The headline reads, " Taxi Driver Died as a Martyr for Family, Mourners Told".
A 41-year-old Somalian immigrant taxi driver who holds two university degrees was stuck driving a cab to support his wife and 7 kids. He was found dead in the trunk of his taxi, stabbed numerous times. Two aboriginal adults, a man and a woman, were charged with his death.
At his funeral the Imam of the mosque said he had died a martyr to the cause. The “cause” I guess is supporting his wife and kids.
This is a tragic story for sure but it’s just another case of a cabby getting robbed and killed for a few hundred dollars. The guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I really don’t understand the “Martyrdom” thing. Is any muslim who dies a random violent death at the hands of pieces of shit considered a martyr?
A desire for martydom seems to occur in every culture. It makes sense that, what with death being inevitable, people would hope that their death would have some meaning or impact.
That said, I think that it is overly self-indulgent to spend much time thinking about being a martyr. It’s the sort of thing that is acceptable in adolecence but which should be put aside as you grow up and deal with actually putting meaning into your life, not hoping that your death can do that for you.
Martyrdom is most consistent with cultures that adopt a Platonic view of existence: namely that the earthly world is inferior and that the separate spirtual realm is the preferred state (although unknowable).
Martyrdom appears to raise the person to a higher level in the believer’s eyes. Shouldn’t you actually have to **do something heroic ** in the course of defending your faith?
Dying a random violent death should only be considered a tragedy and nothing more.
Well, maybe this is just my American perspective, but I was under the impression that you have to be a martyr for something. The Chinese student who stood in front of a tank was a martyr. This cab driver just got a suck deal.
That also brings to mind how people figure suicide bombers are martyrs. Is it because things are somehow seen as so desperate that such murderous self-immolation is rationalized as inevitable and therefore in the vein of early Christians being fed to lions for their beliefs?
Exactly what I’m trying to say. The term ‘martyr’ is tossed around so much in the news relating to a muslim death of any cause. Like really, who in North America really gives a shit. I sounds so “holier than thou”.
Sounds like a case of verbal inflation. “Hero” and “tragedy” have been (mis-)used for so long that speakers feel they no longer satisfy even the lowered standards to which they were being held, so now they’ve upped the ante by referring to crime victims as “martyrs”. By next year, “savior” is probably going to be used to refer to athletes who pay their sports well.
This devaluation of our words through overuse of hyperbole is a holocaust for the English language.
It all depends on how you define ‘cause’. The unfortunate cabbie had a wife and 7 kids to look after and that was his reason for living I guess. Did that elevate him to any higher standing than you or me upon his death. If someone kills themself by blowing up women and children is that considered also dying for a ‘cause’ and worthy of martydom? In the first instance a person has died a tragic death trying to support and nourish 8 lives and in the second a person has died trying to destroy a similar number of lives.
In the above example I think the cabbie is much more worthy of being deemed a martyr. I doesn’t work that way in real life because they both are.
I don’t think the cabbie was really a martyr. True, he died while performing a sacrifice for his family, but in my mind that’s not martyrdom. He had taken the long path, that of living for a cause. Those with too much fire in their bellies and too little sense rabidly look for a cause to die, and kill, for.
Also, I think the reason for a martyr’s death would have to be related to the cause he was devoting himself to. Since I doubt that the cab driver was killed for having a big family, he ain’t a martyr.
[QUOTE=Sublight]
This devaluation of our words through overuse of hyperbole is a holocaust for the English language.QUOTE]It’s a miracle his whole family wasn’t killed with him.