Word: shahids
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...disillusionment was complete. "We were and are begrudged [the right] to lead a more or less happy life," he says. "Our dream of a sovereign state ... has proved a fantasy." Determined "not to go on like this," Said joined the local branch of Islamic Jihad and volunteered as a shahid, or suicide attacker. "We have nothing - neither vehicles nor tanks, let alone planes, with which we could wage war against the Israeli army and for a sovereign Palestinian state," he says. "We only have our bodies. They are our only weapons." Although aware that his death alone wouldn't change...
...confessed his plans to his father. "Some feelings I keep to myself," he growls. His son-in-law whispers later that Abu Shouqa is furious with Haitham for the mission he undertook, but the father, he adds, can't admit it now that people acclaim the boy as a shahid, a martyr...
Islam lauds martyrdom. The traditions of Muhammad state that a shahid's sins will be forgiven when he sheds his first drop of blood, that he can admit 70 relatives to paradise and will himself be married there to 72 beautiful virgins, a point emphasized by Osama bin Laden. (Some authorities, however, feel that causing one's own death categorically disqualifies one as a martyr...
...developed a fairly well-defined profile of the typical suicidal terrorist. That man would be young, 18 to 24, born in poverty, a victim of some personal tragedy, a despairing zealot with nothing to lose. He would be fanatic in behavior and belief: stern, moralistic, teetotaling. The status of shahid, or holy martyr, would solve his earthly issues in paradise, and someone would give money to his family on earth. If he hailed from the rebel training camps of Afghanistan, where the cult of jihad gets its earthly gunmen, he would be fundamentalist in his faith, ignorant of the outside...
...problem? Mirabella's former artistic director, Sam Shahid, doubled as the owner of an advertising and design agency, Shahid & Co. Valentino, Gucci and Anne Klein were some of its clients. "Mirabella had no problem with my running a business," says Shahid. "They liked it-because I had connections to important advertisers." Says June Weir, who has worked as fashion editor of Women's Wear Daily and executive fashion editor of Bazaar: "I think it's a definite conflict of interest when someone owns a business and is also on staff...