Archive | Vol. 12/2019 | No. 1. Martyrdom and the struggle for power in the middle east

Gölz, Olmo [Publishing editor]

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Content

Scientific article

Martyrdom and the struggle for power : interdisciplinary perspectives on martyrdom in the modern Middle East

Gölz, Olmo

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Pages: 2-13

Scientific article

Legitimate means of dying: contentious politics of martyrdom in the Turkish Civil War (1968–1982)

Yenen, Alp

Abstract:

Until today, commitment to the ‘martyrs’ of the Turkish civil war of the 1970s continues to be a crucial part of Turkey’s political culture. This paper will offer a historical-comparative sociology of state conventions and non-state contentions in defining political cultures of martyrdom during the Turkish civil war of 1970s. First, by outlining the historical semantics and political sociology of the state’s culture of martyrdom, I will argue that the state came to claim a monopoly over legitimate means of dying in the name of the state-nation-religion triad and explain how official martyrdom manifested itself during the civil war. In the second part, this paper will discuss cultures of martyrdom in processes of social mobilisation, collectiv identification and moral legitimisation in contentious politics, and how the radical-revolutionary left and the ultra-nationalist far-right in Turkey constructed their own cultures of martyrdom. Non-state claims to political martyrdom from the left and right emulated the state’s martyrdom discourse without rejecting its legitimacy. By (de-)legitimising lethal political violence, cultures of martyrdom establish lasting solidarities across people, times and spaces—and in seclusion against ‘others’.

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Pages: 14-34

Scientific article

Martyrdom and masculinity in warring Iran : the Karbala paradigm, the heroic, and the personal dimensions of war

Gölz, Olmo

Abstract:

During the Islamic Revolution (1978/79) and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) the cult of the martyr in Iran has had a lasting impact on the dynamics of revolution and war. As a powerful mode of boundary construction, the figure of the martyr represented a culturally idealised catalogue of norms and thus contributed crucial elements to the establishment and maintenance of the Islamic Republic’s political system. In this article martyrdom is conceptualised as a radicalisation of these modes of boundary construction, and thus as an extreme form of heroism, since the underlying discourses not only determine the sacred centre of the martyr’s society, but rather define opposing entities and ‘wrong behaviour’ in polar terms. Furthermore, I argue that martyrdom is to be determined as a dominant discourse influencing hegemonic masculinity in Iran in the late 70s and 80s. Accordingly, the cult of the martyr is to be understood to affect all aspects of gender relations in warring Iran. In his paper I shall show how the Islamist discourse on martyrdom has been forged and fostered through references to the Karbala narrative of early Islam and its modern reinterpretation as a heroic narrative which distinctively calls for the self-sacrifice of the true believer when facing tyranny and injustice. In effect, via the exaltation of martyrdom as a radicalised mode of boundary construction, everyone’s contribution to the war became a personal obligation.

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Pages: 35-51

Scientific article

Learning from Shiites: how conceptions of martyrdom appeal to Sunni groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Fuchs, Simon Wolfgang

Abstract:

In this article, I argue that a prevalent focus on sectarianism in conceptualizing contemporary Sunni-Shi‘i relations has blinded us to important processes of intellectual appropriation and mimicry between the two communities. In the context of Pakistan and Afghanistan, I focus on the anti-Shi‘i group of the Sipah-i Sahabah-i Pakistan (“Army of the Companions of the Prophet”, SSP) as well as Islamist Sunni groups active in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets during the 1980s in order to make the case that Shi‘ism in general and Iran in particular remain important fixtures for the Sunni imagination. This rings especially true as far as the issue of martyrdom is concerned. In Pakistan, the SSP tried to actively counter the symbolic power of Shi‘i symbols and concepts, styling itself as producing superior Sunni martyrs. In Afghanistan, Sunni groups made sense of the jihad by applying Iranian lenses of martyrdom to their battlefield experiences.

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Pages: 52-68

Scientific article

The structure and visual rhetoric of the martyrdom video: an enquiry into the martyrdom video genre / Beese, Yorck [Autor:in] – 2019

Beese, Yorck

Abstract:

Since its inception in the 1980s, the genre of vehicular martyrdom videos has served to promote radical Islam. Its history has been generally unsystematic but it has led to the development of several story elements and formal requirements whose occurrence in martyrdom videos has become a contingency. In going beyond the structure of the martyrdom attack genre, this article provides an exemplary analysis of the visual rhetoric of the martyrdom video based on an adapted reading of Roland Barthes’ Rhetoric of the Image, adapted for the analysis of audiovisual content. The effectiveness of the genre in matters of recruitment is found in the genre’s use of pathos: the genre suggests that a martyr goes to the beyond and, from that place, sends a message to this world. This is most evident in the visual language of the genre which is ideologically informed on the level of connotation.

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Pages: 69-88

Scientific article

The sounds of the Shuhadāʾ: chants and chanting in IS martyrdom videos

Dick, Alexandra

Abstract:

This article addresses the various functions of chants and chanting in the context of jihadi martyrdom. Through the examples of IS martyrdom videos, I will identify three different categories: first, live chanting performed by a collective (ḥudā), second, live chanting performed by a professional nashīd singer (inshād) and third, recorded and post-produced chants (anāshīd). In IS martyrdom videos, these sounds convey ritualistic meanings: Ḥudāʾ serves as a rite of separation that often takes place at martyrdom ceremonies to mark the transition from a collective of mujahidin to an individual martyrdom seeker (istishhādī), who will soon carry out a martyrdom operation. To complement this rite of passage, anāshīd serve as posthumous rites of incorporation to integrate the deceased in the hereafter through references to Qurʾanic verses and hadith excerpts mentioning paradise and the rewards for martyrs therein. Sounds thus help to perpetuate the cycle of jihadi martyrdom by promoting this theologically framed concept.

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Pages: 89-104

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