Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [415]
Closely associated with this disposition towards religious explanations, there must a public acceptance of the efficacity of the mission. The relationship between the public and the martyr is a social discourse of encouragement: The public reinforces the martyrdom, and the martyr reinforces the ideals of the public. Public acceptance, one might say, is necessary because it aids in creating the credibility structure that makes martyrdom seem natural and logical. For instance, in the occupied territories, after a suicide bomber is recruited and trained, his or her mission is often announced publicly. During that period, the shahid becomes a “living martyr” in which he (or rarely she) is publicly celebrated as a volunteer. He has a picture taken in a warlike or martyr’s pose. In one example, the shahid was photographed holding his own head as an offering to God, using trick photography to depict his willingness to die. But all use photographic images, made into posters for the walls of Palestinian cities, to spread their fame in the community. Just as it takes a whole village to raise a child, it also takes a village to turn a child into a martyr.
We have already learned that martyrdom can be religious drama, a spectacle of transcendence staged around the death of a believer. In Iran, Ta’ziye is a ritual and a drama at the same time, though it is but a stage performance. But even real martyrdoms are played out as a religious, ritual, a socio-drama.66 It always depicts the supreme confidence of the believer, showing that the martyr’s religious beliefs are correct, thus the cause is just. All the statements are simple and absolute. The cause is so important that one can sacrifice one’s life to it. The power structure, which appears to have the upper hand, is actually just one step from destruction. Martyrdom tends to confirm notions of life after death, which are the most obvious beliefs to be demonstrated by the death of the martyr. So it creates a new “master narrative” of revolution against the power structure, saying that the power is demonic and against divine wishes, and, at the same time, demonstrates that the religious belief of the martyr is true and manifest.
The 9/11 hijackers caused more than 2,800, unsuspecting, civilian deaths in one act of sabotage directed against entirely civilian targets. This act cannot be justified by any suffering in the Middle East; nor was it born out of the frustration of the Palestinian people. Indeed, Palestine was only a minor, supporting motivation in the act on bin Laden’s bill of particulars. Bin Laden’s major reason for the action is Jihad against the presence of infidel US soldiers in Saudi Arabia.
Few Muslims would join such an organization. Yet, young Palestinians and other Muslim youth, all over the Middle East, danced in the streets when the World Trade Center came down. Saudi, Egyptian, and Lebanese students, influenced by fundamentalist education, regularly justify the attack on the World Trade Center as repayment for various injustices-some real, some imagined-perpetrated entirely by the United States or Israel and in which the Arabs were portrayed as innocent victims without any defenses.
Conversely, educated people in the Western-leaning Arab countries simply denied that any Arabs would have done such a terrible deed. Rather, it was the work of the Israeli secret service, who even warned all the Jews to stay home on that morning. Both rationales are equally absurd. The story is still widely run in the Arab newspapers and on television stations. Egyptian television also recently ran a dramatization of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in installments, though it is universally known as a cruel anti-semitic