International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 48

Secularization Versus Secularization: Understanding the System in the Islamic Republic of Iran
person who places his ideas above his biological life. A Sunni tradition described by
Al-Bukhari highlights the beauty of this death, since the purity that emanates from
the martyr’s blood only begins to make sense on the day of resurrection (therefore,
outside the secular sphere). 21 Thus, even considering the religious texts most
focused on corporeality, the modern, quasi-fetishistic conception of the body has
more to do with a form of secularization, since it consists in a sacralization of that
which is most basely biological. For the new martyr, salvation does not happen at
the time of resurrection, but at a specific time T in the secular world, the moment
when the blood flows from a dying body. Salvation is no longer something that
comes from out of this world but is contained within biological death itself.
Thus, Shariati’s thought contributes to the construction of a martyr-loving
Shiism that Farhad Khosrokhavar calls “deadly,” since it constructs identity
in death. The humanization of the martyr is such that it is brought within reach
of any human. It enables the old criteria for social ascension, such as education
or birth, to be transcended. Thus, it is within the context of this social ascension
through the sacrifice of life that the “individual in death” emerges, a notion that
Farhad Khosrokhavar developed in Suicide Bombers: Allah’s New Martyrs and in
“Le nouvel individu en Iran.” 22 The politicization of martyrdom now not only
makes it accessible to humans, but, in its institutionalization, it finds a highly secular
expression due to the fact that even the idea of happiness is now translated into
financial and social terms: various state foundations promise economic security
and social distinction to the families of martyrs. 23
With the disenchantment born of the recognition of institutional Shiism,
the new martyr henceforward embodies something that transcends the modern
Iranian context, the Islamic Republic, its revolutionary message, and its disillusion:
it is one of the figures that bears witness to the impossibility of theocracy.
The political hijacking of the martyr embodies the expression of a new insight into
the impossibility of combining these literally different dimensions. The marriage
the case in both Christian and Muslim traditions. In his work Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), Glen W. Bowersock explains the development of the concept
of the martyr among Muslim populations during the conquest of Palestine in the seventh century:
the notion of the witness (shahid) from then on designated holy death, referring to the Greek idea
of marturos, and it took on the same dual meaning (that of the legal witness and the privileged
witness of God, and, similarly, that of the person who bears witness and who is the embodiment
of a witness).
21 “If a person gets wounded in the way of Allah, he will come on the Day of Judgment with his wound
in the same condition as it was when it was first inflicted; its colour being the colour of blood but
its smell will be the smell of musk.” Sahih Muslim, book 20, hadith 4626.
22 Farhad Khosrokhavar, “Le nouvel individu en Iran,” Cahiers d’Etudes sur la Méditerranée Orientale
et le monde Turco-Iranien 26 (1998).
23 These bonyads (foundations) include the Foundation of the Oppressed and War Veterans (mostaz’afan
va janbazan), founded in 1979, the Foundation of Martyrs, founded in 1980, that of the
Fifteen Khordad (panzdah-e khordad), created in 1981, and the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation,
founded in 1979.
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