Word: martyrizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...most of us, martyrdom lies beyond understanding; we recoil from it. Of all the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden, none baffles Westerners, shaped (as they suppose) by rationality and the Enlightenment, as much as his celebration of the martyr's sacrifice. We puzzle over bin Laden's apparent conviction, in a 1996 fatwa, that at the moment of death, a martyr will feel no more pain than if he were being pinched. We giggle nervously at the rewards bin Laden says a martyr will receive in paradise--marriage to 72 virgins, divine intercession on behalf of 70 relatives...
...should try harder. Martyrs win by losing, and we don't want the world's most famous martyr-in-waiting to win. Given the success so far of the military campaign in Afghanistan, it seems highly likely that bin Laden will soon be dead. He may be killed by U.S. forces who find his lair, or he may meet his death in the rubble of a bomb blast. Perhaps his end will come at the hands of those closest to him; bin Laden's bodyguards are said to have sworn to kill their leader rather than let him be captured...
...fatwa"? More arrogant than the totalitarian conceit that Allah obliges "the faithful" to wage vicious holy war against the airplanes and office buildings of the ungodly? What is more arrogant, or in worse taste, than hijack heroes' sleazy dreams of paradise, with 72 virgins at the disposal of each "martyr...
...life for pulling him out the wreckage after a truck bomb destroyed his house in Kandahar several years back.) Majid is fanatically devoted to Mullah Omar. In Kandahar, the other key player is the governor, Mullah Hassan, who is also more of a wheeler-dealer than a wanna-be martyr...
...naive moment, there was hope for Michael Jackson: Invincible's first single, You Rock My World, arrived sounding contemporary, even understated. Maybe, it seemed, MJ had finally realized he could quit the martyr act, make good ol' R. and B. records, and people might just love him for it. C'mon! It could have happened! Instead, Invincible is a mess, with Jackson calling on rappers, a children's choir and chambers full of strings in a desperate bid to appeal to all his imagined constituencies. The only one served is Jackson, who fills 77 minutes with his hatred...