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.