  (GMT+3)
Martyrs on this side of paradise
Palestinian and al-Qaida suicides have parallels in modern Islam, but not in the religion's early days. What suicide fighters all share is a sense of existential despair, of living on borrowed time - like the walking dead.
By Amnon Barzilai

"Yet we have gone on living,

Living and partly living."

(Murder in the Cathedral, by T.S. Eliot)

Here is the oath of a clan of highway robbers of Islamic tradition in the Caucuses: "At midnight the robber steals into the mosque and prays: 'I swear, in the name of the holy place in which I am now and which I respect, that from this day forward I will be an outcast. I want to shed human blood and not have mercy on anyone. I will hunt down people. I swear to plunder from them all that is dear to their heart, their conscience and their honor. I will impale an infant on his mother's breast, I will set ablaze the last hiding place of the beggar, and wherever happiness prevailed until now I will bring trouble and anxiety. If I do not fulfill this vow, if love or mercy turn my heart, may I never see my father's grave again, may water no longer slake my thirst and food never satisfy my hunger. May my body be thrown by the side of the road and a dirty dog relieve himself on it."

(From Kurban Said's masterpiece "Ali and Nino - a Love Story," originally published in 1937. Said was a Jewish writer from Azerbaijan who converted to Islam.)

In recent years Prof. Emmanuel Sivan, an historian and expert on the Middle East from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been consulted by politicians in Israel who examined possible steps to take against Palestinian suicide bombers. One of the questions that crops up from time to time in the discussions is whether, if the potential bomber knows that he will be buried in pigskin, will this cause him to abandon his attack because he will not enter heaven as a shahid (martyr).

"This is arrant nonsense," Sivan replies when asked this question. The British government, he says, tried a ploy of this kind during the revolt fomented by the Mahdi movement in Sudan against British colonial rule in the 1870s. It was during this war that Muslim suicide bombers first appeared. The pigskin burial tactic was successful there because it encompassed fears and beliefs that no longer exist today. Suicide attackers reappeared in the Muslim revolt against the British in Malaya (now Malaysia) in the 1950s. The British again tried the pigskin ploy, but this time without success - suicide attacks continued. The weapon of suicide was used again in the bloody war between Iran and Iraq that raged through most of the 1980s. The ayatollahs in Iran recruited children to the Revolutionary Guards and sent them into the Iraqi minefields to dismantle them. Chains were placed around the necks of the children on which hung a key to the gates of paradise. Thousands of children were killed brutally in this way and were known as the "children of the keys."

"It was a mass phenomenon of brainwashing, a poor man's kamikaze," Prof. Sivan says. "But it produced an impressive result. The fact is, this act of sacrifice frightened the Iraqis." Shahids appeared also in 1990s Algeria where it was used in the revolt against the ruling secular authorities blocking the Islamic movement from coming to power. About 100,000 people were killed in the civil strife that lasted for nine years.

There are, of course, other examples of the use of suicide attackers by Muslims in the course of recent decades. The most famous and devastating of them was the suicide attack by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization against New York and Washington last September 11.

Stacked deck

There are two striking cases in which suicide attackers have been used in battle or for terrorist attacks by non-Islamic cultures. The best-known case was the Japanese kamikaze (divine wind) bombers toward the end of World War II. Japanese pilots on suicide missions steered their explosives-packed planes into American warships to explode on their decks. Some 2,000 kamikaze attacks destroyed about 35 ships.

Using kamikaze pilots was an act of desperation, says Prof. Jacob Raz, from the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University. The Japanese resorted to this weapon when they had effectively lost control of the Pacific theater and defeat was only a matter of time. The kamikaze phenomenon is a modern one, Raz says. The term "divine wind" was the name of a typhoon that destroyed the fleet of the Mongolians when they tried to mount an invasion of Japan in the thirteenth century.

Raz says: "It is not clear whether there is a direct connection between the samurai, a phenomenon that ended in the nineteenth century, and the kamikaze. The kamikaze took root in a period when total madness reigned in Japan. However, there was no religious aspect to it - it was the result of mere political brainwashing." In any event, and whether by chance or not, the kamikaze phenomenon took place in a culture that embraced hara-kiri, suicide by cutting the stomach. Suicide of this kind was characteristic of the samurai tradition, enabling the samurai warrior to end his life honorably after a major failure or falling into disgrace.

The second major use of suicide attackers occurred as part of the struggle launched by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against the central government of Sri Lanka. In the past 15 years the Tamil Tigers have used terrorist attacks and suicide missions against senior figures in the government. The conflict in Sri Lanka has religious, national and linguistic aspects. The Tamils are Hindus, like the overwhelming majority of the population in nearby India. They are a minority in Sri Lanka - most of the people of the island state formerly known as Ceylon are Sinhalese and follow Buddhist teachings. In their struggle the Tamils did not balk at attacking targets of the Indian government, which supports the Sinhalese regime. It was a Tamil woman suicide bomber who in 1991 killed Indian prime minister Rajiv Ghandi.

Engraved on the monument to Dov Gruner - a member of the pre-state Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), who was executed by the British Mandate government in 1947 - are the words of the founder of the Irgun, David Raziel: "Those who are about to die establish the homeland."

Is it possible to find a common denominator of any sort between the shahids and the members of other religions who displayed readiness and even a desire to sacrifice their life for one cause or another?

According to Prof. Sivan, they do have something in common: "In almost all cases, these are `walking dead' people." Sivan developed this analysis in the spirit of the concept of psychologists in Algeria who coined the term "conditionally dead" to describe the suicide bombers in their country.

"They live with a sense of despair and act out of existential despair," Sivan continues. "Dov Gruner was a classic example of a walking dead man. In his perception, the world of civilization did not exist. He was a Holocaust survivor who had been granted an extension of life. Gruner belonged to a group of Irgun and Lehi [Israel Freedom Fighters, another pre-state group that fought the British] activists whom the British intended to execute (though in the end most of them were spared) and who at the moment of truth refused to ask for amnesty.

Were they depressives? No, but a significant number of them were like Gruner, young people who had just survived the Holocaust and who were burning with a tremendous urge to take revenge. But at the same time they felt they were alive by chance so their readiness to risk their lives for a cause that they considered sublime was extremely high.

"In general, these are people who, even if not suicidally inclined on a personal basis, are seized by a sense of perdition. In the overwhelming majority of cases, we can see these are persecuted people from the margins of society. They live on borrowed time, on the assumption that their lives will be short in any case. Therefore, they are willing to take risks and even make suicidal decisions. The same principle is valid, of course, for those who are ready to sacrifice their lives in all religions and all periods, without exception."

Shahid master

What would the prophet Mohammed say about the fact that today's shahids are young Muslims whose suicide entails the murder of innocent women, children and men? Would he be shocked to the depths of his soul and order an immediate halt to this form of killing, or would he perhaps, like the current Muslim spiritual leadership, encourage the continuation of the bloodbath? Scholars and researchers who specialize in ancient cultures and religions have looked for a historical precedent for the acts of murder committed by the current wave of Palestinian suicide bombers. They have found nothing similar in ancient Islam. "I find no precedent for these actions in the history of Islam," says Prof. Etan Kohlberg from the Department of Arabic Language and Literature in the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

"At the same time, I am loath to guess what the prophet Mohammed would have said about the phenomenon. It is impossible to rule out a possibility that he would approve acts of cruelty - Muslims carried out many acts of cruelty against Jews. In 627, with the authorization of Mohammed, Muslims massacred all the members of the Quraysh Jewish tribe in the city of Medina in the Arabian Peninsula. Justifying the action, Mohammed maintained that everyone in the tribe had forged an alliance with his enemies. Therefore, the whole tribe was blameworthy. However, it is clear that there is a difference between that event and the events we are seeing today."

Prof. Kohlberg is considered one of the leading experts in the study of the martyr phenomenon in the Muslim religion. He is the author of the entry "Shahid" in the new and revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam.

In the years 623-625 Mohammed had a series of revelations, in part against the backdrop of the Battle of Uhud (625), in which opponents of the prophet did battle with his forces. According to one of the traditions, the souls of the warriors who were killed in the fighting ascended to heaven, where they discovered the delights that awaited them. They asked leave to tell the earthly warriors what they had found so that those going into battle would not be afraid. According to another tradition, 72 virgins await the shahid in paradise.

Thus Muslims first became familiar with the phenomenon of the shahada - the death of holy men. In the Koran, the word shahid (plural: shuhadaa) appears with the meaning of "witness": "That Allah may know / Those that believe, / And that He may take / To Himself from your ranks / Martyr-witnesses (to Truth)" - that is, those who died a holy death (Surah 3: Al Imran, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali, "The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an," revised edition, 1989).

Kohlberg, in an article on the subject, notes that Muslim scholars construed the word "shahid" to mean that God and the angels were witnesses to the fact that the person in question was deserving of a place in paradise. Or, in another interpretation, it meant God would be witness to the fact that his intentions were good and pure.

The master of the shahids is Hamza, the prophet's uncle. According to one tradition, Hamza was killed in battle. Mohammed considered the option of leaving his uncle's body on the field of battle, without burial, and thus ensuring that on Judgment Day he would be restored to life from the innards of the birds and beasts of prey. Finally, Mohammed did not leave the body unburied, in order not to offend the feelings of Hamza's relatives, and because he was concerned about creating a precedent.

The phenomenon of the shahid is related to the holy war, or "jihad," which has to do with the order of the world as it is perceived by the Muslim religion. From its inception, Islam divided the world into two - "Dar al Islam," which includes all the Muslim believers, and "Dar al-Harab," namely all other human beings, who must be destroyed. In time a change developed in the interpretation. Muslims understood that if they were to slay all the unbelievers in the world, there would be no one to pay them poll tax. So they adopted an approach according to which those of the heretics who would submit to them would be allowed to uphold their religion and pay the tax.

"The political imperative is to expand the world of Islam at the expense of the other world," says Nehemia Levtzion, professor of Islamic and African History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "That is the role of the jihad. It is a permanent situation. As long as the imperative of Dar al Harab exists, jihad is a commandment. It is imposed on the community, although it is not a personal obligation like prayer or fasting.

To encourage jihad, the believers must be given wages, rewards, hence the concept of the shahid. Those who undertake the jihad and fall in battle will be considered martyrs and become saints. Those who fight in battle are buried in their uniform and their bodies will be treated differently. Usually a body must be washed before burial; but a shahid is considered pure by virtue of having been killed in battle and he ascends straight to paradise."

The Islamic sages rely in this matter on what Mohammed stated at the Battle of Uhud, namely that the shahids should not be washed, for on the day of the resurrection of the dead each of their wounds will give forth a scent of musk.

Mohammed named three types of shahids. The first is the warrior who goes into battle neither to kill nor be killed. The second enters battle with the aim of killing the enemy without himself being killed. The third type seeks to kill the enemy and be killed himself. All will be rewarded, but the greatest reward will go to the martyr of the third type. This behavior is known as "seeking a martyr's death." On Judgment Day this type of martyr will appear with his drawn sword lying on his shoulder and he will be treated with greater honor than prophets and will dwell in whatever part of paradise he wishes.

Conquering religion

The phenomenon of readiness for self-sacrifice in religious contexts exists in the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The question of what type of death the believer chooses derives in large measure from the status that each of the religions had in the world during its period of formation, emergence and development.

In the period of glory of the Roman Empire, Judaism and Christianity were persecuted religions. Islam, by contrast, emerged in the seventh century after the split in the Roman Empire and in a period of a global political vacuum, enabling it to gather strength and momentum in relatively short order.

"The first Christians were passive. They accepted death with love. They turned the other cheek," explains Dr. Aviad Kleinberg, an expert in early Christianity, from the Department of General History at Tel Aviv University. "There are no testimonies about persecuted Christians who tried to defend themselves," he notes. "From the period of the Emperor Nero in the first century CE until the fourth century, they are led like sheep to the slaughter. The principle that guided them was that an authority exists that is beyond human authority and for the sake of which it is worth dying. If you act in the name of that authority, you are beyond good and evil." The model of the desirable death emulated by the early Christians was that of Jesus. He is the lamb taken to be sacrificed, whose death atones for all sins.

Gradually, however, Christianity shifted from pacifism to a "Samson-like" conception of "let me die with the Philistine," Kleinberg continues. The radical conceptual shift, according to which people who die in battle are holy, developed from the period of the Crusades in the eleventh century. "At the same time, there is no suicide phenomenon in Christianity. The Crusader who went into battle may have undertaken suicidal missions, but there is no sanctification of suicide. Christians reject suicide - according to their belief, deliberate suicide is a sin and gains nothing." Judaism also condemns suicide, yet it praises a series of acts of suicide. Some of these acts were considered exemplary behavior or were interpreted as acts of martyrdom and became cornerstones of the historical myth. Two of the most striking cases were the death of Samsom and the suicide of King Saul after the Israelites' defeat in the battle against the Philistines at Mount Gilboa. However, the terms Kiddush Hashem ("martyrdom") and shmad (religious persecution, forced conversion) appeared in the wake of the anti-Jewish decrees in the period of Greek and Roman rule. The Second Book of Maccabees tells of the death of Hannah and her seven sons. Rabbi Akiva was among those who died a martyr's death in the wake of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE - he was put to death because he insisted on reciting the Shema prayer.

The most spectacular of the suicide events - although not the only one of its kind - was the mass suicide at Masada in 73 CE, three years after the destruction of the Second Temple. There were also acts of mass suicide at Yodfat and Gamla. About a thousand years later, in the eleventh century, a similar event occurred in the Rhine Valley in Germany. During the First Crusade, the Christians gave the Jewish communities at Mayence and Worms a choice between baptism and death. The Jews chose to die as martyrs "for the sanctification of the Name."

Hundreds of Jews killed their children and then took their own lives. Dr. Yisrael Yoval, from the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University, studied the impact of this on Christian public opinion. It emerges that the mass suicides were among the factors that shaped the image of the Jews as possessing murderous traits. "But the Jews who committed suicide did not kill others," Yuval says. "They said that it was not worthwhile for them to live in a world where they would not uphold the tenets of their faith. They preferred spiritual existence to physical existence."

In contrast to the defensive posture taken by early Christianity and by Judaism throughout most of its history, Islam in its first 200 years was a conquering, triumphant faith. The Muslims reached the peak of their power and efflorescence in the ninth century. All the promises of paradise that appear in the Koran and in the later traditions date from the first hundred years of Islam. They were intended to develop a warrior culture. Beginning in the eleventh century, Islam went on the defensive. At this stage another phenomenon became dominant - that of shahids who gave their lives in internecine Islamic strife (such as the wars between the Shi'ites and the Sunnis).

The virtues of martyrdom as contrasted with the sanctity of life were discussed by the Islamic sages in clear association with the discussion of jihad, Prof. Kohlberg says. One of the questions that engaged them was whether a lone warrior is permitted to attack a large enemy force. According to Mohammed al-Hassan al-Shibani, one of the founders of the Hanifa school, who lived in the second half of the eighth century, a lone fighter may attack even a thousand of the enemy if a reasonable chance exists that he will survive the assault or kill some of the enemy before himself being killed. If it is more than likely that he will be killed without doing damage to the enemy, his action is considered reprehensible, as he is exposing himself to death without an expected gain to the Muslims. So it stands to reason that the shahids in our time would meet with the approval of the Hanifa school, though under one condition: that they directed their operations against fighting forces and not against civilians. As an operation "against the enemy," they definitely meet the criteria laid down by Mohammed al-Shibani. How closely, if at all, is the phenomenon of the terrorism unleashed by the suicide bombers against Israel connected to the texts that appear in the historical Islamic sources? According to Prof. Kohlberg, "there is continuity here, but the situation is different from what it was in the Middle Ages. There are things here that did not exist in the past. There was never a situation in which a country such as the Jewish state, which is perceived as a state of heretics, was established in territory that is considered Waqf (Muslim religious trust) land that belongs to Islam. The evolution in Palestinian thought in this direction began in 1967, but it has gathered momentum more recently. The radical Palestinian movements today rely on medieval texts in explaining the shahid phenomenon."

Kohlberg has written that there are Muslim religious interpreters today "who state explicitly that if modern explosives had existed in the period of the prophet Mohammed, the Muslims would have made exactly the same use of them as the shahid fighters do today."

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