The Muslim Shahid as Sacrificial Intercessor: Follow-Up

West Jerusalem Bus Wreckage after Suicide Bombing

Tuesday, 18 June, 2002

Allah sorts them out?

(Image from Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

A couple of posts ago, I asked about Bin Laden's citation of a hadith stating that a Muslim martyr's "intercession on the behalf of seventy of his relatives will be accepted." Bin Laden cites it as "Narrated by Ahmad and AtTirmithi but gives no details.

One of my commenters, who goes by the name "Erdal," offered this information on the quoted hadith:

The quote you ask about is quite famous and widely known for a single reason only: It's in Hassan-al Banna's 'Risalat ul-Djihad' (and any any number of compilations of his writings under different titles), which have been read by millions (and have been translated a lot), unlike of course the original ahadith.

The English transliteration would be "Risalat al-Jihad," variously translated as "Epistle on Jihad," "Tract of Jihad," and "Essay on Jihad," as I have learned through Googling. Erdal also called "somebody who owns one of these searchable hadith databases" and reported back:

He says this is #1067 in a-Tirmidhi. It's narrated on the strength of the word of a certain "Al-Miqdam Ibn Madikarib" solely, and expects it to be rated quite low on the reliability scale by classical commentators.

Erdal also noted that his colleague with the searchable hadith database:

...doubted that Bin Ladin got this from al-Banna's book, instead he thought it very likely that he got it from the popular "Mishkat al-Masabih" (sort of a slightly dumbed down 'Best of Hadith' ordered by topic), listed there under Volume 1, No.814, the same source Banna is known to have drawn from.

I am pretty ignorant of these materials, so forgive me for relying on Wikipedia ... but according to the entry on Mishkat al-Masabih:

Mishkat al-Masabih is the improved version of Masabih al-Sunnah. Al-Tabrizi essentially rendered a version of the text more preferable to those who don't posses a more advanced knowledge of the science of hadith by writing a commentary on it by the directions of 'Allamah Husayn ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Tibi, and this writing is what came to be known as Mishkat al-Masabih. It contains 4434 to 5945 ahadith, divided up amongst 29 books and is considered by Sunni scholars as an important writing.

Two things strike me about this hadith. One: it's considered to be of low reliability by the classical commentators. Two: it's a highly popular hadith among jihadists.

The use of this hadith by a Salafist like Bin Laden is somewhat surprising to me, but perhaps due to my ignorance. Salafists reject all 'innovations' in Islam, e.g., venerating the graves of prophets and holy men, which is considered a form of shirk (i.e., polytheism). I would therefore expect Salafists such as Bin Laden to reject the belief that a Muslim martyr could intercede for seventy of his relatives through his self-sacrifice, which sounds to me like something that Muslims ought to consider a form of shirk, given their low Christology, which rejects the Christian veneration of Jesus as self-sacrificial redeemer, and given their own belief that each individual bears the responsibility for his or her own sins.

Still, the hadith is very popular, and for understandable reasons since it not only affirms the salvation of the Muslim martyr but also of seventy family members -- which grounds the martyrdom in society, for it is not simply the act of an individual seeking solely his own salvation but one dying for the salvation of others and thus takes on the character of altruism.

Probably Meir Hatina's article "Theology and power in the Middle East: Palestinian martyrdom in a comparative perspective" (Journal of Political Ideologies, Volume 10, Number 3, October 2005, pp. 241-267), described by the following abstract, would be worth reading on this subject:

Jihad (holy war) and self-sacrifice constituted a formative ethos for Palestinian Islam in its struggle against Israel from the early 1990s onward. They became important components of politics of identity, aimed at infusing metaphysical values into Palestinian life, while also positing a political alternative to the PLO. This paper focuses on a formative manifesto titled 'Readings in the Laws of Martyrdom' (Qira'a fi Fiqh al-Shahada). Disseminated by the Islamic Jihad in 1988, the manifesto laid down the ideological foundations of martyrdom in Palestine. With the passage of time, Palestinian 'suicide attacks' became unprecedented in scale, distinctive thereby from similar phenomena in other conflicted areas such as Lebanon, Kashmir, Chechnya, Turkey and Sri Lanka. The discussion evaluates the role of the Palestinian manifesto in the radical Islamic orbit. For this purpose, two other formative texts are also examined. The first is 'The Absent Duty', issued in 1981 by the Egyptian Jihad movement, which was responsible for President Sadat's assassination. The second is 'Manual for a Raid', issued by the al-Qa'ida organization, containing instructions for the perpetrators of the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. A comparative analysis of the three texts reveals common themes as well as variations that reflect the particular context in which each Islamic group was active.

The article is not online, but I did manage to uncover the fact that it cites "Risalat al-Jihad":

Hasan al-Banna, 'Risalat al-Jihad' (The Tract of Jihad) in (no Editor) Majmu'at Rasa'il al-Imam al-Shahid. (Collection of Tracts of the Martyr Imam) (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-Islamiyya, nd), p. 264.

Since it cites al-Banna, Hatina's article perhaps analyzes his use of the quote about dying for seventy family members, but even if it doesn't treat al-Banna's use, the hadith itself is so popular that Hatina must have dealt with it anyway.

I'll have to look into this more closely. Thanks to Erdal for the very helpful details.