The Making of Martyrdom in Modern Twelver Shi'ism

From Protesters and Revolutionaries to Shrine Defenders

Adel Hashemi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780755633975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Twelver Shi'a Islam, the wait for the return of the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Mahdi, at the end of time, overshadowed the value of actively seeking martyrdom. However, what is the place of martyrdom in Twelver Shi'ism today? This book shows that the Islamic revolution in Iran resulted in the marriage of Shi'i messianism and extreme political activism, changing the mindset of the Shi'a worldwide. Suddenly, each drop of martyrs' blood brought the return of al-Mahdi one step closer, and the Islamic Republic of Iran supposedly became the prelude to the foretold world revolution of al-Mahdi. Adel Hashemi traces the unexplored area of Shi'i discourse on martyrdom from the 1979 revolution-when the Islamic Republic's leaders cultivated the culture of martyrdom to topple the Shah's regime-to the dramatic shift in the understanding of martyrdom today. Also included are the reaction to the Syrian crisis, the region's war with ISIS and other Salafi groups, and the renewed commitment to the defense of shrines. This book shows the striking shifts in the meaning of martyrdom in Shi'ism, revealing the real relevance of the concept to the present-day Muslim world.

1

The Emergence of the Shī‘ī Form of Martyrdom

Martyrs of the Community: Sectarian Factor

Historically speaking, in Islam, martyrdom in the form of violent death for one’s belief in God (and his Prophet) at the hands of unbelievers (as it was the case in early Christianity) was limited to a relatively short period before the migration of Muslims from Mecca to Medina in 622. During that time, those who had accepted Muhammad as the Prophet were persecuted by the pagans of Mecca. Most of the poor and unprotected Muslims were targeted by the Meccans. They were usually tortured to the point of death unless they renounced their faith. However, we can name just a handful of Muslim martyrs who were killed because of their faith in the Prophet.¹ Perhaps the most famous Muslim tortured in that period was Bilāl, one of the Prophet’s most trusted and loyal companions. Bilāl was a slave of a Meccan merchant, and after conversion to Islam, he was severely tortured by his master, Abū Jahl. When he was on the verge of martyrdom, Abū Bakr, probably by the order of Muhammad, negotiated with Bilāl’s master and finally freed him.² Although Bilāl was not martyred, he has been remembered as a paradigmatic martyr-like hero in early Islam.

Not all fellow Muslims who were tortured were as fortunate as Bilāl, as Sumayyah and her husband Yāsir (two elderly and lower-class followers of Muhammad) did not survive the harsh treatment of the Meccan pagans; they have been regarded as the first martyrs in Islam.³ However, at the center of attention was their young son, ‘Ammār, not due to martyrdom but because he, like Bilāl, escaped martyrdom. ‘Ammār was among the first converts and remained a very loyal friend and companion of the Prophet; yet he recanted his faith to survive torture whereas his parents did not. It is reported that Muhammad received ‘Ammār warmly after the incident and endorsed his tactical and non-genuine betrayal.⁴ Reportedly, a verse of the Qurʼan (16:106)⁵ was revealed regarding that incident to vindicate ‘Ammār.⁶ The verse also cleared the way for adopting the practice of taqīya (cautionary dissimulation of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution), especially by the Shī‘a as a minority sect. Nevertheless, ‘Ammār himself was martyred on the battlefield years later in his old age in 657 as he fought for ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the first Shī‘a Imām.⁷ Al-Balādhurī states that at the time of his martyrdom, Muslims knew a ḥadīth from the Prophet stating that: “‘Ammār is always with the truth and he would be killed by a group of rebels.”⁸ ‘Alī also allegedly paid tribute to ‘Ammār, acknowledging that no one had the slightest doubt that ‘Ammār was destined to heaven and his murderer would go to hell.⁹ Hence, when he was martyred in the battle of Ṣiffīn (fought between ‘Alī, the then-Caliph, and Mu‘āwīyah ibn Abī Sufyān, the governor of Syria and future Umayyad Caliph), the followers of ‘Alī used the incident as proof of the righteousness of their leader, on the one hand, and of the hypocrisy of Mu‘āwīyah and his followers, on the other. In response, Mu‘āwīyah claimed that the real killer of ‘Ammār was the one who brought him to the battle in the first place (that is, ‘Alī).¹⁰

In Shī‘ī sectarian literature, other than the Ghadīr tradition in which Muhammad allegedly appointed ‘Alī as his successor and pointed to his wilāyah over all Muslims, we see Muhammad’s individual recommendations to his close companions regarding ‘Alī. According to a tradition, Muhammad revealed to ‘Ammār the turbulent future of Islam after his death and demanded him to follow ‘Alī and fight on his side; he then told ‘Ammār, “obeying ‘Alī is like obeying me (Muhammad), and obeying me is like obeying Allāh.”¹¹ It was in the light of this tradition that the Shī‘a interpreted the martyrdom of ‘Ammār. In retrospect, what made the martyrdom of ‘Ammār so special for the later Shī‘a was that it served in a way to defend the Caliphate/Imamate of ‘Alī. ‘Ammār was a sage for the community, and a towering figure in early Shī‘īsm; hence, both in his forced betrayal as a young follower of the Prophet and in his controversial martyrdom as a respected disciple of ‘Alī, ‘Ammār was influential in how the later Shī‘a approached and formulated martyrdom as the last resort for the defense of faith and a tribute to the truth that (for them) lies on the side of the proper authority of the time (the Prophet and the Imams). It is important here to note again that this is a retrospective reading of history as, at the time, until the middle of the second Islamic century, there was no completely distinguishable Shī‘a identity with its own specific coherent theology. However, we can argue that history makes faith, in the sense that every aspect of an established belief system can be traced back in recorded history and the collective knowledge and traditions of the people adhering to the faith. Hence, the martyrdom of ‘Ammār and other early followers of the Prophet’s family should have had profound effects on shaping the concept of martyrdom in Shī‘īsm as we know it today.

In the early period of Muhammad’s tenure in Mecca, martyrdom, or being killed for one’s faith, was not something that Muslims were seeking, though it was honorable for those who could not escape it. The blood of Muslims was needed to flow through their veins rather than on the ground when the Muslim community was small and vulnerable. Hence, the Prophet asked those Muslims in danger to secretly migrate to the Aksumite Empire of Ethiopia to escape persecution and possible martyrdom; ‘Ammār was one of them.¹² The situation, however, changed dramatically in Medina where the Prophet received the much-needed allegiance of the city’s two major tribes, the Aws and Khazraj. He established a local Muslim state and engaged in a series of battles with the Meccan pagans until their eventual victory over Mecca and subsequently the rest of Arabia. There we see an unprecedented emphasis on martyrdom and fighting martyrs, though apparently the martyrdom terminology (shahīd being “martyr”) had not been popularized then. So, the Qurʼanic jihad verses¹³ were revealed highlighting rewards for those slain in the path of God to encourage Muslims to accompany Muhammad by taking part in the battles against the enemies of Islam without the fear of their possible death in the process. Therefore, it was Ḥamzah, the chief commander of the young Muslim community (and, of course, a member of the de facto sacred family of the Prophet) who was named sayyid al-shuhadā’ (“master of the martyrs”) rather than the very first defenseless martyrs in the Meccan period such as Sumayyah and Yāsir.

In all probability, highlighting the act of (active military) martyrdom was not due to its inherent importance (as we do not see such attention to martyrdom in Mecca), but simply a means to motivate Muslims to defend their faith and the community at any cost once Muslims had established themselves as a new viable force in Arabia. Al-Ṭabarī, for example, reports that before Muhammad’s first battle with Meccan pagans (the battle of Badr) began, he distanced himself from his troops and started praying to God and asked him to grant the Muslim army victory; he then continued: “[I]f this group be defeated no one will remain to worship you.”¹⁴ Ṭabarī narrates that Muhammad tried to encourage his followers to risk their lives for defending the young Muslim community: “[S]wear to God that the life of Muhammad is on his hand whoever is patient in the fight for God and does not turn his back and is killed on the battlefield God will grant him to paradise.”¹⁵ After hearing this from the Prophet, a Muslim named ‘Amīr ibn Hāmām who had some dates on his hand and was eating them replied: “Amazing! For going to heaven they just have to kill me!” Then he dropped the dates and picked his sword and went to fight and was eventually killed.¹⁶ Muhammad needed brave followers like ibn Hāmām, who were not afraid of anything; hence, he reminded them what rewards would be waiting for Muslims once they died; nothing was special about martyrdom, except being a martyr was just one assured way to heaven, and a fallen Muslim was recognized as a war hero. We even see the tradition of asking forgiveness from God for martyrs. It is said that the Prophet asked God to forgive the martyrs of Uḥud, just as he did for other deceased Muslims.¹⁷ Recognizing this sort of tradition probably means that the idea of immediate forgiveness of all sins of the martyr appeared later in Islamic history.

In early Islam, when it was rapidly developing as a new religion in the neighboring regions, participation in battles against pagans and non-Muslims was necessary for the survival of the Prophet’s mission, so military martyrdom was theorized and praised by Muhammad. In the context of the constant state of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, the Qurʼan and prophetic traditions were concerned with fighting and being killed for God (qitāl fī sabīl-i allāh). After the Prophet’s death, during the Muslim conquests under the leadership of the soon-to-be-called Sunni Caliphs, Muslims continued to celebrate the martyrdom of their fellow believers slain on the battlefield by non-Muslims.¹⁸ However, for the majority of Muslims in the central parts of the Islamic territories and particularly after the conquests, the opportunity to die a martyr in the original sense (of dying in a fight against unbelievers) greatly diminished. Therefore, the definition of martyrdom was expanded to focus mostly on other types of dying for God that had nothing to do with dying on the battlefield where Muslims and non-Muslims fought with each other.¹⁹

The martyrdom paradigm soon changed in early Islamic history through the lines of sectarian divisions, as each sect had its own revered martyrs and did not recognize the other party’s martyrs. The phenomenon of sectarian martyrs comes from the fact that every group tends to proclaim that its belief system is authentic, while that of the rivals is considered an unacceptable deviation from the truth. In this light, polemic works of the Shī‘a consider the Shī‘ītes as true Muslims, and even trace back the very beginning of Shī‘īsm to the time of the Prophet.²⁰ Apparently, the first scholar who claimed this was a tenth-century Isma’īlī Shī‘a, Abū-Ḥātam al-Rāzī: “Verily, the first title appeared in Islam during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allāh was Shī‘a and that was the title of four of the [Prophet’s] disciples; they were Abū-Dhar, Salmān al-Fārsī, Miqdād ibn al-Aswad, and ‘Ammār ibn Yāsir.”²¹ Those early followers of ‘Alī, and other like-minded Shī‘a figures, such as Mālik al-Ashtar, Ḥujr ibn ‘Adī, and Mītham al-Tammār, shed their blood in support of ‘Alī in one way or another.²² With their death, they inspired later generations of Shī‘as to continue their struggle in keeping alive what they believed was the proper, yet mostly forgotten path in Islam, that is sticking with the wilāyah of ‘Alī and his successors (the other Imams) and respecting the Prophet’s family (ahlul bayt) as he mentioned on some occasions, such as the event of Ghadīr.²³

The initial dilemma, however, with the very phenomen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Emergence of the Shī‘ī Form of Martyrdom
• 2 Martyrdom Revival in Twelver Shī‘īsm
• 3 Revolution, War, and Martyrdom
• 4 Civic Martyrdom
• 5 Martyrdom Reimagined
• 6 Shrine Defenders: A New Beginning
• 7 From Karbalā to Damascus
• Appendix: Martyrdom in Classical Islam
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright