Word: martyrdom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clear that we are left with one answer--make peace with the terrorist army and then, as a friendly act, kill them. We will offer martyrdom as a token of good will. Finally after all these years we will be able to put aside our differences and arrive at a mutually benefical conclusion to the many years of fruitless combat...
...then the forced emptying of Cambodian cities at the cost of millions of lives follows logically. After all, the extirpation of parasites is a public service. Once you have decided, as did Ayatullah Khomeini, to redeem the Islamic world from idolatry, and once you believe, as he does, that martyrdom is the quickest way to the joys of paradise, then sending 14-year-old boys into the teeth of machine guns is by no means irrational...
Which bodes ill for those hoping to see Iran curbed today. Iran is today's paradigmatic crazy state: its ideology extreme and archaic, its leadership implacable, its population full of passionate intensity, celebrating martyrdom and incurring it. Sightings of moderates notwithstanding, Iran shows no sign of collapse from within. Moreover, its prospects of being punctured from without are slim. Since crazy states tend to be destroyed from the outside, their fate is often a function of their geography. Hitler had the misfortune of being located in Central Europe; his pursuit of Lebensraum ran up against the greatest powers...
...that are covered with mirrors are set beside the doors. "If you drive around the city after a large military operation, you see many of these shrines," says a Tehran resident. "They are all over the southern section. Posters of the dead form a sort of collage dedicated to martyrdom. Every so often, municipal workers come to remove the posters, but soon the walls are covered again. It has become so common that people hardly notice anymore...
...later became known as Shi'ites, Hussein's tragic attempt to establish the Prophet's true succession was the supreme sacrifice for the faith. Martyrdom thus offers Shi'ites a chance to imitate their sainted hero. In Iran, which is more than 90% Shi'ite, passion plays depicting Hussein's last hours are performed regularly. Each year, on the date of Hussein's death, thousands of penitents march through Iranian streets whipping themselves with chains and branches, seeking purification through suffering...