Why Politics Can\u2019t Be Freed From Religion (Blackwell Manifestos) <\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=leithartcom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1405176482&camp=217145&creative=399369\")
) demurs. He finds plenty of evidence that there are contemporary Muslims who \u201crepresent an \u2018Islamic tradition\u2019 that conceives of human bombers as sacrifices.\u201d <\/p>\n And, he adds, sacrifice confers authority, and this in two ways. First, suicide sacrifice sacralizes: \u201cSacrifice is a kind of ritual machine for manufacturing the sacred,\u201d as the etymology of sacrificium <\/em> suggests. The sacrificer himself is sacralized: \u201cthe bomber enters into the space of the religio-political imaginary: the human bomber is seen as ascending to heaven to be received by Allah.\u201d They become sacred figures within their communities: <\/p>\n \u201cAs 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 \u2018conserve, preserve and increase\u2019 [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 <\/em> level of \u2018martyr.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Sacredness is always, however, contagious. Thus jihadist sacrifice \u201cestablishes a \u2018precinct\u2019 or territory of sacrifice,\u201d and \u201cthe place of sacrifice becomes itself a sacred place, a place guarded by taboos and withdrawn from ordinary concourse.\u201d And not only the place, but those who have contact with the martyr or his place share in the sacred energy: \u201cthose who enable the rite participate in the sacredness created by the sacrificial act. The meager belongings of the \u2018human bombers\u2019 are collected and revered as \u2018relics.\u2019 Songs are composed about them and their acts, and sung openly in the streets. Their pictures \u2018become the object of worship-like adoration.\u2019 The families of the human bombers, by a kind of contagion of the sacred, are viewed as \u2018precious in the eyes of the public.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The second way that sacrifice confers authority is in its capacity as gift. Suicide sacrifice is a gift to Allah, an acknowledgement that \u201cone does not own oneself, and consequently that one owes oneself to someone else\u201d and that \u201cAllah has always owned one.\u201d In short, \u201cself-sacrifice is simply returning to Allah what really belongs to Him. It is what one ought <\/em> to do.\u201d 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, \u201cthe human bombers seek to put the entire community under . . . a dual obligation.\u201d They want \u201cthe community both to feel obliged <\/em> to accept the gift of their deaths, and, most importantly, to be obliged <\/em> to repay this gift of their heroic deaths in some appropriate way.\u201d One of the appropriate ways of showing gratitude for the sacrifice is to become a sacrifice yourself. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talal Asad has argued, uncharacteristically, that \u201cnone of the criteria [of] the Islamic tradition\u201d allows anyone to describe suicide bombers as \u201csacrifices.\u201d Ivan Strenski ( Why Politics Can\u2019t Be Freed From Religion (Blackwell Manifestos) ) demurs. He finds plenty of evidence that there are contemporary Muslims who \u201crepresent an \u2018Islamic tradition\u2019 that conceives of human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religions","category-theology-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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