For as long as I can remember, and back from when I was a young child still living in Lebanon, I would hear the word “Shaheed” and “Martyr”. And though I have not stopped hearing those words throughout my whole life, there have certainly been times where I’ve heard them used a lot more. Specifically, social media outlets in the West have a need to sensationalize the word “Martyr” and how it relates to Arabs, and specifically Muslims.
In this post I want to delve a little bit into both the meaning and the translation of the word “Shaheed”, most commonly used and understood in the West as “Martyr”. My hope is that critical analysis of these terms helps to expose the biases and discriminations that arise from misusing them.
A martyr is “A person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion” -Merriam-Webster Dictionary-
A witness is “one who testifies in a cause or before a judicial tribunal” -Merriam-Webster Dictionary-
These are just a couple of examples of the definitions given for both terms. You can find similar definitions in other English dictionaries like the Cambridge dictionary, the Oxford dictionary, etc.
Dictionary definitions are great for describing objects. We use a bunch of words related to a certain object to try and bring as much of that object into ours or someone else’s imagination. What’s a chair? it’s an object, sometimes made out of wood, with a flat surface to sit on, a back, and four legs. What’s an orange? it’s an orange coloured fruit, grows on trees, has a skin that you peel off and a juicy inner flesh. and so on.
However, dictionary definitions on their own are usually not enough when trying to describe concepts. Concepts require so much nuance that is incredibly difficult to capture with just dictionary definitions. Add to that a word that is translated to English from a different language and then described using the English language, and we end up moving further away from the meaning of both the word and the concept.
When we try to describe concepts with dictionary definitions we end up using words, usually other concepts, to describe the original concept. For example in the case of ‘Witness’, we can go on to describe the concept of ‘suffering’ and the concept of ‘death’. The challenge is using words to try to describe a concept without getting too far from the concept.
Furthermore, there is the other challenge, as I mentioned, that comes with translating a word/concept first, and then describing it using a language that isn’t native to it. In Arabic, the word “shaheed” is commonly translated into “martyr” in English. But ‘martyr’, in English, doesn’t capture the nuance attached to ‘shaheed’ in Arabic.
The simplest way to translate The word “Shaheed”(male), “Shaheeda” (female), from Arabic to English, is “Witness”. The word is mentioned frequently in the Qur’an, as different forms of verbs (Shahida, different from shaheeda. Ashhada, and Is’tashhidu). “Shaheed” is also used in the Qur’an in different ways as a noun, and as a nominal.
In total, “Shaheed” is mentioned in the Qur’an 160 times. However, as a translation to “martyr”, “Shaheed” is only mentioned once! ok, twice if you count the verse that mentions “the martyrs”, but this is not to be confused with the act of being a martyr. Most often, the use of the word “Shaheed” in the Qur’an translates to mean “Witness“.
And what does it mean to understand and use the word “Witness” in the context of Arab culture and religion (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish, because all three exist)? For Muslims, in particular, Allah is the divine creator and the one responsible for everything in the universe. As such, all human beings are witnesses to Allah’s creations, divinity, and planning. And on Judgement day, as many religious people who follow the three Abrahamic, monotheistic religions believe, each person will have their whole life experience called on to speak on everything they have witnessed.
In Islam, a person who is killed while fighting in a war, murdered in an airstrike while they were sitting for dinner with their family, dies in a car accident, is a witness to Allah’s divine will. And in my experience, growing up in a Muslim community, those who died, whether by accident, or either as active or passive participants in wars, are always spoken about as witnesses. They are witnesses, the belief goes, because Allah has decided it was their time to testify to what they have experienced and witnessed.
It is really only in the first case, when they are fighting as a Muslim in a religious war that they can really be considered Martyrs. Furthermore, according to the West’s definition of “martyr” they have to openly believe and confess that they are fighting for and willing to die for their religion. It just feels sleazy and dishonest to have the Western narrative surrounding Arab language to wield Arabic words and define them to further fit that narrative.
Aside from the religious context that should be placed around the words ‘martyr’ and ‘witness’, it is also important to consider them in the context of social justice and collective responsibility to the community. My friend Dr. Samah Sabra, an awesome Palestinian woman, with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies brought this to my attention. Samah told me:
“Part of it, for me, is that the English word martyr doesn’t have the same root as the Arabic word, shaheed. The Arabic word implies that their deaths are also witnesses to the injustice – That as witnesses they also call us to act toward social justice. The Arabic word , to me, implies not just that they are subjects but also that there is a collective responsibility to ensure their deaths are not in vain. I’m not sure if all of that is meant to be in the word but it’s how I have always heard the Arabic, shaheed.”
I absolutely agree that this is meant to be in the word! Language evolves based on how its native users grow, experience, and interpret our world and ourselves. Arab culture has always focused on growing and nurturing communal ties, and over time we have developed how we do this. Empowered by education, and interactions with other communities, people, and ethnicities, our understanding and application of our language also transforms.
Seen in this way, as being witness to social justice/injustice allows us to mobilize and act as a community that cares about the well-being and growth of all its members. And as Samah says “the collective responsibility to ensure their deaths are not in vain” is precisely that communal care that goes beyond the individual’s responsibility to address systemic issues. We all become active participants, as each of us who is still alive becomes a shaheed.
Moreover, calling someone a “martyr” keeps us trapped within interpreting and analyzing the issue solely from a religious perspective. It ends up ignoring the social/political/economic power dynamics that are at play, when innocent people are killed and murdered. Palestinian Muslims don’t become ‘martyrs’ in the sense that ‘they died for their religion’ when they’re just sitting around for tea when a group of Israeli soldiers busts in a sprays them with bullets. Palestinian children aren’t ‘martyrs’ when they’re playing on a beach and they get sniped by Israeli soldiers. Those are just cases of senseless murder.
So why is it that a word most commonly used in the Qur’an to mean and refer to “Witness”, and as a call for social justice and collective responsibility, constantly being used and pushed in Western narrative to mean and be synonymous only with “Martyr”?
In my humble opinion, constantly presenting Arabs and Muslims as “martyrs” is part of a propaganda tactic that seeks to dehumanize and demonize them. The word ‘martyr’ as ‘someone who dies for their religion’ is objectified, as a tool that serves the divine will of a deity. And so constantly using it in that context alone when speaking about Arabs and Muslims is dehumanizing. Arabs and Muslims are not simply objects, we are also subjects. Portraying us as such makes it seem as if our lives are worthless beyond being used as an object to fulfill the will of the divine.
On April 2, 2024, The Center of Democracy and Technology published an the article Context Before Code: Meta’s Oversight Board Policy Advisory Opinion on the Word “Shaheed” Calls for Language and Cultural Nuance in Content Moderation , by authors Aliya Bhatia and Mona Elswah, explains that “Shaheed” is the most moderated word on Meta’s platforms. Furthermore, the authors explain that the Meta Oversight Board “concludes that a poor transliteration of “shaheed” from Arabic to English and a set of opaque internal processes has led to a “blanket ban” of the term across services without disclosure to Arabic speakers who use the platform.”
Furthermore, The word ‘martyr’ as ‘someone who dies for their religion’ also demonizes Arabs and Muslims because it tries to portray us as immoral beings who are willing to kill innocent people, again to fulfill some divine will. Moreover, When Arabs and Muslims are portrayed as ‘martyrs’ in this way it trivializes and erases their personal lived experiences and the context within which all of this takes place. We cannot accept the killing of innocent civilians. And yet we can understand that someone whose siblings, parents, relatives, indeed their entire family, was annihilated in an airstrike may want to nothing more than to exact the maximum amount of harm on those they perceive as complicit and responsible.
In both cases, dehumanization and demonization contribute largely to the xenophobia and islamophobia that are already rampant in the West. And if it is one thing we can learn from the histories of multiple genocides (Congolese, Armenian, Jewish) is that it is much easier to justify the killing of a people who are not perceived as human beings. When human beings are perceived as senseless objects, immoral beings, or “human animals” as Israeli defence minister Yoav Galant said about the Palestinian people, killing and murdering them for whatever reason (self-defence, security, deterrence etc.) is so easy to accept and justify.
Many of us are witnessing live, in real time, the wonton murder and annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and in the U.S. of course with the landlord who murdered 6 year old Wadea Al-Fayoume. Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians has all been made possible through the complicit and active participation of Western countries. From supplying weapons and aide directly to Israel, refusing help to Palestinians, voting against Palestinian Statehood and recognition at the United Nations, to promoting pro Israeli propaganda in Western countries, dehumanization and demonization facilitate the perception of Arabs and Muslims as immoral, senseless, and disposable objects.
I want to close by emphasizing how important it is to critically engage and analyze the term ‘martyr’ in this case. the word and concept ‘martyr’ is only one way in which the word and concept of ‘witness’ is to be defined and understood. Finally, the more that people buy into the West’s very narrow definition, understanding, application of the word ‘martyr’ the further we get from perceiving Arabs and Muslims, specifically Palestinians in this case, as human beings deserving of safety, dignity, protection, and happiness.