Martyrdom and Sacrifice in Islam

The concept of martyrdom (shahadah or istishhad) in Islamic history and thought continues to attract a great deal of attention from academics, religious scholars (‘ulama’), think tank and armchair analysts, and the news media. The Afghan mujahidin’s fight against the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, the formation of Lebanon’s Hizbullah in the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq War, and the rise of Al-Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries focused attention on a particular type of martyrdom in Islamic thought, the deaths of Muslim warriors on the battlefield or, as with Islamist militant organizations, in carrying out terrorist attacks targeting civilians. The hyper focus on contemporary jihadi organizations such as Al-Qaeda, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, and Islamic State obscures the historical discussions and debates among Muslim jurists and [ulama’ about the laws and ethics or warfare, prohibitions on targeting certain groups of people, and how dynamics other than religion have impacted the development of differing concepts within the Islamic world about legitimate and illegitimate warfare and violence and the status of the battlefield martyr. ...