Word: martyrize
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...murder of Marwa al-Sherbini, a 32-year-old Egyptian pharmacist stabbed to death in a German courtroom last week, has stoked growing anger in Egypt, where the local press has taken to referring to her as the "headscarf martyr." But with everyone from Islamists to the government claiming Sherbini as a symbol for their cause, her death is transitioning from shocking tragedy to a weapon of religion and politics...
...many, Sherbini has become a convenient martyr, an easy, emotional means to an end - or a distraction from Egypt's domestic woes. "The Islamists in Egypt have already [begun] using this as a card to mobilize for the veil - not for the right of women to wear whatever they want, but in defense of the veil," Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian journalist and author of the popular blog Arabawy.org, tells TIME...
...more salient than the women's-dress issue is the manipulation of Sherbini as a symbol of Islam in a perceived standoff between the Muslim world and the West. "She is a martyr of Islam, and justice will be served on the day of judgment," wrote one man on the wall of another Facebook group, Marwa El-Sherbini "Muslim Martyr." Even Iran, Egypt's traditional adversary, has joined the fray, holding a symbolic funeral for Sherbini in Tehran on Friday and summoning the German ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to hear Iran's formal protest over the attack...
Those forces have now turned Zelaya, an otherwise middling President, into the same sort of political martyr Chávez became seven years ago. Their dispute with Zelaya, in fact, arose from their fear that he was making a bid to become another Chávez. Earlier this year, Chávez, a democratically elected President who has enfranchised Venezuela's poor but has been widely criticized for undermining the nation's other branches of government, won a referendum that lets him seek re-election indefinitely. (Other Latin Presidents, like Bolivia's Evo Morales, have also pushed through constitutional changes...
...violence meted out by the state onto foreign powers and the protesters themselves. State television aired a program in which witnesses and experts all agreed that Neda Agha-Soltan - the 27-year-old bystander whose death was captured on YouTube, sparking sympathy worldwide and turning Neda into a martyr - was shot by foreign agents in order to intensify people's rage. State television also broadcast another program mourning the purported deaths of eight Basijis killed by bullet wounds...