Encyclopedia of Islam

martyrdom

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of paradise.” Variants of this “bird” tradition 

state that the martyrs’ souls are “like birds with 

God,” “turned into green birds,” “in the bellies of 

birds,” or are “in the crops of green birds.” These 

birds are said to “nestle in (golden) lamps that 

are hung (muallaqa) under the Throne of God,” 

and their dwellings are near the “lote tree of the 

boundary.”

In modern times, the definition of shahid has 

widened to include any personal/individual “sacri-

fice” for God’s cause or “trial” sent by God result-

ing in death, such as dying abroad, dying from 

epidemic disease or natural disaster, in childbirth, 

by pleurisy or drowning, to protect one’s family 

or property, and finally the jihadist “effort” of the 

Ulama

  (“the ink of the scholars is of more value 

than the blood of the martyrs”). The widespread 

politicization of Islam after the 1960s has led to 

Shii ideologies of martyrdom linked to the political 

jihad of “revolution,” as in the discourse of Ayatol-

lahs Khomeini, Taliqani, and Mutahhari in Iran, or 

to guerrilla “resistance” movements that practice 

proactive martyrdom, as in h

izbUllah

 in Lebanon.

Models of Sunni martyrdom have also kept pace, 

inspired by such jihadist ideologues and organiza-

tions as h

asan

 

al

-b

anna

  and  s

ayyid

  q

Utb

 of al-

Ikhwan al-Muslimun, or “m

Uslim

  b

rotherhood

,” 

in  e

gypt

; Abu al-Ala Mawdudi of J

amaat

-

i

  i

slami

in p

akistan

, b

angladesh

, and northern i

ndia

; and 

h

amas

, which has religiously underwritten Pal-

estinian intifada as an all-out civilian “resistance” 

specializing in martyrdom/

sUicide

 bombings. Both 

Shii and Sunni jihadist ideologies of martyrdom 

are part of a multifront religious “struggle” against 

the hegemony of the West (whether interpreted 

as European colonial/postcolonial regimes, such 

as France in North Africa, Russia in a

Fghanistan

,

Zionist Israel in the Arab Middle East, or active 

imperialist powers in the Muslim world today, prin-

cipally the United States in its unilateral support 

for and interventions on behalf of i

srael

 and more 

recent military presence in Saudi Arabia and post 

9/11 incursions in Afghanistan and i

raq

). Sunni 

and Shii jihadists define their task as resisting 

“secular” Western-style democracy and working 

for sharia-oriented governments and reinfusions of 

Islamic “values” in the Sunni umma throughout the 

Muslim Middle East, southeastern Europe, Central 

and South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Such postmod-

ern Muslim “fighters” for the faith and “martyrs” 

for the umma now include women and children 

as well as the more traditional male “soldiers” for 

Islam. The “rewards” for these more tender martyrs 

seem focused on how they will be remembered 

in this world rather than on male-ordered defini-

tions of “paradise.” They are willing to expend 

their lives, using the power of their powerlessness, 

against what they perceive to be a more powerful, 

unjust, and oppressive enemy.

See also 

aFterliFe

; 

Jihad

 

movements

; s

hiism

.

Kathleen M. O’Connor