What would compel a group of soldiers to willingly run into a barrage of automatic weapons during World War I? How did the Buddhist kamikaze pilots come to believe their actions were warranted? How did the Muslim 9/11 hijackers believe that killing themselves along with thousands of innocent people was a desirous fate? Why do the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) in Srilanka use “human wave” attacks consisting of hordes of suicide bombers to effectively swoop down on the militarily superior Srilankan army in droves ? How and why do stories of individuals embracing death for their beliefs hold such an enduring fascination?
As the myriad examples above show, Martyrdom is not a stable term with a single meaning. For the sake of simplicity we shall define it as the suffering of death on account of adherence to a cause considered greater than the self. From the ‘noble death of Socrates’ to the voluntary violent martyrdom of Christ to modern day suicide terrorism, defined as an individual killing him or herself on a mission to kill others, also known as ‘predatory martyrdom ’, the phenomenon of martyrdom is thousands of years old and spans across culture and religions.
The term "martyr" derives from the Greek word, “martus” meaning witness, while the verb “mártyras” means "to bear witness." The Arabic word “shaheed” is another eponym for witness. The counterparts of the English ‘martyr’ in the three most prevalent languages of the world, namely Spanish, Chinese, and Hindi are El mártir, 烈 (Lièshì),and शहीद" (also pronounced shahīd). Each of these enunciations has its own nuance. For instance, in Chinese the term "烈士" is composed of two characters:
:
1. "烈" (liè) means "fierce," "intense," or "ardent."
2. "士" (shì) means "person" or "scholar," and in this context, it refers to a person who is virtuous or dedicated.
The term "烈士" as a whole refers to someone who is fiercely dedicated to a cause, often to the point of sacrificing their life for it. While the term itself does not have a direct etymology in the sense of a historical origin, it is used to describe individuals who have made significant sacrifices, including their lives, for a noble or righteous cause in Chinese history and culture. In essence, although each of these words implies different things, at some point, these words became inextricably connected with being a “blood witness,” in other words bearing witness by giving up one’s life to death. For example, when the suicide bomber dies for his cause he bears witness to the intensity of his belief and proves the reality of the sacred object/purpose with which he identifies.
However, ever since the Palestinian intifadas and 9/11, the term martyr is has become associated with jihadist and the phenomenon of martyrdom has become inextricably intertwined with ‘terrorism’ and closely linked in the popular Western imagination with one particular religion, Islam, and it’s Muslim adherents. The simplistic thesis offered by intellectuals of an Orientalist mindset posits that Muslims are somehow uniquely predisposed to such actions because of their religion. This thesis does not stand up to scrutiny. It is the same thing as saying that because Black Americans commit a disproportionate amount of the crime in the US that they are uniquely predisposed to be criminals. Not only is it condemnable and counterproductive to otherize and essentialize whole groups of people like this, the approach is one dimensional and monochromatic. It does not really help us have a serious and substantive conversation about the origins of martyr terrorism. It doesn’t help us understand the very real extremism and security threats that exist in the world with the analytic rigor it requires.
Contentious issues like this require a complex, nuanced, multifaceted approach that takes into account the political, social, geo-strategic, historical, material and most importantly psychological and relational conditions and motivations that produce the phenomenon of suicide martyrdom, a phenomenon which cannot be reduced to any one particular ideology, religion or holy book.
In this chapter we will show that this phenomenon of suicide martyrdom with or without the “terror” component is not a religious, but rather, a human phenomenon, which has been around for thousands of years, and the psychological determinants of which are shared in equal measure by Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and secular and Communist groups. We go beyond the martyr’s overtly religious rhetoric, bringing to light his psychic dynamic and the interaction between his psyche and the real world historical events, social and psychological conditions that triggered his actions.
It is a well known fact that one community’s martyr is another’s terrorist, but none of the arguments put forward in this chapter are meant to justify or excuse suicide bombings, “martyrdom operations” and other attacks on civilians whether perpetrated by state or non-state actors of any nationality, racial, ethnic or religious persuasion. Those who articulate such justifications either fail to understand or have decided to ignore their obligations under international humanitarian law. There can be no doubt that suicide attacks against civilians are grave crimes. In most, if not all cases, they are crimes against humanity. International law defines those who perpetrate these atrocities as criminals. So are those who incite, plan, and assist them. They should be brought to justice.
The very first known predatory martyrs/suicide attackers were Jewish zealots known as the Sicarii, in the first century AD, when Jews were under Roman occupation . The Sicarii carried sicae or small daggers concealed in their cloaks. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Roman soldiers and alleged Roman sympathizers alike, falling to the inevitable retaliation the attempt would bring, but gladly giving up their lives hoping to foment a rebellion through this process that would rid them of their occupiers. Early Christian martyrs also deliberately killed themselves in defiance of Roman occupation, just as a modern day Christian group, the “Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine” pioneered suicide bombings in occupied Palestine in the early 90s, long before Hamas became known for such actions. This is a template that has been repeated countless times, whether it be in Srilanka, India, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Lebanon or Chechnya. It is a strategy used by people who consider themselves at war with their enemies.
In fact, the social scientist, Robert Pape, who has assiduously compiled the definitive database of all 343 completed suicide bombings from 1980-2004 in his book “Dying To Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism” found that over half were secular. The world leaders of modern suicide terrorism are found in Srilanka: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers are a Marxist, secular and Hindu group. They perceive discrimination, marginalization and repression of their language and culture by the Sinhalese-dominated government and use suicide terrorism as an extreme form of a national liberation strategy of their ancestral homeland. Similarly, over a third of suicide attacks by muslims are by secular groups like the PKK in Turkey which is also Marxist and anti-religion in orientation. What over 95% of all modern day suicide attacks have in common is a specific strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw combat forces from territory the “terrorists” view as their homeland or otherwise prize greatly. There were no suicide bombers in Lebanon before Israel invaded in 1982 and there have been none since it withdrew in 1986. Suicide bombings in Israel/Palestine began only in the mid-1980s when Israel began settling large numbers of Jewish people in occupied lands, instigating an angry reaction. Since 2004, there have been over 1800 martyrdom operations across the world and the vast majority of them concentrated in the areas occupied by the US like Iraq and Afghanistan, countries in which suicide bombings were unheard of before US occupation. And after the US pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, suicide terrorism dropped like a rock, and is down over 85%.
Pape has also collected data on the 71 individuals who killed themselves to carry to out suicide attacks for Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. The largest number come from the Arabian peninsula where the United States first began to station combat forces including tanks and fighter aircrafts in 1990. Al Qaeda attacks started only a few years later in 1995. Many videos left behind by these operatives emphasize their motivations as ethical in an effort to protect and avenge their people and the perceived atrocities committed against them. They repeatedly demand that Western armies leave their lands and invoke the brutal occupation of Palestine. They worry about the loss of their way of life, and the loss of control of their social, economic and religious institutions as a result of military occupation. They are angry at the perceived subservience of local leaders to Western interests. Pape’s work shows conclusively that the link between suicide terrorism type martyrdom and foreign occupation is even stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer. He describes this type of martyrdom as “altruistic suicide,” a phenomenon first identified by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim in his book, “On Suicide.” Durkheim thought that these acts required a name that should signal their social prestige and thus, moral stature. Could they not be seen as ‘sacrifices’ instead, since Durkheim believed that sacrificial rites occupied a place of high social status. However, he was not able to make much progress on this line of thinking.
Altruism pervades the phenomenon of martyrdom in all its forms. We will return to a discussion of altruism and sacrifice, but what are the other possible psychological determinants that underpin the actions of the martyr? What is the psychological logic of suicide? There have been other attempts to describe the psychic functioning of the “terrorist martyr.” Terman and Jones (2010) identify the “narcissistic rage” (Kohut, 1972) of the suicide terrorist as a fetal outcome of “primary narcissism” fueling the fundamentalist's soul. These authors originate the extremist's splitting of the world between an all good and paradisiac realm to build, and an all bad and persecutive present to eradicate, based on paranoid-schizoid defenses (Klein, 1946). Others, like Masi, (2011) stress death drive mechanisms and severe masochism in suicide terrorists. On the one hand the terrorist's vision of a patriarchal punitive Diety and the regression to the “archaic father” (Stein, 2006, 2009) and, on the other hand, the hypothesis of alleged pre-oedipal mechanisms - projection and paranoid-schizoid defenses - usually considered to have emerged from a troubled relationship to a maternal object (Klein, 1946; Winnicott, 1990). Patricia Cotti in her 2018 paper “O Mother Be Patient: The Origin of a Terrorist’s Death Wishes and His Quest for Martyrdom” posits the “Pieta Fantasy” or the fantasized ideal of a fusional relationship with an object that is always good, namely, God or the mother who is waiting for him in paradise.
These contributions neglect the crucial multifaceted, relational, cultural, societal and sociopolitical component that could give us a better idea of the terrorist’s/martyr’s psychic reality, and of its origins. What escapes the purveyor of exclusively intrapsychic explanations of this phenomenon is the network of social relations and or community and the material conditions in which an individual martyr is located. Fixating only on the individual as an agent posed against someone, hides the sense in which martyrs see themselves as embedded in a network of social relations to which they may be said to belong or want to belong. The research of Israeli psychologist, Ariel Marari discusses the pivotal role of “peer pressure” in University cafeterias in the making of Arab Palestinian radicals. Both Marari and anthropologist, Scott Atran have suggested that peer networks and social cohesion matter much more than ideological brain washing or religious extremism in this regard. Their social science research has shown that far from being nihilistic, psychopathic, alienated, or ideologically rivetted, martyr terrorists are in search for a meaningful path in life, social identity, and personal significance and glory. They radicalize to find a firm identity in a flattened world, where vertical lines of communication between the generations are replaced by horizontal, peer to peer attachments that can span the globe. Therefore, traditional Freudian explanations of this phenomenon which is pervaded by the Cartesian “myth of the isolated mind”(Stolorow & Atwood, 1992, chap. 1), bifurcating the experiential world into inner and outer regions, severing both mind from body and cognition from affect, reifying and absolutized the resulting divisions, and picturing the mind as an objective, separate entity that takes its place among other objects, a “thinking thing” that has an inside with contents and that looks out on an external world from which it is essentially estranged is not the correct framework to understand this highly social phenomenon. In this chapter we will emphasize instead, the inseparability of the “intrapsychic” from the social and the relational context embeddedness of the emotional experience of martyrdom. Martyrdom can only be understood in its social context and in the reproduction of the social context in the individual.
While not all martyrs have the same motivations and it is impossible to create a single psychological profile of martyrs and suicide terrorists, and while the act of martyrdom may seem irrational and self-destructive at first glance, a deeper analysis reveals the intricate interaction of group dynamics, politics and religion, and real world historical events with various psychological factors that contribute to such extreme sacrifices. Altruism, and sadomasochism two foundational psychological concepts that play a significant role in generally understanding the motivations behind martyrdom.
In psychological research, altruism is conceptualized as a motivational and relational state that
a person possesses with the goal of increasing the welfare of another person or group at enormous personal cost . The “altruistic motive” in both “noble and predatory martyrdom” is not mainly a product of the separation of the group from society as is commonly seen in cult and ordinary suicides . It is in fact, typically the result of a close integration and attachment of these groups with their surrounding society. From the voluntary and passive sacrifices of the early Christians to the more active team suicide attacks of today, all of them take place in the context of and exist within a particular extensive social interaction and unity of purpose. Those who engage in these actions value martrydom as an opportunity to sacrifice for something greater than the self. This might be defined as the SACRED OBJECT a sacred value or a super ordinate higher purpose or organizing principle to which these human beings submit and which brings this enterprise into being. For the early Christians, it was their belief in a crucified God and a commitment to the wider, persecuted Christian community. For Socrates, it was the idea of “preserving philosophy” and healing the rifts within Athenian society. For the LTTE it is Tamil Eelam. For martyrs in Palestine it is Palestinian selfhood and freedom. For the Jewish Irgun Zvai Leumi and Lehi the sacred object was Zion. For a Japanese kamikaze pilot, the sacred object was the Emperor. The sacrificial act—giving one’s life—functions as a testimony to the truth or reality of the entity in whose name the individual dies.
Let us now look at the interaction of anomie and altruism in martyrdom. Occupied and defeated peoples (and their co-religionists in other countries who identify with them) engaged in a struggle for freedom, autonomy and agency suffer continuous dehumanization, deracination and even attempts at complete erasure of their national and ethnic identities. In the modern world, the long and ongoing nightmare of the Palestinians is a case in point. Israel uses its modern weaponry against a captive population that has no army, no navy, no air force, no mechanized military units, no command and control and no heavy artillery, while pretending intermittent acts of wholesale slaughter are wars. The crude rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations — a war crime because they target civilians — are not remotely comparable to the 2,000 pound “bunker-buster” Mark-84 bombs with a “kill radius” of over 32 yards and which “create a supersonic wave of pressure when they explode” that have been dropped by Israel on crowded Palestinian neighborhoods, the thousands of Palestinian killed and wounded and the targeted destruction of basic infrastructure, including electrical grids and water purification plants .
Palestinians in Gaza live in an open air prison that is one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. They are denied passports and travel documents. Malnutrition is endemic in the Occupied Territories. “High proportions” of the Palestinian population are “deficient in vitamins A, D, and E, which play key roles in vision, bone health, and immune function,” according to a 2022 World Bank report . The report also notes that over 50 percent of those aged six to 23 in Gaza and over half of its pregnant women are anemic and “more than a quarter of pregnant women and more than a quarter of children aged 6–23 months [in the West Bank are] anemic.”
Within the West Bank, there exists a sophisticated apparatus of Israeli control of and interference with every aspect of Palestinian life. This includes job opportunities, work and earnings. This apparatus is extensive and multilayered. It includes a permit system, physical obstacles/closures, checkpoints, restricted roads, prohibitions on entering large areas of land in the West Bank and most notably the separation barrier/annexation wall that has turned the West Bank into a fragmented set of social and economic islands or enclaves cut off from one another. It also includes a prohibition on Palestinian land ownership in certain areas and the insidious dispossession of the Palestinians who remain to artificially maintain Jewish majorities in those areas.
These occupied people stand deeply humiliated and aggrieved by their loss of sovereignty, brutalization, forced displacement and imprisonment, and constant attempts at erasure of their national identity, which frays and disintegrates the social bonds that keep communities together and thriving. This engenders a deep-rooted sense of insecurity, despair and hopelessness. Consequent rage can be a rational response when all of the avenues to self actualization and the social bonds that give you a sense of meaning and dignity are forcibly ruptured. Emile Durkeim used the term “anomie” literally meaning rulelessness, ie, when the rules don’t work anymore, to describe this psychological condition.
But anomie alone, is not enough to explain this type of martyrdom. Even if some suicide attackers are partially motivated by personal or anomic reasons, those who work together as a team must also be motivated to achieve a collective purpose, the completion of a personal mission that serves the cause and the sacred object beyond their death. This takes place within what Fanon referred to as “regimes of foreclosures” that leave little “psychic space” for expressions of disaffection and frustrations of the occupied. This collapse of psychic space creates what Lara Sheehi has denoted as “enactments of otherness,” where occupied peoples like the Palestinians are compelled to act and resist as “other” because all other recourses and possibilities to get justice have been foreclosed. This is reminiscent of Fanon’s powerful observation in the opening pages of “The Wretched of the Earth” correlating the colonial control of external space (the closure system), the assault on the interiority of the colonized subject, and the physical and psychological resistance to this systemic, settler violence. The psycho-spatial matrix, he tells us, defines social relations between colonized, colonizer, and the physical as psychic manifestation of settler colonialism. “As soon as [the colonized] are born,” he states, “it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out and out violence.
In this context, voluntarily sacrificing oneself in the most undeniable, spectacular and influential manner possible, for the altruistic purpose of maintaining your very self-hood while at the same time challenging the hegemonic colonial power structure that keeps you imprisoned, at the same time hurting the occupiers responsible for the “regimes of foreclosure” and the plight and oppression of your people and fighting the national enemy, serves as a “glorious” act of meaning making, comradeship and “community service” in a life otherwise devoid of hope and significance within the context of settler colonialism. In this one glorious act of struggle and sacrifice, the powerless victim turns the tables and not only frees him or herself from perceived shackles but also becomes the most powerful symbol of willfulness, freedom and defiance in the face of perceived oppression undoing what in some cases amounts to a lifetime of perceived humiliation. For him, this self orchestrated death is better than living in humiliation. It is a “noble sacrifice.” In one fell swoop, he regains control, asserts his agency, and finds purpose in an “heroic” act that he believes will further the cause of his people or at least make their cause hard to ignore. Therefore, altruism lies at the core of many martyrdom narratives. Individuals who embrace martyrdom often feel a strong sense of this duty towards their community, religion, or cause, believing that their sacrifice will bring about a positive change in their community’s sociopolitical situation or protect their loved ones. This is also the “dream” and adventur offered by the most violent and extremist organizations like ISIS. In it’s manifesto, "Tadbir al-Barbarah” which is transliterated as “The Management of Savagery" they say “Fly to us, youth, to the regions we manage, for the youth of the nation are closer to the innate nature of human beings on account of the rebelliousness within them, while the inert groups only try to repress them.
This extreme form of altruism can be traced back to the psychological need for meaning and purpose in life and signifies an extreme form of attachment and integration to the community. In the words of Emile Durkheim, the altruistic martyr kills himself for the sake of his community “because it is his duty to do so.” The Roman poet Horace conveys the same sentiment “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” or “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” Altruistic martyrs believe that their actions will create a lasting impact, even if it costs them their lives. This form of self-sacrifice can lead to a profound admiration from their community and potentially inspire others to follow suit. In calling a death sacrifice, it is typically ennobled, raised to a level above the profane calculation of individual cost-benefit analysis – to the level of a so-called ‘higher’ good, whether that be of a nation or some transcendent reference, like a religion. Once one is convinced about the mission’s moral virtue, then spectacular violence is not a turn off but sublime and empowering, as noted by Edmund Burke about the French Revolution which introduced the modern notion of terror as an emergency defense of radical political change.
One of Durkheim’s successors, Maurice Halbwachs in his book “The Causes of Suicide” (1930), revisited the question of the relation of suicide to sacrifice, and produced a formula. Whether something was a ‘sacrifice’ rather than a ‘suicide’ depended upon the viewpoint of their respective societies of reference. “Society claims sacrifice as its own proper work,” accomplished “within the bosom of the community, where all the spiritual forces converge,” says Halbwachs. Society thus “presides” over sacrifice; it “organizes” it and “takes responsibility for it.” In Palestinian Arabic, the phrase for a bombing attack in which the perpetrator is killed is an amaliyya istishhadiyya, a "martyrdom operation," or an amaliyya fida'iyya, a "sacrificial operation.” The media coverage comprises only part of a larger atmosphere of social respect for those who have died in the intifada, expressed through street posters, pamphlets, internet sites, murals, banners, public discourse, and attendance by public officials at funerals or memorial ceremonies. The Tamils in Srilanka also honor their martyrs with statues, murals and shrines. Virtually all societies engaged in armed struggle honor those who die as part of the struggle. Observers of human bombing in the Middle East record that these bombings are done with a specific social function in mind–so that the “entire Islamic Umma is rescued.” Just like the Sicarii aimed to rescue all Jews and were applauded for it. This is precisely what Halbwachs had in mind in speaking of society “claiming sacrifice as its own proper work” of sacrifice accomplished “within the bosom of the community,” or of a society that “presides” over sacrifice, “organizes” it and “takes responsibility for it.” Human bombings, understood by their agents as sacrifices, are then suffused with social intentions, essentially involving networks of relationships.
The problem of religious violence and suicide terrorism is essentially a problem of group dynamics. Going back to Scott Atran’s research, a man who has trekked with the mujahideen from Afghanistan to the suburbs of Paris, the most common suicide terrorist cell comprises 8 members, generally well educated, including scientists and engineers. They are remarkably homogenous, they eat alike and dress alike, sing the same songs and belong to the same sports teams. They create a group of “fictive kin” that performs as a family just like a platoon in the trenches and sacrifice for one another the way a mother would for a child or a sibling for a sibling. Even the idea of “paradise” in the religious rhetoric of suicide terrorists is a concept suffused with the idea of union with their family/tribe in the afterlife. The patina of religious ideology is essentially a cypher. It is just a signpost of communication, just like Mao’s little red book, which was waved about without anybody believing or even knowing what they believe. These small group dynamics thus are the largest predictors of suicide terrorism. Indeed, all political systems we know of are expressed in terms of fictive kinship.
When it comes to Palestine in particular, scholars such as Shuki Cohen have determined through psycholinguistic analysis that suicide bombings during the Second Intifada were not “anti-social” behavior but motivated by “pro-social and interpersonal” motivations . What is perceived as a terroristic act of irrational anti-Semites is, in actuality, a rational act that arises from a personal sense of altruism. This altruism, according to Cohen, results from a “strong sense of social embeddedness and commitment” to their family, community, and identity. Cohen concludes what Palestinians have said for decades, namely, political acts of political violence in the name of liberation need to be understood as acts of social solidarity and individual self-realization. These acts of self-realization are in response to a sustained hegemonic structure of settler-colonial violence engineered to atomize individuals, attempting to strip them of their communities, their identities, and their internal ego coherence. That is, their actions are a reaction to sociopathic settler-colonial structures . As a result scholars like Lara Sheehi have rejected racist psychoanalytic formulations that approach suicide in Palestine as a form of self-castration because of feelings of impotency against the superiority of the West or Israel, or considering suicide as a redirection of Western phantasies of some primal form of Arab patriarchal aggression transmuted into self-annihilation. They also reject a contrapuntal reading that might consider that the violence of Israeli settler colonialism is responsible, bending the death drive back onto the Palestinian self.
Sikhism is not a tradition very commonly associated with suicide martyrdom, but one of the greatest anti-colonial freedom fighters India ever produced was a Sikh man named Bhagat Singh. Bhagat Singh and his associates threw a non-lethal bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi on April 8, 1929, to protest against repressive laws and to make a statement against colonial rule, inspiring others to join the struggle for independence. Their intention was not to kill but to use the event as a platform to express their opposition. After the bombing, they willingly courted arrest even though they knew what it would mean, and used the court trials as a means to convey their message and beliefs to a wider audience circumventing the very effective British system of control and censorship. Ultimately, Bhagat Singh and his comrades were declared to be terrorists, sentenced to death for their actions and silently executed in the dead of night and their bodies cremated, so fearful were the British of publicly martyring them. They willingly embraced their martyrdom, using it altruistically as a tool to galvanize public opinion against colonial oppression. Bhagat Singh's sacrifice and his steadfast commitment to his ideals have made him an enduring symbol of courage, sacrifice, and the struggle for freedom in India's history.
Another anti-imperialist freedom fighter who was denounced by his enemies as a “terrorist” was Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. Months before completing his medical degree, he and a friend embarked upon a motorcycle trip across thousands of miles in Latin America. During his travels, he glimpsed a commonality between the experiences of Latin Americans and their countries. He became convinced that injustice and inequality transcended national borders and that poverty and helplessness united Latin Americans. He was convinced that United States’ neo-colonialism based on exploitation, control and expropriation of resources of Latin American countries for the benefit of American corporate and economic interests was largely to blame. One of the most famous quotes from "The Motorcycle Diaries" is: "I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people." This quote encapsulates Guevara's growing awareness of social injustices and his desire to align himself with the struggles of the impoverished and oppressed. Throughout the book, Guevara expresses a strong sense of empathy for the marginalized and a growing conviction that revolutionary change is necessary to address the widespread poverty and inequality he witnessed during his journey. Not only was Che instrumental in the success of the Cuban revolution that overthrew the US supported dictatorship of Batista in 1958, he tirelessly continued his mission to assist with revolutionary movements in other countries with the aim of producing nothing less than a worldwide proletarian revolution which he believed was the only response to the hegemony of capitalist and imperialist forces. He played a large role in training and supporting revolutionary forces in Africa, including the Congo and later Bolivia where he was captured and executed. The question of whether Che Guevara deliberately sought an altruistic martyrdom is a topic of debate and interpretation. Many believe that Guevara's actions, especially in his final years and during his campaign in Bolivia, suggest that he was willing to accept the possibility for his revolutionary ideals. Others argue that his primary goal was to spark and support revolutions in other countries, and that his actions were driven by a commitment to his beliefs rather than a deliberate desire for martyrdom. Regardless, during his time in Bolivia, Guevara and his small group of guerrillas were isolated and hunted by the Bolivian military. As their situation became increasingly dire, Guevara's options became limited. He chose to stay and fight to the end, despite the odds, as a symbolic act of resistance and a demonstration of his unwavering commitment to the revolutionary cause. He is considered a heroic figure in Latin America today and his actions and legacy continue to inspire discussions and interpretations about the nature of his commitment to social justice, his revolutionary fervor, and his ultimate sacrifice.
Two examples of predatory martyrs for the cause of Abolition of slavery in the United States were John Brown and Nat Turner who are held in very high regard by American moral philosophers like W.E.B Dubois, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederik Douglas. Nat Turner was an African American enslaved man who is known for leading the largest and most violent slave rebellion in the history of the United States. Turner was a religious fanatic and believed that he received divine visions and messages from God. He saw himself as an agent chosen by God to lead a rebellion against slavery. As did John Brown, a zealot, and radical abolitionist who believed in using armed force and killing innocent people to end slavery. Both of them deliberately massacred white settlers and slave holders in their rebellions. You might call them “premature Jihadis.” They wanted to create a moral crisis to force the country to confront slavery. Both of them were captured and executed but had a profound impact on the fight to end slavery. John Brown has even been memorialized in several folk songs most famous of which is “John Brown’s Body [lies a-moldering in the grave].” This song has its origins in the American Civil War era and was sung by Union soldiers during the conflict. The song praises John Brown for his abolitionist stance and his dedication to the cause of ending slavery and his martyrdom.
The self-immolation of Buddhist monks, particularly during the Vietnam War era, as a form of protest against the oppressive policies of the South Vietnamese government and its collaboration with the United States in the Vietnam War is another example where altruism plays a key role. Buddhist monks believed that the South Vietnamese government, which was predominantly controlled by Catholics, was discriminating against the Buddhist majority. They were subjected to religious and political suppression, which led to feelings of frustration and marginalization. They were concerned about the erosion of religious freedom and the preferential treatment given to the Catholic minority. They saw self-immolation as a drastic way to highlight the suppression of their religious practices. They hoped that their extreme sacrifice would shock the world and draw attention to the suffering of the Vietnamese people and prompt international intervention to address the ongoing issues. Self-immolation was seen as a powerful symbol of commitment and sacrifice for a cause. The monks hoped that their actions would inspire others to join the protests and eventually lead to positive change in the political landscape of Vietnam. The monks were elevated to lofty moral, and indeed religious levels, whether as sacrificial victims themselves or as kinds of saints, similar to the way Palestinian and Al- Qaeda and 7/7 suicide bombers were elevated in their societies.
The notion that these immolations are offered to or for a cause allows us to dwell for a moment on the peculiar property of sacrificial gifts and of making things holy. Durkheim also argued that sacrifice is more than just a socially sanctioned kind of self-inflicted death . It is also a ‘making holy,’ as the Latin origins of the term indicate –sacri-ficium.’ Sacrifice from this point of view is then a giving up or giving of that which makes something holy. As the name, ‘sacri-fice’ indicates, while the immolation/martyrdom consists of a gift, giving up something of value in the present so that the future may be better, it is also at the same time, a ‘making holy.’ So in performing sacrifice for the sake of Palestine/Vietnam/ Tamil Nadu etc, one ipso facto ‘makes’ the martyr holy for his compatriots. They give themselves in a spirit of obligation characteristic of the gift. Their deaths are seen as a sacred duty to sacrifice; to give up themselves totally.
Sadomasochism, typically associated with deriving pleasure from inflicting or experiencing pain and suffering, might seem paradoxical when connected to martyrdom. However, an exploration of the psychoanalytic underpinnings reveals a deeper truth. In Toward a Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche writes, “Man, as the animal that is most courageous, most accustomed to suffering, does not negate suffering as such: he wants it, even seeks it out, provided one shows him some meaning in it, some wherefore of suffering” (Nietzshe 1954 [1887]: 453). When it comes to martyrdom, “I have suffered to become who I am”, runs the immanent logic, therefore suffering is justified, and “you too should suffer like I have.” Once justified, suffering becomes as Neizsche said, something we seek, “provided one shows him some meaning in it.” That is, pain as technique becomes desirable and the martyr an “exemplary victim.”
Sadomasochism is particularly apparent in the martyrdom operations intended to achieve a specifically strategic/political goal such as the attacks by Al Qaeda on 9/11, the Islamic State extremists who terrorized Paris in September 2015 and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide bombings within Israel proper. All of these organizations effectively brandished the use of terror through suicide attacks by creating a sense of fragility, vulnerability and danger deep within the heart of the despised imperial enemy, tormenting their would-be oppressors in their homes. If even office buildings, restaurants, bars, cafes and markets were not safe, then no place was safe. In the case of Islamic Jihad and Hamad, significant losses among Israeli citizens proved to the terrorist organizations in particular and to the Palestinians in general that they have an effective lethal weapon capable of inflicting much damage on Israeli society. Yahya Ayyash, a leading Hamas bomb maker who was killed by Israel in 1996, was quoted as saying that the use of "human bombs" was a way to "make the [Israeli] occupation that much more expensive in human lives, that much more unbearable." This “success” was an especially poignant contrast to the sense of helplessness that had spread among the Palestinians in light of the disparity of force between the sides and the disproportionate gap in the number of casualties on both sides. The individuals who carried out these attacks likely derived satisfaction from enduring suffering as they believe it purifies their soul or demonstrates their unwavering commitment. This willingness to endure pain or hardship can be seen as a form of self-inflicted suffering, resulting in a paradoxical sense of empowerment and control over their own destiny. Their personal masochism and desire for self destruction is thus projected onto a grandiose arena.
Additionally, this act of painful self-sacrifice can also invoke a sense of superiority or righteousness over those who are perceived as oppressors or enemies. At the same time inflicting suffering and pain on others serves the psychological function of attaining mastery and control over their own perceived trauma and victimization and helplessness by writing a new script where they are in control of the outcome. Killing him or herself and both soldiers and innocents alike, the suicidal-homicidal martyr sates his rageful and sadomasochistic desire for vengeance against his real and or perceived persecutors, whether it be the occupying military or its supporters whom the martyr holds responsible for killing his friends and family and the members of the religious or ethnic group he or she identifies with. The terrorist/martyr whether it be a Palestinian from Gaza, a Tamil Tiger, or the Japanese kamikaze would not exist but for his relational bonds with his tribe.
In his 2013 paper entitled “Heroic Masochism” Steven Gardiner attempted to replace Freud’s three-fold schema of masochism—erotogenic, feminine, and moral—with a two-fold typology, dividing abject forms of masochism from what he called heroic forms. The abject form of masochism corresponds perhaps more closely with what Freud theorized as erotogenic and feminine masochisms, characterized by a desire for either physical pain of various sorts, or the experience of humiliation, disgust or violation. What makes heroic masochism different is
the mechanism of inclusion or award, typically involving the use of pain. What makes it heroic—other than association with countless narratives of heroism that showcase necessary suffering as a stage in the development of heroes or their apotheosis is the repression or displacement of the erotic potential of abjection. That is not to say that desire as such is eliminated. Rather, it is attached not to the experience of abjection but to the socially authorized purpose—group belonging, thwarting the enemy, preserving comrades, obedience to the institution, the redemption of the world—glossed in the phrase the greater good. Heroic masochism, then, is “the socially useful suppression of abject masochism. It valorizes sacrifice and has a tendency to find meaning and purpose in suffering.” Heroic masochism, in fact, can be said to achieve its most socially potent forms precisely in those cases where pain is multiplied to infinity—in burning, in dismemberment, in crucifixion, and blowing oneself up with bombs. The construction of such experiences as somehow sublime, transcendent, depends precisely on the “incongruous capacity to imagine the unimaginable, that annihilation through suffering can somehow be linked, with union with the infinite, perfect communion with the divine, or obtaining impossible and permanent victory in the name of group or nation.” It is a powerful font of affect that attaches men to groups via the narrative of the greater good: suffering, then, has a purpose—service to the group, the family, the nation. The perversely alluring dread and ambivalence associated with initiation in the group, with acts of heroism and sacrifice, and with death are tamed.
According to Robert Stoller, sadomasochistic behaviors in general might arise as a coping mechanism for dealing with the emotional aftermath of trauma. Engaging in power dynamics, role-playing, and intense physical sensations could serve as a way for individuals to reenact and gain some measure of control over the traumatic events that occurred in their past.
He expounded the concept of "repetition compulsion," suggesting that individuals may unconsciously seek to reenact and master the traumatic experiences that shaped their life. Engaging in sadomasochistic scenarios might provide a way for individuals to confront and process their unresolved trauma by exerting control over the traumatic elements in a controlled and consensual context, bringing their trauma to a different resolution and thus gaining “mastery” over it. One can see how this concept might apply to martyrs who have actually been traumatized or feel vicariously traumatized through their identifications with the suffering of certain groups of people. This certainly applies, for example to the 7/7 Islamic State bombers all of whom were British but yet acutely felt the powerlessness and trauma and suffering of muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan after the American invasions.
Vamik Volkan's theories in the field of political psychology also seek to explain the psychological processes that contribute to intergroup conflicts and violence. One of his concepts is "chosen trauma," which refers to collective experiences of victimization, oppression, violence and injustice that are passed down through generations, shaping the identity and behavior of a group. The group comes to identify itself through the lens of these traumatic experiences, which become central to its identity. Chosen traumas are passed down through cultural and social mechanisms. Stories, symbols, commemorations, and narratives of victimization are shared within the group, reinforcing the sense of shared suffering and the injustice that the group has endured. Over time, the collective memory of the chosen trauma can lead to a desire for justice or revenge. The group may develop a narrative that portrays its actions as a response to the historical trauma, aiming to rectify past wrongs and restore a sense of dignity. According to Volkan, unresolved chosen traumas can lead to conflicts and extremism, as groups may attempt to address their collective sense of victimhood and gain a sense of identity and purpose through acts of violence.
In Islam too, one can find a long tradition of martyrdom involving both altruism and masochism extending all the way back to the origins of Islam. Shia Muslims commemorate the founding or chosen trauma of their religion, the willing martyrdom of Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, in various ways, particularly during the month of Muharram and especially on the day of Ashura, which falls on the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic lunar calendar. This commemoration is a deeply significant event in Shia Islam and involves a range of rituals and practices including “matam” or self flagellation consisting of chest-beating, flesh cutting, and other physical expressions of grief that serves to remember the suffering and tragic sacrifice of Imam Hussain and his companions in the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. These practices are intended to symbolize their empathy with the pain endured by Imam Hussain and his followers during the battle and through such means to purify their own souls by partaking of the spirit of Imam Hussain, as a model of unwavering faith and resistance against injustice. By participating in self-flagellation, they seek to emulate his suffering, steadfastness of bravery in the face of persecution, and show their solidarity with his cause as well as engaging in an act of atonement for their sins or as a way to seek forgiveness from God. They believe that the physical pain endured during the ritual serves as a form of penance and spiritual purification and strength. All of this takes place within a communal context, reinforcing a sense of identity and shared beliefs among Shia Muslims as we as a form of artistic expression and symbolic representation of their devotion. The rhythmic beating and chanting during the ritual can evoke a powerful emotional response and create a sense of unity. In the end, this tradition of self flagellation is a deeply spiritual and transcendent experience that allows them to connect with their faith, their God, their identity, their “sacred object” on a profound level.
The willing martyrdom of Imam Hussain became a defining moment for the Shia tradition of martyrdom. Imam Hussain's refusal to pledge allegiance to the tyrant Umayyad caliph, Yazid and his stand against tyranny and injustice resonated deeply with the Shia community. His sacrifice and the tragic events of Karbala solidified the concept of martyrdom as a means of standing up against oppression and upholding principles of justice. While the practices of Ashura might appear intense and emotionally charged to outsiders, they are rooted in the solemn remembrance of a tragic event and the principles of sacrifice, justice, and resistance against oppression. Thus, Shias gather on this day all across the world to attend tributes to the dead, the already dead and the future dead. Processions, songs, speeches, dialogues with the dead, recitation of the names of the dead, flags dipped in salute, hundreds of thousands of black unified mourners, ranks and squadrons, blood banners, coming together to form a shield against their own dying, and in solidarity with the indomitable spirit of ultimate sacrifice.
The masochistic tendency is most prominent in the voluntary martyrdom of early Christians under Roman occupation eg, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch in 108 CE. His irrational yearning to be wounded by his persecutors is made explicit in his “Epistle to the Romans:” ‘For I do indeed desire to suffer, but I know not if I be worthy to do so. Come, fire and cross, encounters with beasts, incisions and dissections, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the whole body.’ And, by no means is he the only one of the early Christians who actually appear keen to be tortured and slain for their faith. Choosing to follow in the footsteps of Christ to death, and thereby hoping to make a final public statement became increasingly popular among zealous Church groups.
Which brings us to perhaps the most famous altruistic, masochistic, even archetypal sacrifice of all time, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ himself, that which gave birth to one of the largest religions in the world, in the form of those who would try to live up to the example set by the voluntary self sacrifice of their savior. Christ may be considered the proto or founding martyr of Western civilization who led the way for his followers through his suffering and death. What makes the story of Christ so archetypally tragic is the worst possible thing happening to someone who clearly doesn’t deserve it, the worst of all possible punishments visited upon the least deserving person. But even that just barely begins to scratch the surface of this story. Not only is it a terrible torture, it is the result of Christ’s embrace of brokenness and death, his willing acceptance of betrayal at the hands of his fellow man, a mob of his own people who are simultaneously under the thumb of a tyranny that is part and parcel of what is persecuting him, who persecute him knowing that he is not just innocent, but also good, not just good but as good as it gets, but who choose to punish him instead of someone they know to be criminal. The Passion of Christ, in many ways the founding myth of western civilization may thus be considered as the sum total of confrontation of all possible fears through altruistic and painful self sacrifice. The reality of one’s own pain and suffering is the most absolutely certain thing a martyr faces. It is undeniably real. So what does that make that which welcomes and overcomes that pain? The tragic sacrifice is not the end of this story, it is the beginning. It is resurrection that is the final outcome which could be understood as something like the spirit of “God” for Christians or the highest ideal for secularists that manifests itself within one in opposition to tyranny. It is the highest apotheosis of courage and the accompanying willingness to abide by the truth which is admitted by all those who understand it today. The psychological implication is that if people expose themselves to something they are terrified of and the tragedy of their being, it is not the terror but the recovery and survival that is the end of the story, to the degree we are capable of bearing suffering by confronting it forthrightly and prevailing. The implication for Christians is that they should willingly pick up their tragic burdens and crosses, die continually and renew their souls continually. That is the death and resurrection celebrated by Easter. It is an antidote to what Heidegger called the “thrownness of being” or the catastrophe of life with all its tragedy, malevolence, suffering and vulnerability and fragility. This must be voluntarily accepted and confronted like Christ’s acceptance of the crucifix, to live in truth and stumble uphill. This is also the idea enacted in the ceremony of the Christian Eucharist. Incorporation of the “body of Christ” is the symbolic transformation of the participant into the active imitator of Christ, into the person willing to undergo whatever death is necessary to bring about the next and better state of being.
In conclusion, Martyrdom must be understood as situated in the realm of an ancient and ubiquitous human phenomena in order to open it to a genuine analytic inquiry, one that is not gripped by political ideology or reducible to a toxic belief system, even if it bears the accoutrements of such. It contains two systems of paradoxical and seemingly contradictory psychological determinants - violence and love/belonging to the community on the one hand and altruism and sadomasochism on the other. And it always occurs in a context of oppression. As long as the conditions and structures that give rise to disenfranchisement, exploitation, systems of control, oppression and injustice exist, there will always be altruistic individuals that will wish to sacrifice for their community in the name of shared sacred values and ideals, chief among which is the desire to have a sense of belonging with people they see as their kin, and live in freedom and dignity, or at least some less deplorable state of existence for their beleaguered community, especially in a context when other avenues and opportunities of contributing to their communities are circumscribed or impossible. Martyrs are not nihilistic, desperately poor or brainwashed individuals, rather they come from all strata of society, in many cases are highly educated, deeply idealistic, and loving and are deeply integrated into their communities. They are seeking to make their mark for their people. Violence just becomes a means to an end once an individual is convinced of the morality of his actions, seeing them as liberating acts of social solidarity and self realization, and confident that his or her act will be understood in that way by their community. Martyrdom can be an appropriate response while being a horrific act of sorts, all at the same time. Since it always occurs in a context of social oppression where a group feels othered, dehumanized and oppressed by another group; the context determines its meaning. The context IS what determines the meaning of martyrdom and the psychological determinants of the martyr. The oppressive group will see martyrdom as an act of sadism, hatred, pathology, and anti-social impulse. That group will look to understand the martyr only along the lines of a pathological response to trauma, and failed development. The literature is replete with this line of explanation. The oppressed group from whom the martyr emerged will see the determinants of the martyr's psychology as rooted in love, altruism, self sacrifice for the greater good and an act of mastery in a context of learned helplessness.
Heroic sadomasochism plays a role in violent martyrdom and the memorial dance of the “chosen trauma” of a particular tribe of people as it serves to reconcile that generational trauma, converting the powerlessness and lack of control of the original trauma to a feeling of supreme control by volitionally re-creating that suffering on one’s own terms and attaching the libidinal impulse, in the form of a reward, to the socially authorized purpose—group belonging, thwarting the enemy, preserving comrades, restoring identity, obedience to the institution, the redemption of their world, glory for the nation —suffering in service of the greater good. While seemingly disparate, these psychological concepts intertwine to shape the psyche of potential martyrs. Altruism often provides the initial impetus for individuals to consider martyrdom while the presence of sadomasochistic tendencies may fuel the perceived nobility of suffering, reinforcing the individual's conviction in their path as he attempts to gain mastery over real or vicariously experienced trauma and taming the very fear of death itself.
The role of altruism, and sadomasochism, love and violence in martyrdom reflects the complexity of human motivation and the multifaceted nature of self-sacrifice. These psychological concepts are not mutually exclusive; instead, they interact and influence each other, driving individuals towards extreme actions that might seem incomprehensible to outsiders. Understanding these dynamics can provide insights into the motivations behind martyrdom, shedding light on the intricate interplay of psychological, historical, material and geostrategic factors that lead individuals embedded deeply in social bonds within their communities to willingly and violently give up their lives for a cause they perceive as greater than themselves. The analytic task thus must begin by seeing martyrdom in its context and to see the contextual, historic and cultural determinants in the person who is doing the seeing.
Footnotes:
“LTTE's Human Wave Tactics Redefine Guerrilla Warfare.” 19 Nov, 1999, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies
“Martyrdom, A very Short Introduction” by Jolyon Mitchell.
“Islam and the Future of Tolerance,” by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Harvard University Press.
“Race and Ethnicity of Violent Crime Offenders And Arrestees.” Statistical Brief, Jan 2021, US Dept of Justice.
Paul Christian Who were the Sicarii?, Meridian Magazine, June 7, 2004
Robert Pape “Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism”
Wilson DS. On the relationship between evolutionary and psychological definitions of altruism and selfishness. Biol Philos. 1992;7(1):61–68.
Pape “Altruism and Terrorism” chapter
Sacrificial Death and The Sacred Object: https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/newsletter/posts/2014/2014-09-18-LOSS-2.html
https://aoav.org.uk/2022/an-examination-of-us-and-eu-weapons-used-in-explosive-violence-in-gaza-2021/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-gaza-faulty-indiscriminate-lethal-vietnam-era-bombs?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://archive.is/WbL0S
https://www.undp.org/papp/publications/gaza-infrastructure-damage-assessment-report?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#:~:text=It%20led%20to%20a%20considerable,provision%20of%20vital%20basic%20services.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jul/27/david-cameron-gaza-prison-camp?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2022/06/20/hidden-hunger-micronutrient-deficiencies-in-the-west-bank-and-gaza?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
47 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 3
Arabic-language media in other countries have used varying terms. See, for example, Daniel Sobelman, "Saudi Media Drops Shaheed in Coverage of Suicide Attacks," Ha'aretz, May 22, 2002.
Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What It Means to Be Human. Scott Atran Hardcover – January 1, 2010
Shuki Cohen, “Mapping the Minds of Suicide Bombers Using Linguistic
Methods: The Corpus of Palestinian Suicide Bombers’ Farewell Letters
(CoPSBL),” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 39, nos. 7–8 (2016): 682.
Psychoanalysis Under Occupation; Practicing Resistance in Palestine, Lara Sheehi.
“How To Think About Suicide Bombers” by ivan Strenski, Library of Social Science.
"Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism"
“Martyrdom, A very Short Introduction” by Jolyon Mitchell.
