The symbol of martyrdom is entrusted, by the chiefs of a community, to men and women who offer their life voluntarily for solidarity with their group and in conflict with a different and ideologically opposite aggregation.
The martyr and his assassin are delegated; paladins or defenders of their society.
Few martyrs are technically suicide cases: the majority of them are killed by public functionaries, military people or policemen, or by religious representatives.
These people kill the martyr as if he were a terrorist, a criminal or a heretic who threatens the fundamental social values or the physical health of members of the community.
The society of the killer and that of the killed, fight to control the significance of the killing: Should it be perceived by the world as an authentic martyrdom or as a judicial sentence?
Nevertheless, the use of the martyr, as a weapon capable of provoking a considerable number of victims, has focused the attention of the media exclusively on this form of self-martyrdom, particularly after the 11th of September 2001. This gives us an incomplete or distorted perception of the social reasons for martyrdom.
Martyrs can be “ the witnesses”, using the literal significance of the Greek term, of private political groups that champion self-determination, or the heroes of the wars of expansion of institutionalized groups: a Buddhist monk who sacrifices himself in Vietnam; a soldier of the IRA which lets himself die of hunger in a British prison; a Japanese kamikaze who directs his bomber aeroplane against an American ship; a shahid who flies a passenger plane against the Twin Towers.
Martyrdom seems to have appeared rather early in history, probably in the 4th Century BC. The identification of the ideology as an independent cultural reality was certainly a requisite for martyrdom. Ideologies in juxtaposition among themselves serve as symbols of mobilization, around which principles communities gather, reinforcing and also radicalizing the economic and political conflicts.
The ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions, as well as the Greek philosophy, considered ideologies as cultural realities which had already in themselves the germs of the ideas of Good and Evil. The Zoroastrian dualism had elaborated the existence of an independent evil force, and Hebraism, from the age of the Maccabees (2nd to 1st Century BC.) adapted this idea of a struggle against an evil force, to monotheism. Greek culture introduced a personalized element into these ideologies, through the image of the ascetic philosopher.
The oriental Christian faith combined the dualistic idea to that of the individual hero, in this way, anticipating the Islamic ideas on martyrdom, among which, the idea of the pledge of an eternal life for martyrs, the pardoning of sins, the exclusion from Universal Judgement and the capacity of intercession by the souls of martyrs.
Martyrdom attributed a sacred significance to economic and political conflicts, subordinating them to what Max Weber called “the ethic of the absolute end” that is the unrestricted search for results, no matter how high the cost.
When, on the contrary, the “ethic of responsibility” prevails, and the value of the results is compared with the price of achieving them, this inevitably results in discouraging Martyrdom.
Martyrdom is a free and voluntary act. It is also an altruistic gesture.
The martyr can avoid death by declaring himself defeated in the face of his enemy, but also in this case, he accepts, affirms or even seeks death.
A soldier or a gladiator fights to defeat the adversary, above all, not to be, in their turn, struck and killed. If death occurs it is understood as a sort of accident caused by the circumstances. Only when this situation is recognized as perfectly sacred, as in the case of the Moslem Jihad, the soldier who is killed in war is a martyr.


The perception of the martyr
within the group to which he belongs

Martyrdom attributes a special divine grace to a terrestrial event.
The symbolism is parallel to that which happens when a sacrificial animal acquires a kind of sanctity. The animal victim disappears, eaten by the faithful, to whom it gives its sacral status, or otherwise, is completely burnt, giving up an agreeable perfume to the Lord or to the Divinity.
The Martyr, as a human sacrifice, acquires everlasting sanctity.
The sacredness can take the form of a promise of redemption, which eases the suffering or renders the martyr capable of resisting, notwithstanding the pain.
It was believed that the first Christians, imprisoned and waiting for martyrdom, had the power to pardon sins. Those who were liberated kept such powers and, in some cases, become ministers of the Church.

The martyr dies in the conviction of his own legitimate authority, which defies that of the executioners.
The human victim, after death, becomes a sacred symbol of the authority around which the community revolves. This authority is charismatic, freed from tradition: it abandons a more ancient order to acquire a new social and cultural one, which is often conceived as a spiritual order.


Martyrdom as an example

The martyr often constitutes a model for other minor forms of martyrdom. In Islam, for example, the idea of the death of a martyr, “in the way of Allah” is applied metaphorically to sadaqah, that is, to the alms.
Suicide which is self inflicted, is rarely considered a form of martyrdom. In fact, no aspiring shahid or failed shahid, would define himself as an unsuccessful suicide, since suicide is forbidden by the hadiths and, according to some scholars, also by Koran. Their actions are moulded by the very principle of the Istishad, i.e. to martyrdom. Suicide is a selfish act, while their sacrifice is unselfish. Asceticism, also this self- inflicted, is, on the contrary, a minor martyrdom. The adversary of the ascetic is physical desire. Victory over desire is introductory with respect to victory over the concrete enemy.
The martyr demonstrates the human possibility of the act; the fact that a person in flesh and blood triumphs over death, sometimes with excruciating pain, facilitates recruitment of the future martyrs.
Furthermore, a similar death constitutes a deterrent to any future deviation. In fact, that a member of a scorned minority is able to demonstrate such a commitment constitutes a challenge to the members of the dominant group. The enemy can try to hide the fact, but to be exemplary the martyrdom, it must be public and publicized. For this reason, video cassettes of the shuhada (Islamic martyrs) are made before carrying out the suicidal attacks. An undisclosed action, on the contrary, would be significant only for the martyr and the executioner and would fail in its exemplary function.
Thus the benefits of the witness of its own champion would be denied to the martyr’s group. The many martyrs of whom there is no trace, undoubtedly died in underground prisons and their ashes scattered. The history of martyrs, however, contains no martyr who willingly tried to hide himself from his community.
In the Hebrew tradition, the death for giddush hashem, which sanctifies the name or, better, the reputation of God, has the aim of impressing the Gentiles. This precept derives from the interpretation of a phrase of the Prophet Ezekiel.
Publicity, for the Islamic shahid is implicit in the idea of jihad: understood as a collective duty, more than a personal one, for this reason, not all the Islamic fundamentalist groups avail themselves of the martyrs’ video-tapes. Ibn Rushd (Averroè) wrote in his work on the jihad, Bidayat al-mujtahid, in the 12th Century, that to cancel any obligation towards the shuhada, it is necessary to know and to re-know their voluntary martyrdom.


Martyrdom and suicide

It is not easy to make an exhaustive study of the conviction of the aspiring shahid to embrace the idea of martyrdom and not suicide, even if it is justified by religious motivation.
Many of the major religious traditions refuse to consider suicide justifiable from a religious point of view, but at the same time, they make a great eulogy of martyrdom. Among these religions can be numbered Hebraism, Christianity and Islam. These religions make a distinction between the active willingness to put an end to one’s life through suicide, and the passive acceptance of death as divine will, through martyrdom by the hand of another. Nevertheless, the actions of the first Christian martyrs and the death of the Hebrews of Masada, in 74 AD, obscure, at least in part, this distinction, since the acceptance was anything but passive. This is a key passage to get closer to the concept of terrorist martyrdom.
In contrast to the religiously motivated suicide, we can also speak of a heroic and altruistic suicide, which consists in the act of a man who decides to assume the moral responsibility of dying for the good of the community or for its honour. This is a still greater approximation to the concept of martyrdom. Furthermore, one must consider a further distinction between religiously motivated suicide and that which can be virtually imposed on an individual by the norms of his society and can represent for him a duty or a punishment. One thinks of sati, the custom of burning widows in India and of seppuku, self disembowelment when it is practiced as a self punishment, in Japan.
The theme of religiously motivated suicide is very complex. On the one side, it is difficult to distinguish it from martyrdom and self sacrifice, and on the other side, from heroic or altruistic suicide.
On the whole, what can be defined as religiously motivated suicide constitutes only a small part of the total number of suicides Scholars say that the incidence of suicides, and the attitude that is assumed regarding them, depends, to a great extent, on the conception of the Hereafter, which the individual and the society possess. Where death is perceived as a happy existence, there is a sort of incitement to suicide. The tendency to suicide, in fact, is strengthened when it is considered a neutral act or even, deserving of compensation. In addition, the percentage of suicides grows also when this life is no longer considered acceptable or worthwhile.
Islam is like Hebraism and Christianity in prohibiting suicide (intihàr), while it glorifies those who die as martyrs (shuhada) or as witnesses of the faith. While scholars debate whether or not the Koran specifically forbids suicide, all are in agreement in affirming that the hadiths – that is, those traditions which conserve the words of the Prophet regarding a considerable number of problems – prohibit suicide. According to these sources, Mohammed proclaimed that a person who commits suicide will not obtain Paradise and, instead, will spend his time in Hell, repeating the act with which he put an end to his life. According to the models of tradition, suicide for religious reasons is impossible, because to renounce one’s life is both a sin and a crime.
Notwithstanding this, as in Hebraism and in Christianity, the demarcation line which divides suicide from martyrdom is not at all clear. From the moment it is believed that the Moslem martyr who dies in defence of his faith, is compensated with immediate entrance into Paradise, where he will enjoy great pleasures and compensations, it is not surprising to know that some Moslems voluntarily participate in the battle, even in conditions of heavy numerical inferiority, in the hope of dying during the course of the fighting. Nevertheless, it would be extremely diminishing to think that the motivation for martyrdom lies in virgins and sex. The foundation is, above all, religious and political.
Within Islam, the Shiite sect assigns great importance to self sacrifice and to the suffering of its Imams, the successors of Mohammad. The death of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet and third Imam, for instance, was considered by his followers as an act of voluntary self sacrifice, which could be considered as a death dictated by religious motivations.
Although he died on the battlefield, the death of Husayn was thereafter interpreted as a goal that he had both wished for and actively sought; the representation of his passion, which is performed at the climax of A’shùrà (the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year), shows his death as openly wanted. In the course of this representation, Husayn says: “Dear Grandfather (referring to Mohammed) I abhor life; I would rather visit my dear ones in the other life”.
Within the Shiite movement, and particularly, in the Ishmaelite sect, Hasan-i Sabbàh, in the 12th Century, constituted the order of the Assassins, who dedicated themselves to gaining their religious and autonomy in government. also by killing indifferently, crusaders and Sunnites. The death of a member of this group was not considered a suicide, even when his mission would most certainly have ended in his death, but rather, was considered a glorious martyrdom, which would have awarded him the veneration of the community and the pleasures of Paradise. Tradition cites many tales of mothers who were overjoyed upon hearing of the death of a son, but if, on hearing, subsequently, that the son was not dead, she immediately clothed herself in mourning because he had not reached the glorious condition of martyrdom.
In the final analysis, an easy and evident distinction between suicide and martyrdom does not exist, and on the other side, nor between suicide and sacrifice. In trying to evaluate the religious and moral value of certain acts which end in death, each person applies his own religious and moral values and his own religious and ethic traditions.
Such personal judgement, however, must be joined to the knowledge, by the West, above all, that what can be perceived by an observer as a useless self sacrifice can be judged by another as the most noble example of religiously motivated suicide, or of martyrdom, in the name of faith, of values, or tradition.


Martyrdom as a political act

Martyrdom is also a political act, which is relative to the partition of power between two societies, or between a secondary group and the community to which it belongs. The rebellion of the Maccabees, for example, which offered the first paradigmatic martyrs, was the action of a smaller community seeking some element of cultural independence. The Christian communities of Asia Minor, in the 1st and 2nd Centuries, offered their martyrs to the Roman authorities in the struggle to limit the power of Rome in imposing particular expressions of political loyalty.
Certain religious martyrs refuse to use physical violence against the enemy, but martyrdom, as a political act, is never passive submission. The martyr, even if not violent, psychologically strikes the enemy.

The cry which arises to avenge the martyr mobilizes action against the enemy. Let us take the example of the martyrdom of Mary Stuart which followed the hard religious struggle for the crown of England. Elizabeth Tudor feared that a religious war could develop over the claims to the throne by Mary Queen of Scots. The Catholic kings of Europe were more than anxious to avenge a dead Mary Stuart, rather than keep her alive. The cry for vendetta over her spilled blood was much stronger and clearer than her cry would have been when she was alive.
Where the hierocratic power emerges, political power is not far away: often the one changes into the other. IRA utilized the hierocratic power of the Church to support its struggle for the independence of Ireland from Great Britain.
Martyrdom aims at undermining the political authority, at challenging the sacred foundations which legitimate the authority of the enemy. The potential martyr is a rival that claims authority and this political claim can be legitimated by religion.
The political struggle can also be an internal struggle: the society of reference and the schismatic minority can share the same faith and political system. The Maccabees, Arnaldo da Brescia, Jan Hus and Savonarola, for example, accused of betrayal, all the heads of the groups they fought. The attack of the minority was, in these cases, considered heretical, and dangerous for the faith.
The Persian sufi ‘Ayn al-qudat al-Hamadhani (1098-1131) stated that divine grace had come upon him in all fashions of the esoteric science and of the divine revelations and he was, therefore, an independent source of law.
The bohemian, John Huss, (1373 – 1415) operated directly in the political field. He challenged the legitimacy of the Pope stating that Peter was not the head of the Church, which, on the contrary, must answer directly to Christ. Condemned by the Council of Constance and jailed in 1414, Huss wrote a message, characteristic of a martyr, to a friend in Prague: “In prison and in chains, waiting for the morrow to be sentenced to death, full of hope in God that I shall not flinch from truth nor abjure errors imputed to me by false witnesses.” He was again invited to retract after he was tied to the stake, but he answered, according to the custom of martyrs: “As God is my witness, I have never thought or preached what the false witnesses have said against me, . . .now, I die joyously”.
The pyre was eventually lit and Huss repeated the Kyrie Eleison until the smoke suffocated him. His ashes were scattered in the river. Extreme strategy in controlling the significance of the event impeded the elevation of a sepulchral sanctuary. After his death the Hussites returned to Prague and founded the ecclesiastic organization of Tabor (the so-called Taborites), recognizing only two sacraments, the baptism and the communion: refusing the greater part of the Catholic Church liturgy
Any minority can organize itself as a secret society, as a sect which practices an unusual cult. Tanchelmo of the Netherlands and Redus de l’Etoile of Brittany, in the 12th Century, both declared themselves to be the son of God. Their followers were victims of repression and they were imprisoned and martyred. Numerous ascetics and people given to ecstasies, and critics of the recognized Church gathered around this kind of religious claim and perpetuated their movements.


The different types of martyrs:
political independence and orientation of action

The respective political power of the community which is in conflict, determines the task of martyrdom and the characteristics of the martyrs selected to perform such task. Every growing society, without distinction, generates some particular form of martyrdom.
The Christian communities within the Roman Empire constituted a growing political minority. Martyrs of this minority suffered passively, inviting rebellion, but inflicting only moral or psychological pressure on the adversary. Islam in expansion during the first centuries of its history is a perfect example of a society in a phase of self determination. Its martyrs were active and bellicose.
The post-illuminist Hebrew community of Western Europe, on the contrary, was a society in a phase of political decline. The Jews who died at the hand of their enemies were not exactly martyrs, but simply, victims of mass massacres or, subsequently, of the Holocaust.
The attitude of the society with regard to terrestrial action represents a second influence on the type of martyrdom. The orientation towards action can be mainly the “ultra-terrestrial” type or mainly the “terrestrial” type, to repeat the terminology of Max Weber: that is, whether death concludes or not, the sense of the vital parabola. Those two types of orientation are in a dialectic relation between themselves. A political reading of the earthly existence, understood in an active way, represents an element of scarce influence for the growing society and for the society in phase of decline, while it constitutes a fundamental motive for the society in phase of self determination.

The sectors of the society which are prevalently terrestrially oriented tend to enter into conflict with the sectors turned rather more towards the ultra-terrestrial.
Heterodoxy represents a case in which the internal non-conformists, which constitute in themselves a phase of growth, furnish a religious counterpoint of the ultra-terrestrial type to the political orientation of a dominant society in a phase of self determination. This case is representative of the present situation in the moderate Arab countries.


Martyrdom in the society in phase of growth

A growing society is politically without power, but it begins to move; in some cases, to be reborn.
The resistance of the Hebrews to Hellenization under the Seleucid sovereign, Antiocus Epiphane in the 2nd Century BC represents a first model.
The old man, Eleazar, according to the apocryphal “2 Maccabees”, is the type of martyr who chooses to give his life rather than eat pork meat in an already desecrated temple in Jerusalem.
This image is re-proposed in the Hebraic rebellion of the 2nd Century against the Rome of Hadrian, in which the scholar and political leader ‘Aqiva’ ben Yosef joined Bar Kokhba, head of the revolution. Tradition has it that ‘Aqiva’ was wound in a Torah scroll and burnt in a Roman arena. The model of Christian martyrdom is the trial and crucifixion on Golgotha Hill, as is written in the Gospels. The subsequent martyrs tried, in fact, to imitate Christ.
The sacrificed Lamb of God fully survives, not in this world, but in the Hereafter. In a relatively singular way, the executioners designated by the Divine were Pagan. Normally, in fact, only a priest could celebrate a valid sacrifice.
This principle reappears among the Hebrews of Magonza who, in the 11th Century, when facing the imminent massacre, killed their own children and then themselves. In this way, they sanctified the sacrifice through their own hands in their role of priests: symbolically reliving the rite of the temple of Jerusalem (a massacre performed by pagans would have contaminated the offering). By consigning only corpses, the enemy is rendered impotent and in this way, the maximum of non-cooperation is shown and the spiritual strength and authority of the martyred community is affirmed.
Martyrdom in the growing society produces authority, increases the struggle, unifies the minority and legitimates the new culture through the demonstration of its superiority over nature. Furthermore, martyrs drive a politically growing society towards self determination, towards social and cultural freedom. The institutionalization of a new authority represents a first step of this process when, for example, the group of the martyr becomes imbued with the Holy Spirit. The death of the martyr renders the ideological choice a question of life or death. All this strengthens the struggle, generally accelerating its solution to the advantage of the minority. When the society moves towards an increased responsibility, it changes the entire culture. Paradoxically, the values for which the first martyrs gave their lives can often have no significance for the members of the subsequent society, which is, perhaps, fully self determined and prospers.
The radicalization and the escalation of the conflict, internally unifies the two parts involved. The atrocious injustice represented by the killing of the defenceless martyr and the horrible circumstances relative to such a killing involve all the people present. Moreover, martyrdom unifies and strengthens the group in its struggle. If social solidarity is a prerequisite for martyrdom, how can a group, internally still divided, and still not in the phase of growth, find its first martyrs? A partial answer to this question is that martyrs, in their turn, constitute a small group within the minority.
The intense relations realized within this group, render it capable of facing the larger and more powerful group.
The unity of the minority community can be hindered by defection of some of its members over to the majority group. For example, during the Christian conquest of Spain, between the 13th and 14th Centuries, a large number of Moslems and Jews accepted Christianity and publicly declared their adherence, but continued to practice their original faiths clandestinely.

Nevertheless, both the Moslem and the Hebrew societies fell into decline. The Inquisition tried to strike these ‘new Christians’ and, at the same time, pressured the State until it expelled those who remained Hebrew and Moslem. A kind of unification was reached by the Jewish emigrants, only in their Diaspora.
Before it is possible to think of serious open resistance, a crystallization of the minority around a nucleus of authority is necessary. The tragedy of unification in separation is dramatized in the apocalyptic opening of the Gospel of St. Mark (13,9-13), where it is written that brother will betray brother, father his own son and that children will rise up against their own parents and will put them to death.
In martyrdom, the culture of the minority, its ideology and laws are sanctified and a pact is stipulated which is sealed in blood. A comment and an interpretation of Hebraism is written in the manuscripts of Mekhitar - that all the Jewish commandments will perish only when the same are truly recognized and all these commandments will decline when the Lord is recognized among them.
Martyrdom, by putting the ideology before physical survival, affirms the priority of the culture over nature; as well as existence, law and group civilization over biological selfishness. A society in the growth stage, which values the life of the individual above group survival and even above its own cultural survival, is not yet ready to become a self determined society.


The self determined society:
the heroic martyrdom.

The self determined society has reached the full political control of its own existence. Examples of this situation are the Christians of the 4th Century in Asia Minor, after the victory of Constantine; Islamism of the Umayyad caliphates in the Damascus of the 8th Century and the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine during the 1920’s, led by Va’ad Le’umi, the National Council.
The martyrs of a self determined society are active; they help the society in its expansion by making open propaganda, sending missionaries to the non-converted and fighting against the enemies. In Islamism, the Jihad is a religious obligation and the martyr, the shahid, is the one who dies in this Holy war.
The European Christian society which, under Pope Gregory the 7th, sent the armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem, went towards a mass sacrifice, a deified group. Defence from external enemies constitutes the major problem; the reaching of internal unity remains a social problem of minor importance. Notwithstanding this, the self determined society suffers, in its turn, the internal schisms.
The Islamic historians speak very little about the Moslem martyrs put to death in the very first phases of the pagan Arab oppression, which constituted the first group of opposition. The evidence on Islamic martyrs of the various internal conflicts is much more precise: the many Moslem martyrs killed by other Moslems during the course of the period of growth and self determination are celebrated by their sects.
The historical example is represented by the grandson of Mohammed, Husayn, son of ‘Ali, killed by the soldiers of Yadiz, son of the caliph Mu’àwiyah, to impede the rise of Husayn against the caliphate.
This martyrdom is commemorated every year in the Shiite ambient with the flagellation, a form of imitative suffering. The ideological conflict was between the Shiite insistence that successors to the Prophet should come through family lineage and a context which was founded on an elective basis for the successor, to maintain the caliphate legitimacy.


The society in the stage of political decline:
victims and anti-martyrs

The society in phase of political decline is the one which is losing its capacity to be self determined. The pagan communities of the provinces of the Roman Empire declined when they were assimilated by the victorious Christianity. Zoroastrian society became a very weak minority in Persia, with a particular Diaspora in India, immediately after the Islamic conquest. Numerically smaller societies, such as the American Indians or the Polynesian Islands, were cancelled by modern imperial powers.
The cause and the characteristics of this decline are to be found in the loss of political autonomy. The symbols of the society are no longer able to control the loyalty of their members. The Jewish community of Western Europe, starting from the end of the 18th Century, conforms to this model.
The control of the different local Hebrew communities, according to studies carried out, was severely weakened when the new concepts of independence and citizenship took root in Europe. The Christian or profane schemes of reference, and the values connected to those schemes, started to influence the interpretations of the Hebraic tradition itself.
The Hashanah, or Hebraic illuminism, was build on the basis of these new intellectual symbols. The major contributions given to civilization by the Jewish people were not given to the Hebraic society as such, but rather to surrounding societies. Heine, Mahler, Freud and Einstein contributed, above all, to their own cultures, which were German and Austrian, respectively.
Martyrdom is latent in a declining society. The enemy simply wants victims which, with their death, do not affirm an ideology. The Hebraic authorities tend to remember the victims of the holocaust as martyrs who acted for the sanctification of God’s name. Some scholars, instead, believe that the people who died in concentration camps, on the whole, were passive victims rather than holy witnesses: not proud martyrs for a cause, but simply political pawns.
Leaders of a society in decline can discard resistance and martyrdom in favour of negotiations with the enemy. Some researchers attribute to the chiefs of the Hungarian Hebrew community, a sort of complicity in their own destruction, during the Second World War.
Although they knew about Aushwitz, a meeting with Eichmann convinced them that they had nothing to fear if they cooperated with the Schutz Staffen (SS) in imposing the ghetto system, the confiscation of personal property and the deportation to Poland for “labour services”.
The Hebraic resistance, operated independently or in cooperation with the local partisans, produced authentic martyrs, but was seldom supported by the Judenrat authorities, the Jewish councils in the ghettos.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, sanctioned by the ghetto authorities, was a sort of extreme suicidal push, like Samson in the Temple of Dagon. Self sacrifice requires, at least, a residue of moral strength and the will to protect the honour of the group. Slaves can only commit suicide, like the interns of the concentration camps who, to end their sufferings, found death by throwing themselves against the electric wires of the camp fences.
The victims who reach compromises with the enemy can become co-operators or converts. They can become also anti-martyrs. An anti-martyr can also be converted to the dominant ideology, but remains a chief of the minority and tries to master the conflict by co-operating with the dominant group. This attempt can cost them their lives. Sometimes, anti-martyrs try to eliminate the martyrs they consider to be unbalanced.
They are not just plain opportunists, guided by personal advantage, but co-operators, deeply involved in the enemy ideology, which they believe more suitable to their group. The anti martyr can find death at the hand of his new allies, if and when they loose faith in him.
Some new Christians, accused by the Spanish Inquisition of having reverted to Hebraism, went to the stake holding a Crucifix in their hands. The chiefs of a minority group, who avoid martyrdom because of the survival instinct, without accepting their enemy, are not true anti-martyrs.
A martyr is the representative of his community and is made divine by that community. Anti-martyrs, on the contrary, act on an exclusively individual basis or at the very most, as members of a small separatist group. The minority situation results in their condemnation as traitors and in transforming their apotheosis into a sin.



The production of martyrs

It is not always possible to find candidates for martyrdom. In what way can a community recruit and prepare individuals disposed to this sacrifice? Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who sought martyrdom in Rome, begged his co-religious companions not to try to free him, but to let him die. But, in the same period, some bishops of the Church denied their faith and fled to escape criminal prosecution.
Not all sectors of the social minorities produce martyrs in equal measure. The level of devotion of the majority of the members of the community, is not sufficient, in fact, to totally support the martyrs. Particularly zealous people constitute special cells within the vast community of the faithful, and these cells can become forges of martyrs, supporting them during their preparation.
The martyrs of the minorities which are in the phase of political growth are, in general, the chiefs, recruited for their nobility. Usually these martyrs are men, not because women refuse martyrdom, but because martyrs are drawn from the political and religious leadership. Women martyrs die, in general, affirming the values of the family. Barbara, who belongs to the vast group of the Virgin Martyrs and who was, perhaps, a follower of Origen, in the 3rd Century, was immured in a tower and was finally decapitated by her father, once he learnt of her conversion to Christianity. Cecilia, according to tradition, died as a martyr during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, together with her husband and the friends she had converted.

What are the psychological characteristics, the motivations of those who seek suffering and want to die? Although some scholars tend to underline motives of self celebration, the promise of redemption or according to the opinion of St. Augustine, the will to avoid sin, it can certainly be said that unselfishness represents the fundamental motivation. The deep involvement in the moral action transcends the martyr’s immediate interest regarding his own personal destiny. Accepting this involvement, a particular personal integrity is manifested together with the capacity to overcome the instinct of flight.
There is no doubt that some people embrace martyrdom out of madness. But the psychotics must have been very rare among the martyrs, since the mentally unstable are usually unable to maintain the personal ties which are required in groups of martyrs. However, many originally healthy minds must have given way under the tortures which often preceded the execution.
A martyr is prepared, in the course of his life, within his group, by a sort of social support: he finds help in this. The act of martyrdom is strongly distinguished by the ideological point of view and the potential martyr is repeatedly put to the test. The ideology of the martyr is concentrated on the significance of life in its relation with death.
It has not only the aim of neutralizing the pain of martyrdom through the vision of a future life, but it also supplies a significance for death, in continuity with the meaning attributed to the life of the martyr. For this reason the martyr goes ahead, notwithstanding the suffering. For the shuhada a minor ideological-confessional connotation is necessary because the torture phase is absent.
The martyrologies, both the narrative ones and those with a cultural scope, praise the martyrs and put evil into evidence. They prepare the new martyrs by means of the example, and encourage minor forms of popular martyrdom. The Christian cult of the Martyrs, approved at the beginning of the 2nd Century, centres around the exhibition of the martyrs’ relics in occasion of the anniversary of martyrdom.
In more recent times, the training of kamikaze also included the veneration of a special sanctuary dedicated to those who had died while training or in combat. In this, the recruits received a sort of spiritual “intoxication”.
The “exemplary” martyrs do not necessarily come from their own groups. Envy and pride, in fact, can be as important as rage in strengthening the resolution to bear physical pain and humiliation. The first Christians, who had not yet cut all bridges with Hebraism, identified themselves with the Maccabee martyrs. Ghandi, during his struggle against the Boers, in Transvaal, praised the strong Boer women who had survived the shameful imprisonment, by the British, during the Boer war.
Therefore, to prepare a martyr, the ideology supports the holiness of the mission and, the satanic quality of the enemy. It evokes the previous exemplary martyrs, also those belonging to different groups. The preparation for the ordeal materializes during life, in the narration of the martyrdom.
This training starts with the study of martyrology, an indirect experience, and proceeds with the direct practice of minor forms of martyrdom: doing acts of charity, fasting and receive the sacraments.
The submission to an existing shahid of the videotapes of the previous shuhada, is a contracted and more involving form of martyrology study.
The first Christians had extremely articulated narrations regarding the test. The Roman trial, in fact, which was of a judicial type, was perfectly predictable. Its phases included arrest, interrogation, threat and persuasion, the acquittal for abjuration and, finally, as a proof of loyalty, the celebration, on the part of the abjurer, of pagan rites. Those who were likely to be interrogated, were already instructed: for each phase of the trial the answers were ready.


The social control of the martyrs

A real danger for a politically growing community is represented by the risk that some of its members may start an open political action, even an open rebellion, before the community is ready to support a similar act and bring it to a successful conclusion. Martyrdom, precursor of the uprising, also constitutes a temporary alternative to it. A community must carefully control its martyrs, in the same way as it controls over-zealous militants.
The community establishes the rules which govern the occasions for the martyrdom. What principles are worth dying for? In what situations must one not die? The loss of this type of control by the Jews during the last part of the 1st Century AD, was fatal for the Jewish autonomy and, but for very little, almost caused the end of Hebraism altogether.
The complete defeat of the Jewish rebellion in 70 AD, which led to the destruction of the Temple, was symbolized in the new denomination of the Temple Hill, which was thereafter called Aeolia Capitolina. The subsequent revolt of Bar Kokhba (circa 132-135) was also severely subdued. The community, being unprepared for such desperate acts, did not sufficiently support Bar Kokhba. These catastrophes put the centre of the Hebraic life in the Diaspora.
The various edicts of Hadrian, such as that which prohibited circumcision, have often been interpreted as the cause of unleashing the Jewish rebellion, while, in reality, they were subsequent to it and were applied as a sort of martial law.
The social control of the martyrdom rules also foresees the possibility of establishing when there must not be martyrdom. The Moslems, for instance, are forbidden to wish for death or to meet the enemy. According to Islamic jurists, the talab al-shahàdah, the search for martyrdom, even on the battle field, is too similar to suicide. Mahmud Shaltoutis, former professor of compared law at the University al.Azhar in Cairo, clarified, in 1977, that only three reasons are allowed to the community to declare jihad: to repel the aggressor, to protect the mission of Islamism and to defend religious freedom, i.e. the Moslems’ freedom to practice their faith also in non-Moslem territory.
The laws of the Talmud on martyrdom were formulated by the Council of Lydda in the 2nd Century, but such laws regulated only a very small minority in a particular province of pagan Rome. Starting from Mediaeval times, the Hebrews were always a minority within the powerful and important Christian States. From time to time, pressure on the Jews to convert their religion increased, to the point that martyrdom then became a real problem.
Also the survival of the group, not only of the individual, thus became a sacred obligation. Moshe ben Maimon, writing his epistle on apostasy in 1162-1163, warned against the risk that the death of the martyr could condemn to ruin, also all his descendents. For this and other reasons, ben Maimon considerably limited the occasions that could lead to martyrdom.
Even though the Japanese Empire could not be aware and therefore evaluate the situation, it was their employment of the kamikaze ‘weapon’, which determined the American decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they found no other alternative to the continued payment of an appallingly heavy price in human lives until the enemy declared surrender.

The Talmud rabbis have limited martyrdom to only those cases in which it is necessary to avoid the public cult of foreign divinities, incest, adultery or homicide. Under coercion, it is sufficient, ben Maimon writes, to pronounce the Shahàdah, the Moslem declaration of the unity of God and of the prophetic mission of Mohammed. The Hebrew under coercion was free to react according to his will. If a Jew is forced to publicly violate the commandments of the Torah, with the exception of the three previously mentioned cases, ben Maimon recommends submission, a position which, however, does not appear again in his “Epistle to Yemen” nor in his “Mishneh Torah”, his major work.
It concerns an attitude extremely close to the Moslem dissimulation which suggests, in cases of coercion, to pretend to have truly abandoned Islam. However, anyone whose violation depends on their exclusive free will is considered totally guilty. Ben Maimon advises emigration to more hospitable lands, rather than await the arrival of the Messiah in a land of oppression.
Furthermore, certain rules which control the candidacy martyrdom exist. For example, those candidates who would not be able to face the adversary would be discouraged. As well as those who do not assure that their action is voluntary. The rules suggested by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) to gather the candidates to jihad, recall the Biblical rules which limit military service according to age, marital status and attitude towards danger. The shahid must not retreat from the fight until the enemy becomes double in number, a evaluation which is based on a verse from the Koran (8.66), but one can flee before a disproportionately great number.


The elimination of martyrdom by
the dominating group

The dominant group, when it cannot use the public significance of martyrdom, tries, in every way, to impede it. The potential martyrs are then absorbed or suppressed.
The dominant group, for example, can assimilate a sector of the minority, which is in some way harmonious. The new “converts”, then, if they receive important positions in the dominant society, can constitute an example which is understood to soften the resistance of the minority (this project fails miserably when it ends, instead, by polarizing the minority, inciting the resistant elements to attack those who favour the assimilation, as in the case of the attack of the Maccabees against the ‘Hellenized’ Hebrews). Since martyrdom depends on the charismatic authority, any movement directed to the rationalization of the social order, gives a sense of justice and order to the minority and weakens the propulsion towards martyrdom.



The repressive measures can be perfectly parallel to the measures of assimilation, in a sort of policy of the stick and the carrot. The generating groups of martyrs can be attacked, for example, by a provoking agent that infiltrates them. These resistance groups can be declared illegal and their members can be put to death, in a sort of “witch hunt”.
The favoured terror by the government against the communities of the martyrs’ tends to deprive the resistance groups of any sort of support.
Other ways of provoking a sanction against a community that practices martyrdom are represented by the infliction of particularly painful deaths, or by executing a large number of martyrs, all together, thereby abusing the potential of martyrs supplied by the minority.
This ever-growing wickedness often represents an act of desperation. Its authentic horror, in fact, can further radicalize the minority in its rebellion against the dominant society. The Israeli authorities, for a short time, adopted the technique of sewing the remains of the shuhada in pig skins, but the uprisings which followed convinced them to limit their reaction against the shuhada families, by simply destroying their houses.
Persecutions imply perfectly organized repressions against the minorities, not simply isolated or localized actions against potential martyrs. The Christian tradition speaks of ten persecutions: among them, those under the Emperors, Decius, Valerian and Diocletian. For example, under Valerian, in 257 AD, an edict was issued obliging acts of submission, according to the Roman religion. Christians who refused were condemned to the mines, were beaten with lashes and rods, marked on the forehead and shaved on one cheek only, so as to be immediately recognizable in case of escape, like fugitive slaves or criminals. This very severe persecution took place only two generations before Constantine.
When it comes to martyrdom, its impact on the adversary society can be limited by hiding the death of the martyr: for this reason the execution is generally entrusted to specialists. Just as there is a preparation for martyrs, in the same way there is a specialized training for their killers. The SS in Nazi Germany consider themselves to be a sacred order - an elite group, in charge of the Führer’s protection.
The extermination camps were training grounds, which prepared them for this task. Prisoners were considered as belonging to inferior races, incapable and antisocial, subject to malnutrition and unhealthy conditions; they finished up by resembling walking dead. Any officer of the SS who showed compassion was immediately removed from the group. Those who fraternized with the prisoners were immediately degraded, submitted to 25 whip lashes and were put with the group of ‘sub-humans’.
A diametrically opposite choice is that of encouraging wide public participation of both the dominant and the minority communities, in the representation of the repression. The aim is that of eliminating or demoralizing the minority, to the point that it can no longer be a background for the martyrs. In the face of elements which are outside the control of the authorities, it is, in fact, opportune for the system to apply the law disguising its real intent.

By acting in this ambivalent way, the dominant community can pretend to extend a political and juridical protection, with the scope of deterring the minority from a programmed resistance. The same situation can occur when more than one authority is present in the society. In Mediaeval Germany and Poland, for instance, Jews lived under the protection of the Bishop or of the local nobility. But this guarantee of security revealed to be totally ineffective when the Jews were attacked by soldiers and by mobs during the popular uprising against them, and on the occasion of the first mass slaughters.
The lynching of black people in the Unite States after the war of secession has the same character of an action provoked by the crowd, which is sometimes condemned and other times, tacitly accepted by authorities.
The dominant society can deprive the martyrs of their exemplary function by calling them criminals. The injustice is realized by removing them from the society. Starting from the 2nd Century AD, the Romans developed a rich literature justifying the suppression of the Christians and defining their martyrdom as madness. The works of Marcus Cornelius Frontone and of Lucian, for example, attacked the Christians as public enemies, as atheists and as a fanatical race which was in love with death and went to the most fearful tortures as if they were going to a feast.
To discredit their ideology, these works ridiculed the Christians, who affirmed that Jesus was born to a virgin of a poor family in a modest city of Judea, while, in reality, his mother had been repudiated by her husband for having committed adultery with a Roman soldier by the name of Panther.
The significance of martyrdom often emerges only in subsequent eras, through the myths which derive from the events. The martyr sees his ordeal as the prelude of the submission to his executioner and, therefore, revenge upon him and his community.
The dominant society, on the contrary, interpreting the event as a punishment or revenge, hopes that it has no sequel and that the cycle is concluded with the punishment of the criminal.
The destruction of the testimony has the objective of controlling the subsequent historical reconstruction. During the Diocletian persecutions (285-323 AD), the churches were burnt with all their manuscripts, which contained, among other things the passions of the martyrs of the past. The books were burnt in pyres in public places. The persecutors, not having been able to stop the apostasies, tried to cancel all traces.
Perhaps the most effective weapon of the State, in particular of the modern State, has been its capacity to render martyrdom an obsolete and insignificant act. The bureaucratization of the execution aims at this end. The Holocaust could not have happened in a politically advanced community, but without a police and a highly prepared and disciplined state bureaucracy. The moral obstacles, in the face of the elimination of a surplus population, were swept away, taking the project from the hands of the bullies and the hooligans and entrusting it, on the contrary, to the bureaucrats.