From the Moto Park: Martyrdom

A martyr, our dictionaries tell us, is one who suffers death rather than renounce his or her faith. A secondary meaning, somewhat vulgar, is one who undergoes great suffering (e.g. ‘she’s a martyr to indigestion’); and a third, polemical meaning is one who makes a parade of suffering (e.g. ‘don’t adopt that martyred expression with me’). West European attitudes to the concept of martyrdom are conditioned by the histories of Christian martyrs, scourged, shot full of arrows or otherwise horribly persecuted by non-Christians or, seemingly just as often, by those professing a different form of Christianity.

Setting aside the German Nazis and similar beastly and backward groups, religious persecution resulting in martyrdom became rare in Europe some hundreds of years ago. The whole concept of martyrdom thus sends a slight shudder down the spine of modern European man. It is seen as something very nasty indeed, to be avoided at all costs, and at the same time faintly ridiculous. The courage and nobility of martyrs is of course recognised and admired. But isn’t there something just a little bit … well … mad about it? If people are crazy enough to torture you over some detail of your beliefs, surely the thing to do is to tell them something or other to make them stop?

A sight of the thumbscrew or of irons being heated in the fire must have brought this thought into many minds and saved thousands from martyrdom. Those saved in this way, at the cost perhaps of a trifling feeling of guilt and shame (and who in this world does not carry such luggage everywhere?), are not remembered, while the martyrs are. Every faith needs its heroes and totems, and the Christian martyrs, following the example set by Jesus himself, perform this function. Political faiths also have their martyrs. The essence of martyrdom is the stubborn refusal to give in to coercion. It represents a moral victory over the bullies of the other side.

Political martyrs are easier to understand than religious ones but just as difficult to emulate. Spies or guerrillas caught by the enemy’s security forces sometimes die without betraying their fellows. Such heroism commands respect. But the countless thousands who have been executed or murdered just for belonging to the wrong group – for being Communists or Trotskyists or priests or atheists or landlords or trade unionists – without being given the choice of recanting, are not martyrs but victims. As are those who die in war, whether bravely or not.

This at any rate is the European view. Islam favours a broader definition of martyrdom which embraces war dead and even terrorists accidentally blown up by their own bombs. Not everyone who dies in war dies as a hero, but in the Gulf war, apparently, everyone killed by the enemy dies a martyr. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the idea of martyrdom has been deliberately vulgarised to ensure a good flow of military volunteers (since martyrs are guaranteed an express ticket to heaven).

Let us imagine for a moment the situation of a suspected atheist in the hands of a Tehran street mob. Asked to kiss the Koran or otherwise demonstrate his membership of the Faith, he refuses to do so and is stoned to death by his incensed neighbours. To a Western rationalist he appears a martyr to his own rationalist principles, who has nobly but foolishly invited murder by people incapable of understanding him. To his neighbours he is a limb of Satan who has quite rightly been put down. It is not suggested that the inhabitants of Tehran actually kill people for atheism, although Iranian atheists probably maintain the same discretion as those elsewhere in the Muslim world. But Islam, formed around the Prophet Mohammed, who was an effective general and a firm believer in the sword, is an aggressive faith with a contemptuous disregard for infidel views. This configuration saves the faithful from considerable intellectual effort. It means that they know what is what without having to work it out. This has great advantages for those commanding Muslims in political or military struggles. Like the Gulf war, for example.

Iran, it must be remembered, is not the aggressor in the Gulf war and hates and fears the United States (and one or two other Western countries) for the very good reason that they encouraged and supported the despotic Shah for many years to ensure their petroleum supplies. Where the rationalist would part company with the Persian Imams is in their view that the US is actually the devil, a status also bestowed on its friends and allies, even those who are themselves Muslims. Hence the provocative demo in Mecca the other day, the understandable overreaction by the Saudi authorities (and apparently other pilgrims), the bloody aftermath and the ensuing ‘Operation Martyrdom’ in the Gulf itself: Iranian naval craft sowing mines all over the place under the pretext of an ‘exercise’.

The Gulf is now full of warships, tankers, mines and potential martyrs in small boats, with more of all these things arriving every day. It is an extremely dangerous and frightening situation. Two more less blundering superpowers, two cunning and craven lesser powers and a collection of assorted Arab states and statelets are trying variously to pacify, subvert or defeat an Iran wielding today’s military and economic power with a philosophic apparatus a thousand years out of date. All to no avail on both sides, since the martyr’s crazed bravery is equalled, in military terms, by the courage and technical skill of trained professional soldiers on all sides: things which are also very ancient and – to a rational person – not quite sane. Everyone stands to lose, perhaps a lot, perhaps everything. Nobody can ‘win’. There will be more martyrs.

West African Hotline, 16–31 August 1987