International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 107

International Journal on Criminology
地区的冲突的蔓延和发展进行理解 , 我们不得不熟悉这一现代战争武器。
关键词 : 圣战 , 烈士 , 什叶派 , 逊尼派
The phenomenon of the Muslim martyr is a reality that the West must be
able to grasp. It is a modern weapon of war with which we can no longer
afford to be unfamiliar, both for obvious security reasons at home and in
order to understand the spread and development of conflict in the Near and Middle
East, Central Asia, and Asia.
The term “martyropathy” was coined by the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar.
It was first used in the Iranian context during the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988)
to describe the phenomenon that occurred when the hope of paradise was supplanted
by despair as the aspirations of the 1979 Islamic revolution were crushed.
This resulted in the creation of an “individual in death” by separating an individual
from society, so they could give their life for a state version of Islam. This concept,
extended to include the modern Muslim martyr, must be defined as a phenomenon
that pushes an individual to die for a political cause that is regarded as sacred.
As surprising as this may seem from the outside, those who die as martyrs for this
cause are not necessarily (or say they are not) Muslims. During the Iran–Iraq war,
some Iranians of Armenian origin (who were therefore Christians) also embraced
the notion of the nation as sacred and prepared for martyrdom with the same
enthusiasm as Muslims. In dying as martyrs, they were held in the same familial,
social, and institutional respect as Muslim martyrs who fell for the same cause. 1
Likewise, Iran also—during a public ceremony in 2014—unveiled a monument to
Jewish martyrs 2 killed during the war against Iraq. The existence of this memorial
seems to have been a surprise only to Westerners, as Iranians knew that the ideological
aspirations and (often disenchanted) ideals of the early years of the regime
had never restricted martyrdom to Muslims, but accorded it to all those who defended
the Islamic Republic.
1 Note also that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited the families of Christian martyrs
during their Christmas celebrations. On December 27, 2015, the regime's press service, the
Tasnim News Agency, reported that the Leader visited the families. It even published a photo
with a Christmas tree in the background, showing Ali Khamenei sharing food with the family of
a Christian martyr. The image is far from insignificant, given that a Muslim cleric would normally
consider eating food prepared by non-Muslims to be forbidden. https://www.tasnimnews.com/
en/news/2015/12/27/954331/ayatollah-khamenei-visits-home-of-christian-martyrs-in-christmastime.
2 The memorial was erected in a seven-acre Jewish cemetery located in the south-east of Tehran.
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