Jihadist sacrifice

Talal Asad has argued, uncharacteristically, that “none of the criteria [of] the Islamic tradition” allows anyone to describe suicide bombers as “sacrifices.” Ivan Strenski ( Why Politics Can’t Be Freed From Religion (Blackwell Manifestos) ) demurs. He finds plenty of evidence that there are contemporary Muslims who “represent an ‘Islamic tradition’ that conceives of human bombers as sacrifices.”

And, he adds, sacrifice confers authority, and this in two ways. First, suicide sacrifice sacralizes: “Sacrifice is a kind of ritual machine for manufacturing the sacred,” as the etymology of sacrificium suggests. The sacrificer himself is sacralized: “the bomber enters into the space of the religio-political imaginary: the human bomber is seen as ascending to heaven to be received by Allah.” They become sacred figures within their communities:

“As sacred, they become preeminent symbolic bearers of the kinds of values that a society treasures as fundamental to it because . . . they are not part of the normal system of utilitarian truck-and-barter. Instead, they are what society must ‘conserve, preserve and increase’ [quoting Maurice Godelier]. Sacrifice works in the first sense because the forces thus liberated by actualizing the sacred inform people with strong values. In Israel/Palestine, human bombers are elevated beyond the status of ordinary profane humanity. In the eyes of the community, those who sacrifice themselves for the community rise to the lofty religious level of ‘martyr.’”

Sacredness is always, however, contagious. Thus jihadist sacrifice “establishes a ‘precinct’ or territory of sacrifice,” and “the place of sacrifice becomes itself a sacred place, a place guarded by taboos and withdrawn from ordinary concourse.” And not only the place, but those who have contact with the martyr or his place share in the sacred energy: “those who enable the rite participate in the sacredness created by the sacrificial act. The meager belongings of the ‘human bombers’ are collected and revered as ‘relics.’ Songs are composed about them and their acts, and sung openly in the streets. Their pictures ‘become the object of worship-like adoration.’ The families of the human bombers, by a kind of contagion of the sacred, are viewed as ‘precious in the eyes of the public.’”

The second way that sacrifice confers authority is in its capacity as gift. Suicide sacrifice is a gift to Allah, an acknowledgement that “one does not own oneself, and consequently that one owes oneself to someone else” and that “Allah has always owned one.” In short, “self-sacrifice is simply returning to Allah what really belongs to Him. It is what one ought to do.” Gifts are always reciprocal, placing the requirement of reception and gratitude on the one who receives the gift. But Allah cannot be put under obligation. Who, then, is obligated by the gift of suicide sacrifice? Strenski says, “the human bombers seek to put the entire community under . . . a dual obligation.” They want “the community both to feel obliged to accept the gift of their deaths, and, most importantly, to be obliged to repay this gift of their heroic deaths in some appropriate way.” One of the appropriate ways of showing gratitude for the sacrifice is to become a sacrifice yourself.