"Martyr" in Arabic

[GorillaMan]

Watching a documentary from Iraq…I’m wondering how Arabic language translates to the English ‘martyr’. More than one, people were describing bombings etc in a matter-of-fact way…and the subtitles said “blah blah car exploded blah and four were martyred blah …”. Is this likely to be a reasonable translation? Is there cultural connotations to the phrase, comparable to “in a better place”, “meet his maker” (OK, so I’m trying to think of some non-trite examples, but you know what I mean)?

[ratatoskK]

I don’t have the specific answer, but a few years ago I was in Turkey and the guide mentioned something about people who had been “martyred” and she did not mean it in a religious sense at all. I think she was referring to members of the military. She was a native Turkish speaker who was communicating with me in English.

[Northern_Piper]

Don’t know the answer myself, bu this is what Bernard Lewis, a well-noted Western scholar on Islam, says about it in The Crisis of Islam:

Those who are killed in the jihad are called martyrs, in Arabic and other Muslim lnguages shahid. [Note: there’s a little bar over the “i” in the original text.] The English word martyr comes from the Greek martys, meaning “witness,” and in Judeo-Christian usage designates one who is prepared to suffer torture and death rather than reounce his faith. His martyrdom is thus a testimony or witness to that faith, and to his readiness to suffer and die for it. The Arabic term shahid also means “witness” and is usually translated “martyr”, but it has a rather different connotation. In Islamic usage the term martyrdom is normally interpreted to mean death in a jihad and its reward in eternal bliss, described in some detail in early religious texts. Suicide, by contrast, is a mortal sin and earns eternal damnation, even for those who would otherwise have earned a place in paradise. The classical jurists distinguish clearly between facing certain death at the hands of the enemy and killing oneself by one’s own hand. The one leads to heaven, the other to hell. Some recent fundamentalist jurists and others have blurred or even dismissed this distinction, but their view is by no means unanimously accepted. The suicide bomber isthus taking a considerable risk on a theological nicety.