Al-Qaeda and Sacrifice: Martyrdom, War and Politics by Melissa Finn

Author:Melissa Finn [Finn, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, History & Theory, Political Science, Middle East, History, General
ISBN: 9780745332628
Google: XSDluQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 13721788
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2012-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

As for the heretics, God willing, they will receive their due from martyrdom operations and car bombs.106

Al-Qaeda’s sacrificial subjectivity is heavily grounded in redemption in ways that speak more to pre-Islamic principles than Islamic principles as such. Pure revenge inhibits the calculation Muslims are expected to apply when determining right and wrong action. The Prophetic message included an effort to eradicate revenge killings. The work of al-Qaeda is redemption and retribution through sacrificial exchange, best encapsulated in the biblical phrase “an eye for an eye” (a life for a life), or what Naji calls a covenant: “blood for blood and destruction for destruction”,107 and made possible by social networks and social tests of loyalty. Osama bin Laden captures the principle of “an eye for an eye” in speech directed at the United States in 2005:

It had not occurred in our mind to attack the [twin] towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and the inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance towards our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way – to destroy towers in America so that it can taste some of what we are tasting and stop killing our children and women.108

First, the world painted by jihadi literature often treats the human-Divine relationship as subject to processes of calculation or a contractual exchange of goods akin to religious/doctrinal capital: the Divine authority keeps a running tally of all obediences towards and infractions against Divine will. (For human subjects on the ground, however, ascertaining Divine will is difficult because it is not tangible and accessible like a physical document [e.g., constitution], nor is it unambiguous like gravitational attraction between planets.) The sacrifice of the atoning martyr, his/her piacular act, re-invents many principles of ancient law. For W. Robertson Smith this means that “every offense against the deity [Divine or Divine within] can be appraised, and made good by a payment of a certain value”.109The martyrdom operation is seen in some circles as purifying a life of sin, even sin conducted intentionally and knowingly and thus a martyrdom operation fee sabil’illah is seen as a type of payment and atonement. Here, the idea that people can appraise offenses against God not only invokes the concepts of “offense” and “redemption” (where one’s sacrifice is a gift/payment to facilitate a redemption in the face of a serious offense), but also doctrines of retaliation (for example, from God).

In this vein, it is assumed that God will not retailiate or punish an offender if given a gift of sacrifice (which, by default, brings the martyr closer to God), and/or can be appeased by the gift of martyrdom. It assumes that the payment of some kind of sacrifice will off-set the need for retaliation between people. The former idea (payment to the Divine) paints a calculative relationship between humans and the Divine (where atonement is deemed necessary in a world

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