Word: martyrdom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Enderby's previous incarnations, his buffoonery is a form of martyrdom to art. What gives it weight here is a pair of short stories he writes about Shakespeare. They form the opening and closing chapters of Dark Lady. The first, Will and Testament, is a bawdy historical pastiche in which Shakespeare, with Ben Jonson's connivance, manages to insert his name in the King James translation of the 46th Psalm ("Though the mountains shake . . . He cutteth the spear . . ."). The other, The Muse, tells of a scholar from an alternative universe who time-travels to Elizabethan England to verify...
...Souvenirs: Propaganda for the Front and for the War is the work of the Ayatullah's Revolutionary Guards and was intended to embolden the young volunteers in suicidal human-wave attacks. The bottom corner of each page of the book bears a printed blood-red splotch, symbolizing glorious martyrdom. There are photographs showing the Ayatullah in the midst of adoring Iranian masses, and crude political cartoons depicting a crumbling Star of David or a malevolent Menachem Begin loading a cannon with shells provided by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A message emblazoned on the back cover reads...
...Muslim militia called Islamic Amal, but the attacks could not hope to wipe out the group's suicidal zeal. For the followers of Shi'ite extremists, especially supporters of Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, dying in a jihad, or "holy war," means martyrdom and a guaranteed place in heaven. With the recent suicide bombings of the U.S., French and Israeli headquarters in Lebanon, radical Shi'ite groups have become a small but potentially destabilizing force in Lebanon. Says an Israeli intelligence official: "We have the makings of a jihad on our borders...
Since the 7th century, when the death of the Prophet Muhammad precipitated the division of Islam between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the Shi'ites have stressed martyrdom as a way of atonement. About 20% of the world's 750 million Muslims are Shi'ites and they are the dominant majority in Iran. In Lebanon, Shi'ites outnumber Sunnis 3 to 2, but are overshadowed by the Sunnis in wealth and influence. Over the past few years, as the political situation in Lebanon deteriorated, the Shi'ite community grew susceptible to the radical religious politics...
...whiff of martyrdom has begun to rise from the lower levels of the White House. Faith Ryan Whittlesey, who is something called Reagan's new assistant for public liaison, says she is "appalled" by television news and thinks "the media have tried to portray what we think are the bad guys, the Communists, as Robin Hoods." Her office predicts that Reagan will be proved as correct as Churchill was in the 1930s, and his critics as discredited as Neville Chamberlain. To make such an analogy valid, the country's survival would have to be equally at risk...