Word: martyrdom
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...brought me to Alamut is the legend, chronicled by Muslim and Crusader historians, that Hasan-i Sabbah, leader of the 12th century Middle Eastern terror cult known as the Assassins, had built a simulacrum here of the sensual delights of Paradise to quicken his men's taste for martyrdom. The Assassins - a kind of al Qaeda of its time - operated by stealth, and armed only with daggers, they killed hundreds of princes, viziers, generals, and rival clergymen. According to legend, before being dispatched on a mission, an operative would be drugged into a deep sleep. He would wake...
...hijackers came from wealthy families, and it's not as if they left the boys out of the will. Finally, I told her about my conversation three years ago with the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. "What's the difference between suicide, which the Koran condemns, and martyrdom?" I asked. "Suicide," he replied, "is done out of despair. But remember: most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives." In short, there was a future to live for--and they detonated it anyway...
What explains the appeal of suicide attacks in Iraq? For one thing, using oneself as a weapon can be a relatively effective tactic against an enemy with far superior firepower. And extremist Muslim suicide bombers believe that their sacrifice guarantees them "martyrdom" and a passport to paradise. (That said, suicide attacks aren't unique to Islamist insurgencies. Sri Lanka's mostly Hindu Tamil Tigers have probably conducted more such attacks than any other single group...
Toward the end of the cleansing period, a bomber may ask a fellow jihadi, one better versed in religious doctrine, to help with the final spiritual preparation. Marwan says he was asked to mentor a friend intent on martyrdom earlier this year. He expects his final weeks to be a period of euphoria rather than penance. "My friend was happier than I had ever seen him," Marwan says. "He felt he was close to the end of his journey to heaven." (The friend, he says, blew himself up two months ago at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers near Ramadi...
...would someone in full clown regalia wander--like a child into a war zone--through the streets of a toxic inner city? Is he on a quest for instant martyrdom? No. He's Tommy Johnson, an ex-drug dealer now known as Tommy the Hip-Hop Clown, and he's recruiting some of the best local talent of South Central Los Angeles to help create a frenetic, feel-good style of dance called clowning. Missionaries of optimism, they go about, one clowner says, "making smiles where there were no smiles, laughter where there was no laughter," and turning the meanest...