Martyrdom

"Thus, the concept of martyrdom developed differently in Islam than it did in either Judaism or Christianity. Martyrdom in Islam has a much more active sense: the prospective martyr is called to seek out situations in which martyrdom might be achieved. For example, in Abdallah b. al- Mubarak’s Kitab al-jihad, we find Nawf al-Bikali praying: “O, God! Make my wife a widow, make my child an orphan, and ennoble Nawf with martyrdom!”"

"Whoever gave the green light to suicide operations against Israeli civilians, and said that the dialogue with the Jews would take place through human bombs, did so out of political, ideological motives, in support of a certain political group. It has nothing to do with religion. All the religious scholars, especially the Salafi scholars, have said that whoever blows himself up, even among the enemy, is killing himself, and will be punished in hell."

"The struggle should be in unusual, through resistance and martyrdom, by which we can achieve balance with the Zionist entity...the preachers should present the issue of commitment to resistance and Intifada and preach for Jihad and martyrdom for Allah....This people must continue to sacrifice martyrs daily, and confront the Israeli enemy with steadfastness, faith, and high values."

"Brethren! God gives the ummah that is skilled in the practice of death and that knows how to die a noble death, an exalted life in this world and eternal felicity in the next. What is the fantasy that has reduced us to loving this world and hating death? If you gird yourselves for a lofty deed and yearn for death, life shall be given to you. Know then that death is inevitable, and that it can only happen once. If you suffer it in the way of God, it will be your profit in this world, and your reward in the next."

"Those who oppose martyrdom operations and claim that they are suicide are making a great mistake. The goals of the one who carries out a martyrdom operation and of the one who commits suicide are completely different. Anyone who analyzes the soul of [these two] will discover the huge difference between them. The [person who commits] suicide kills himself for himself, because he failed in business, love, an examination, or the like. He was too weak to cope with the situation and chose to flee life for death. In contrast, the one who carries out a martyrdom operation does not think of himself. He sacrifices himself for the sake of a higher goal, for which all sacrifices become meaningless."

"It is regrettable that the propaganda of the enemies of Islam has influenced the Muslim community so much that Muslims instead of planning for the uprooting of the Zionist regime and its arrogant supporters have occupied themselves with questioning and discussing the legitimacy of the Palestinian's self-defence which is carried out under the most oppressive conditions imaginable. For sure, when protecting Islam and the Muslim community depends on martyrdom operations, it not only is allowed, but even is an obligation as many of the Shi'ah great scholars and Maraje', including Ayatullah Safi Golpayegani and Ayatullah Fazel Lankarani, have clearly announced in their fatwas. Consider the rewayah from the prophet of Allah (SA) who said: "Whoever is killed in defence of his belongings, he/she is martyr." (Wasa'il al-Shi'ah, v.15, p. 121)"

"Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord; They rejoice in the bounty provided by Allah. And with regard to those left behind, who have not yet joined them (in their bliss), the (Martyrs) glory in the fact that on them is no fear, nor have they (cause to) grieve."

"Say: Can ye await for us aught save one of two good things (death or victory in Allah's way)? while we await for you that Allah will afflict you with a doom from Him or at our hands. Await then! Lo! We are awaiting with you"

"Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur´an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme."

"Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, and are then slain or die,- On them will Allah bestow verily a goodly Provision: Truly Allah is He Who bestows the best provision."

"The Prophet said, "By Him in Whose Hands my life is! Were it not for some men amongst the believers who dislike to be left behind me and whom I cannot provide with means of conveyance, I would certainly never remain behind any Sariya' (army-unit) setting out in Allah's Cause. By Him in Whose Hands my life is! I would love to be martyred in Allah's Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.""

"The Prophet said, "Nobody who enters Paradise likes to go back to the world even if he got everything on the earth, except a Mujahid who wishes to return to the world so that he may be martyred ten times because of the dignity he receives (from Allah).""

"It has been narrated on the authority of Anas b. Malik that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: Who seeks martyrdom with sincerity shall get its reward, though he may not achieve it."

"The Prophet said: He who is killed while protecting his property is a martyr, and he who is killed while defending his family, or his blood, or his religion is a martyr."

"Sahl bin Abi Umamah bin Sahl bin Hunaif narrated from his father, from his grandfather, that the Messenger of Allah said: Whoever asks Allah, the mighty and Sublime, sincerely for martyrdom, Allah will cause him to reach the status of the martyrs even of he dies in his bed."

"Siapa yang menuntut ilmu dengan niat yang ikhlas, dia mendapat kehormatan sebagai mujahid, pejuang Allah."

"He who studies with sincere will, will be honored as a mujahid, defender of Allah."

"The Mujahid is one who strives against his own soul."

"Not equal are those believers remaining [at home] - other than the disabled - and the mujahideen, [who strive and fight] in the cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives. Allah has preferred the mujahideen through their wealth and their lives over those who remain [behind], by degrees. And to both Allah has promised the best [reward]. But Allah has preferred the mujahideen over those who remain [behind] with a great reward."

"And verily We shall try you till We know those of you who strive hard (for the cause of Allah) and the steadfast, and till We test your record"

"Those [mujahideen] are freedom fighters. Those are people fighting for their own country and not wanting to become a satellite state of the Soviet Union, which came in and established a government of its choosing there, without regard to the feelings of the Afghans."

"MARTYR, n. One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death."

""There is often greater martyrdom to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die" is a motto of the Mahatmas."

"Nothing, indeed, can be more deserving of our admiration than the conduct of the Christian martyrs, who cheerfully submitted to an ignominious death, inflicted by the most atrocious torments, rather than deny their faith even by the mere performance of an apparently insignificant rite of Paganism."

"“The total disregard of truth and probability in the representation of the primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a very natural mistake. The ecclesiastical writers of the fourth and fifth centuries ascribe to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against the heretics and idolaters of their own times.... The learned Origen, who, from his experience as well as readings, was intimately acquainted with the history of the Christians, declares, in the most express terms, that the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable. His authority would alone be sufficient to annihilate that formidable army of martyrs, whose relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of Rome, have replenished so many churches, and whose achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of holy romances....”"

"Martyrs have been the stock-in-trade of prophetic creeds down the ages. Long before the prophet of Islam was born, the annalists of Judaism and Christianity had perfected the art of making the aggressor look like the victim of aggression, and vice versa. The Bible was the master-piece produced by this art. The biographers of the Prophet had only to borrow the art and practise it in the new context."

"The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone."

"The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins."

"The most zealous among them saw it as their solemn duty to make a public display of their faith even if it meant arrest, torture and death … A few of the Soldiers of Christ actively sought martyrdom by charging into the shrines and temples of the pagans, smashing the statuary, and overturning the altars, as they were instructed to do by their own scriptures: 'You shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, for the Lord is a jealous God.' .... Indeed, the spectacle of men and women who went willingly and even ardently to their deaths – and, long afterward, the memory of these martyrdoms and the relics of the martyrs themselves – only stirred the fires of true belief and inspired ever greater acts of zealotry. Sometimes the pagan magistrates literally begged the Christians to make some gesture of compromise in order to save their own lives."

"Either one defines “personality” and “individuality” in terms of their possibilities within the established form of civilization, in which case their realization is for the vast majority tantamount to successful adjustment. Or one defines them in terms of their transcending content, including their socially denied potentialities beyond (and beneath) their actual existence; in this case, their realization would imply transgression, beyond the established form of civilization, to radically new modes of “personality” and “individuality” incompatible with the prevailing ones. Today, this would mean “curing” the patient to become a rebel or (which is saying the same thing) a martyr."

"Ideas grow quickly when watered with the blood of martyrs."

"I do not think life will change for the better without an assault on the establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions."

"When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that the True is his heresy."

"The Sheikh has departed, may God have mercy on him, to his God as a martyr and we must continue on his path of jihad to expel the invaders from the land of Muslims and to purify it from injustice. Today, and thanks to God, America is not facing an individual or a group, but a rebelling nation, which has awoken from its sleep in a jihadist renaissance."

"For a tear is an intellectual thing; And a sigh is the sword of an angel-king; And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."

"The noble army of martyrs."

"Strangulatus pro republica."

"Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star."

"He strove among God's suffering poor One gleam of brotherhood to send; The dungeon oped its hungry door To give the truth one martyr more, Then shut,—and here behold the end!"

"Martyrs! who left for our reaping Truths you had sown in your blood— Sinners! whom long years of weeping Chasten'd from evil to good."

"It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr."

"His wife and children, being eleven in number, ten able to walk, and one sucking on her breast, met him by the way as he went towards Smithfield: this sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood, dear as they were to him, could yet nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience, in the defence and support of Christ's Gospel."

"Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire."