Saudi Liberal Mansour Al-Hadj on Shahid Intercession

Medina Mosque

Saudi Arabia

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've previously noted that contrary to what one ordinarily hears of Islamic teaching about the limits of sacrifice -- namely, that one person cannot act as a redemptive sacrifice for another, which is stated as an objection to the Christian view of Christ's vicarious sacrifice -- Islam also has a view similar to the Christian one.

One finds this view expressed most often in Islamist writing. According to Memri (Special Dispatch, No. 2663), the "reformist writer Mansour Al-Hadj, one of the . . . senior reporters [for the liberal Muslim e-magazine Aafaq], described the Islamist education he received as a youth in Saudi Arabia, which stressed the culture of death and the glorification of martyrs." Here's the money quote on intercession by the shahid (martyr):

"[In Saudi Arabia], we were also taught that every martyr has six privileges . . . . [the sixth being that] he can intercede on behalf of 70 of his relatives, [ensuring that they join him in Paradise after their death]."

The intercession here means that the martyr's death qualifies him to act as a redemptive intercessor based on his sacrifice of his own life, which earns paradise not only for him but even for seventy relatives.

Actually, there's a lot to sort out on this point, not just precisely what the 'redemptive' act entails -- in what way it is redemptive and what the redemption is from -- but also what Muslims mean when they deny the Christian view of Christ's redemptive act . . . and in fact, I'd like to find an instance of the denial, now that I think about it.

But not this morning, for work calls.

Denis MacEoin: "Suicide Bombing as Worship"

Denis MacEoin

(The Royal Literary Fund)

I read an insightful article yesterday by Denis MacEoin on suicide bombing as a form of worship, and since I want to share it -- and keep a link for myself -- I'm interrupting my posts on Hwang Sok-yong to briefly blog about MacEoin's article this busy morning.

In "Suicide Bombing as Worship: Dimensions of Jihad," Middle East Quarterly (Fall 2009, pp. 15-24), MacEoin tells us:

Preeminently, the bombers are referred to as "martyrs" (shuhada', sing. shahid) or "those who sacrifice themselves" (fida'iyun, sing. fida'i).

The latter term especially interests me, for I don't recall seeing this term "fida'iyun" translated before as "those who sacrifice themselves," and -- not knowing Arabic -- I didn't realize the religious connotations of the term, though I've posted a couple of entries specifically on Islamist praise for martyrs as sacrifices:

The Muslim Shahid as Sacrificial Intercessor

Al-Liby on Jihad as Blood Sacrifice

Or search my website for "sacrifice" for more on this issue. I'm curious to know, by the way, if the term "fida'i" is ever used by Christian Arabs in a theological sense to describe the crucified Jesus.

Be that as it may, MacEoin's article is very interesting, albeit rather depressing, for it places the "suicide bomber" squarely within the jihad tradition of Islam in order to make sense of the act, an analysis implying that this form of 'worship' might be difficult to discourage.

Samson as 'Suicide Bomber'

Samson Destroys the Temple of Dagon

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)

(Image from The Bible Illustrations)

The Milton List has been conducting a discussion about John Milton's Samson Agonistes, under the somewhat provocative thread heading "Samson as Suicide Bomber" -- the obvious allusion being made to current-day suicide bombings.

The scholar Carroll Cox offered some rather provocative comments of his own about the allusion:

There is an elephant in the room -- so far delicately ignored: "Suicide Bomber" refers, of course, to Arabs, who have replaced "dirty commies" in the mythology of u.s. politics. But that is not the elephant but merely the context. The elephant is that, through discussing Samson in theological terms, one implies that the suicide bombers of the daily newspaper are acting or claiming to act from theological motives -- that they are religious fanatics.

But they are acting from strictly secular motives, as a study of a year or so established: they represent frustrated nationalism! So if we want to discuss Samson as a suicide bomber, we need to discuss his politics, not his religion.

Not his religion? Well, Cox often presents a Marxist analysis, emphasizing political motives as more fundamental than religious ones. Be that as it may, in the case of "suicide bombers," he is wrong to state that "they are acting from strictly secular motives," as I noted in a response:

The expression "Suicide Bomber" refers to anyone who blows himself or herself up to kill others, usually in a terrorist act. The bomber can be any ethnicity and any religion -- or even have no religion. Currently, most such bombers are Muslims radicalized by Islamism. They may act out of a combination of motives, but religion is certainly one of these. Moreover, regardless of the motivation, Muslims would be unlikely to engage in "suicide" attacks if these had not already been declared not acts of suicide and if these had not already been theologically justified by Islamists. According to such Islamists, the reward for the Muslim 'suicide' bomber is paradise -- which is why . . . ["suicide bombings"] are called by Islamists "martyrdom operations." Religion certainly plays a major role in the phenomenon, and it cannot be ignored.

A number of other scholars disagreed with Cox -- including Noam Flinker, Salwa Khoddam, James Rovira, Stella Revard, and Feisal Mohamed. Feisal's response was the most interesting for my purposes:

I believe Carrol Cox has in mind the work of Robert Pape, now available in the important book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape and others have shown that the Tamil Tigers, which is not a religious movement at all, is one of the groups most frequently engaging in suicide attack. But complicating the assertion that this is only the military tactic of a nationalist struggle is the culture that has developed in the Tamil cause, which elevates self-sacrifice to the kind of cosmic virtue that one would associate with religion.

Feisal's point about the Tamil Tigers is very interesting since this group is often put forward as evidence that suicide bombers can have entirely secular motives. Apparently, that's not quite the case. I suspect that any 'military' strategy requiring 'suicidal' missions would tend to offer religious motives even if the struggle were otherwise wholly secular. At any rate, Cox seems to have backed away from his assertion that suicide bombers "are acting from strictly secular motives," for he contacted the journalist Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing religious movements, asking for his opinion of Pape's book. As Cox acknowledges, Berlet responded that Pape's analysis is a:

"Highly flawed analysis because the concepts of apocalyptic belief and religious nationalism were simply dismissed."

Cox therefore restated his position -- or, rather, repositioned himself, dropping his own dismissal of religion as a motive:

I do want to insist that when writers speak of "suicide bombers" they should recognize that the subject is a complex one. The phrase is firmly embedded in contemporary politics, and to use it raises contemporary political issues. (Just as it is impossible to discuss Milton's concept of freedom in PL without overlapping 21st-c theological disputes.)

This is a rather far cry from his original claim that suicide bombers "are acting from strictly secular motives" and appears to be an implicit acceptance of my own position (though Cox and I would cash this out rather differently).

Anyway, the comparison of Samson to a suicide bomber is not new, for Noam Flinker dealt with it as early as 1991, and the comparison became quite popular after 9/11. I haven't dealt with this particular issue much, for I'm not an expert on Milton's Samson Agonistes.

But perhaps I ought to look into it.

Or am I, not Pullman, the sinister one?

Stelmaria?

Lord Asriel's Dæmon?

(Image from Philip Pullman)

In a previous post ("Philip Pullman: 'shallow and sinister'?"), I agreed with Milton scholar Professor James Fleming, who had written that he found Pullman both shallow and sinister:

As far as I can tell, The Golden Compass ends with Lord Asriel, the good-scary guy, murdering a child (Roger). This is presented as a noble sacrifice, allowing the great man to open up the heavens in defiance of an authoritarian God.

I agreed but also had an inkling that something else might be going on:

Like Professor Fleming, I was troubled by the "noble sacrifice" -- though there may have been an allusion to Christianity in that.

Lord Asriel is a complex figure but is partly modeled upon Milton's Satan in his rebellion against God, and therein lies Pullman's cleverness.

If Stanley Fish is correct in Surprised by Sin, then Milton intends for the reader of Paradise Lost to identify with Satan not because Milton has cast Satan as the hero of this epic but because Milton wants us to renact the original fall from Paradise in our experience as readers. We initially admire Satan's heroic qualities and follow him as he escapes from hell and crosses the treacherous realm of chaos, but we later discover that we have been misled and therefore come to recognize the sin within ourselves that drew us into that identification.

I suspect that Pullman is doing something similar with Lord Asriel. He wants us to initially identify with Asriel but to discover through Asriel's sacrifice of the child Roger that we have been misled.

Why should this be problematic for the reader? Couldn't one simply reject Asriel? I think that Pullman intends his readers to do so, but he is also setting a trap for his Christian critics, who will certainly not wish to identify with Asriel (even if they initially might have done so as readers). The Christian critique of Asriel will likely center on Asriel's apparent "end-justifies-means" ethic, namely the evil of sacrificing a child to open a way toward attaining what Asriel considers good. Pullman could then retort -- more or less plausibly -- that this is precisely what the Christian God does, i.e., sacrifice a child to attain the good. If Christians reject Asriel, then they must also reject their own God. If they refuse to reject their own God, then they cannot criticize Asriel.

I think that this is what Pullman is up to with his depiction of Asriel. Whether the trap that he springs catches Christian critics is less clear to me, for the two cases of sacrifice are not entirely analogous.

What do readers of Pullman think about this?

Back to René Girard: Two Types of Sacrifice

Touchstone Magazine Header

(Image from Touchstone Magazine)

Still surfing the internet waves for information on René Girard, I managed to find an interview, "Violence & the Lamb Slain," by Brian McDonald for FSJ's Touchstone Magazine that explicates Girard's view of Christianity as a 'sacrificial' religion, a topic that I was wondering about a couple of blog entries ago.

As a preface to the interview, McDonald provides an illuminating illustration summarizing Girard's theory of the scapegoat:

Picture two young children playing happily on their porch, a pile of toys beside them. The older child pulls a G.I. Joe from the pile and immediately, his younger brother cries out, "No, my toy!", pushes him out of the way, and grabs it. The older child, who was not very interested in the toy when he picked it up, now conceives a passionate need for it and attempts to wrest it back. Soon a full fight ensues, with the toy forgotten and the two boys busy pummeling each other.

As the fight intensifies, the overweight child next door wanders into their yard and comes up to them, looking for someone to play with. At that point, one of the two rivals looks up and says, "Oh, there's old fat butt!" "Yeah," says his brother. "Big fat butt!" The two, having forgotten the toy, now forget their fight and run the child back home. Harmony has been restored between the two brothers, though the neighbor is now indoors crying.

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Girard builds his whole theory of human nature and human culture through a close analysis of the dynamics operating in this story. Most human desires are not "original" or spontaneous, he argues, but are created by imitating another whom he calls the "model." When the model claims an object, that tells another that it is desirable -- and that he must have it instead of him. Girard calls this "mimetic" (or imitative) desire. In the subsequent rivalry, the two parties will come to forget the object and will come to desire the conflict for itself. Harmony will only be restored if the conflicting parties can vent their anger on a common enemy or "scapegoat."

This is precisely the sort of illustrative story that good teachers use to explain some thinker's system, and it pulls together and tightens a lot of loose ends in my understanding of Girard's views.

As for Christianity and sacrifice, which is one of the things that I went internet-surfing for, McDonald had a question similar to my own:

McDonald: You have advocated what is seen as a "non-sacrificial" reading of the death of Christ that is significantly at odds with the usual understanding of that death as a "hilasterion" [i.e., "propitiation"] that satisfies the wrath and justice of God. Could you describe that view and how your study of the formation and maintenance of human cultures has led you to it?

This is more or less what I was wondering about in my piecemeal readings of Girard, and his answer involves a distinction between two concepts of sacrifice:

Girard: Oh, this is a question that will require a long answer! It is not quite true that I take what you have called a "non-sacrificial reading of the death of Christ." We must establish first of all that there are two kinds of sacrifice.

Both forms are shown together (and I am not sure anywhere else) in the story of Solomon's judgment in the third chapter of 1 Kings. Two prostitutes bring a baby. They are doubles engaging in a rivalry over what is apparently a surviving child. When Solomon offers to split the child, the one woman says "yes," because she wishes to triumph over her rival. The other woman then says, "No, she may have the child," because she seeks only its life. On the basis of this love, the king declares that "she is the mother."

Note that it does not matter who is the biological mother. The one who was willing to sacrifice herself for the child's life is in fact the mother. The first woman is willing to sacrifice a child to the needs of rivalry. Sacrifice is the solution to mimetic rivalry and the foundation of it. The second woman is willing to sacrifice everything she wants for the sake of the child's life. This is sacrifice in the sense of the gospel. It is in this sense that Christ is a sacrifice since he gave himself "for the life of the world."

What I have called "bad sacrifice" is the kind of sacrificial religion that prevailed before Christ. It originates because mimetic rivalry threatens the very survival of a community. But through a spontaneous process that also involves mimesis, the community unites against a victim in an act of spontaneous killing. This act unites rivals and restores peace and leaves a powerful impression that results in the establishment of sacrificial religion.

But in this kind of religion, the community is regarded as innocent and the victim is guilty. Even after the victim has been "deified," he is still a criminal in the eyes of the community (note the criminal nature of the gods in pagan mythology).

But something happens that begins in the Old Testament. There are many stories that reverse this scapegoat process. In the story of Cain and Abel, the story of Joseph, the book of Job, and many of the psalms, the persecuting community is pictured as guilty and the victim is innocent. But Christ, the son of God, is the ultimate "scapegoat" -- precisely because he is the son of God, and since he is innocent, he exposes all the myths of scapegoating and shows that the victims were innocent and the communities guilty.

In his prefactory remarks to this interview, McDonald makes an astute observation:

Girard's belief about the death of Christ may be no less controversial among Christians than his allegiance to Christ is scandalous to the secular world. Against the view of Christ's death that would see him as a propitiatory sacrifice offered to the Father, Girard would argue that Christ's death was intended to overthrow in its entirety the religion of propitiatory sacrifice, since he sees that religion as of the very essence of fallen man.

Girard's view is thus rather problematic for orthodox Christianity, for his reading of the crucifixion would turn the orthodox interpretation on its head, transforming Christianity from the religion of sacrificial atonement par excellence into the religion of anti-sacrificial atonement par excellence. The sense in which Christianity remains sacrificial seems to reside solely in the gesture whereby Jesus relinquishes vengeance against his tormentors through his willingness to sacrifice even that very understandable desire for the sake of their lives, a synecdochal image of Christ giving himself for the life of the world, in Girard's understanding anyway.

Christ's death is therefore not the actual sacrifice but, rather, Jesus's renunciation of revenge, the death itself thus being at most a sort of noble death, similar to the death of Socrates at this hands of his enemies but taking things one step further by the explicit forgiveness of the enemies.

Interesting views, but probably unacceptable for most Christians.

Further on René Girard and Violent Sacrifice in Islam

René Girard Speaks Out

(Image © 1999 Dietmar Regensburger/Innsruck)

My pursuit of René Girard's views on Islam and violent sacrifice have led me to the website for the Italian paper Chiesa, which offers an article first posted on June 23, 2003: "The Innocent Victim Has a Defender. And He Is in Jerusalem."

This Chiesa post provides an English translation of the original article, "Il Dio dell'apocalisse" ("The God of the Apocalypse"), an interview with Girard conducted by Attilio Scarpellini for L'Espresso (No. 25, June 12, 2003) in which Scarpellini raises the issue of Islam and violence:

Scarpellini: And Islam?

Girard: "Islam has problems with violence. But we must avoid confusion. Islam cannot be classified as a primitive religion: it is a monotheistic religion that belongs to the religious family of Abraham, and it has been profoundly influenced by both Judaism and Christianity. Islam, too, contains the seed of a critical stance toward violence. Human sacrifice is not part of the Muslim tradition, and no orthodox or authoritative religious current of Islam justifies it. Islam is not sacrificial."

Scarpellini: But there are the suicide bombers.

Girard: "That's true. Fundamentalist terrorism is sacrificial. But it is a contradiction that plays upon the ambiguity of our relationship with religion and the sacred."

Scarpellini: The philosopher Jean Baudrillard says that the behavior of the suicide bombers is an assertion of moral superiority, in that they are capable of sacrificing themselves and others, a symbolic challenge that westerners are no longer able to accept.

Girard: "I haven't read much by Baudrillard lately. But in this case I would be tempted to agree with him. We are not capable of accepting the terrorist's challenge to sacrifice because the logic of suicide-homicide is unacceptable in a moral context permeated by Christianity; because we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value. The act of the suicide bomber who immolates himself and his enemy on the same altar may draw our attention -- as does in fact happen -- but it doesn't convince us. But to think that the refusal of this sacrifice weakens the West is merely a way of reviving Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity."

I wonder who the "we" is in Girard's words that "we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value." Many Westerners still speak unselfconsciously -- though in a thoroughly secular sense -- of soldiers who die in battle as "sacrificing" themselves for their country. Or do only American Westerners think this way? Now, if Girard means specifically the suicide-homicide sort of 'sacrifice', then I'd agree that Westerners today generally reject any sacrificial understanding of a terrorist's mass homicide, even if the terrorist 'sacrifices' himself -- though I suspect that some Americans in WWII may have employed a secularized use of the term 'sacrifice' to describe the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (but I'm just guessing).

More to the point, I cannot quite see how in a "moral context permeated by Christianity ... we do not believe that the mechanism of the sacrificial victim has any value." Is this a general principle that also applies to religious concepts of forgiveness? Do Girard's words imply that sacrifice is an ineffective mechanism for the forgiveness of sins in Christian soteriology? I don't quite understand this. Perhaps "Islam is not sacrificial," but Christianity certainly is. Christian soteriology puts the self-sacrifice of Christ at its center and claims that the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament points toward this self-sacrifice. Moreover, it understands Christ's self-sacrifice not only as effective in enabling the forgiveness of sins but even as necessary and sufficient for the final purification from all sins. Perhaps this is Girard's point, that Christ's sacrifice makes any further sacrifices otiose?

Be that as it may, Girard's main point about Islam is that "Human sacrifice is not part of the Muslim tradition, and no orthodox or authoritative religious current of Islam justifies it." In short, "Islam is not sacrificial." If Girard is correct, then the Islamist exaltation of the suicide bomber is an Islamic heresy. Some Muslim scholars have, in fact, argued this, but a lot of others have defended the human sacrifice that they call "martyrdom operations."

Concerning this issue of human sacrifice in Islam, one might wish to read a couple of my earlier posts on the shahid as Islamic redeemer.

Al-Liby on Jihad as Blood Sacrifice

Abu Yahya al-Libi

Al-Qaeda Member

(Image from MEMRI Special Dispatch Series - No. 1349)

(November 7, 2006)

As a preface leading into an observation that I intend to make about Abu Yahya al-Libi, I want to note that some of my older postings still get an occasional comment, such as my initial post on the Pope's Regensburg talk, which received this comment yesterday:

Anonymous said:

hi, i am a student at the american university in cairo and am doing a presentaion on the pope's speech and am a muslim. i have to admit that people might have misunderstood the pope's speech or even as u mentioned the translation wasnt accurate but in both ways it would probably still sound abit insulting because muslims look at the prophet mohammed as an ideal human being, so the pope should never have mentioned mohamed in his speech cuz its a sensitive isuee. like did u ever hear a shakh mention any prophet of any other religion in a speech with any negative words or anything like that ? no .and a pope should be fair and respectiable of other religions and not bias thats what i think a pope should be like. so i think the pope should have thought twice before bringing up this issue and i do admit that some muslims use violence but that is because they dont understand religion or islam well enough cuz islam should be representing peace and all good. but i still also think that the viloence is in the character not related to religion at all like there are violent christians, jews...etc... so islam doesnt have anything to do with it. and those people who claim to be muslims do nothing but harm islams repitation which used to be a good one among the countries long ago. plus i just wanted to clarify that my best friend is a christian and christains do not live in hell in egypt. if u ever visited egypt you would find the people very friendly and helpful and am seriously not being bias or anything. thanx.

I didn't address all of the points raised by Anonymous, for I don't know if he'll check back, but I did say this:

Anonymous, in the West, criticism of religious leaders has been allowed, more or less openly, since the Enlightenment, and I hope that this right to free speech remains uncurtailed.

As for the Pope's actual words, they were in German and show that the Pope expressed himself very carefully, far more carefully than the English translation.

If you haven't yet looked at my other posts on this issue, then you might want to look at the posts that follow this one that you've commented on.

As for violence and Islam, while I think that most Muslims are peaceful individuals, Islam does officially sanction violence in the cause of religion. I'm no expert, and limits to the acceptable kind of violence or to the degree of violence within the acceptable kind remain unclear to me.

My impression, however, is that the limits are rather broadly set.

To take one example, suicide bombing of Israelis seems to be widely accepted, both by religious leaders and by Muslims generally.

If suicide bombings of civilians is considered acceptable in Islam, then Islam has a very big problem with violence, one that Muslims themselves need to face up to and solve.

Okay, now that this long preface is finished, I'm ready for a brief observation on Abu Yahya al-Libi -- and, yes, I will make a connection to the comment by Anonymous and my reply.

In perusing words from the transcript of a statement by Al-Qaeda Member Al-Liby, I've come across another one of those jihadist remarks that seem to cast suicide jihadism in terms of human sacrifice, as indicated by this money quote:

"this form of worship [i.e. jihad] can only exist through the blood of those who sacrifice their souls for [Islam]..."

In effect, Al-Liby seems to be saying that the external, military jihad is a type of worship that takes the form of blood sacrifice through its martyrs.

Anonymous would perhaps argue that Al-Liby is not a scholarly spokesman for Islam, and I'd be willing to concede this point (if it's correct), but Al-Liby does appear to be a spokesman for a significant percentage of Muslims, and this is the central issue -- regardless of whether Islam is intrinsically peaceful or not -- that moderate Muslims such as Anonymous will have to deal with.

The Muslim Shahid as Sacrificial Intercessor

Shahid Belt

Designed by Tailor of Death

(Image from War Online)

I know that some of my readers know quite a lot about Islam, so perhaps one of you can tell me precisely where to find a particular hadith, cited by Osama Bin Laden, promising that a martyr can intercede for seventy of his relatives.

Here's Bin Laden's citation, found in his "A Declaration of War: Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places":

He [i.e., Muhammad] also said : "a martyr privileges are guaranteed by Allah; forgiveness with the first gush of his blood, he will be shown his seat in paradise, he will be decorated with the jewels of belief (Imaan), married off to the beautiful ones, protected from the test in the grave, assured security in the day of judgement, crowned with the crown of dignity, a ruby of which is better than this whole world (Duniah)and its' entire content, wedded to seventy two of the pure Houries (beautiful ones of Paradise) and his intercession on the behalf of seventy of his relatives will be accepted". Narrated by Ahmad and AtTirmithi (with the correct and trustworthy reference).

I've borrowed this from the website of John C. Lamoreaux, Department of Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University, which has Bin Laden's entire text as a source for reference. Regretably, I could find no specific citation to Ahmad and AtTirmithi.

By Googling, I found online Alfred Guillaume's book, The Traditions of Islam: An Introduction to the study of the Hadith Literature, which has the same hadith cited in Chapter 5, "Selections from Hadith":

Al Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja report the following:

the martyr has six privileges with God: his sins are pardoned when the first drop of blood falls; he is shown his seat in paradise; he is safe from the punishment of the grave and secure from the great terror (i.e. hell); a crown of dignity is placed on his head one jewel of which is worth more than the world and all that is therein; and he is married to seventy dark-eyed virgins; and he makes successful intercession for seventy of his relatives.

Al Tirmidhi, who lived from 824 to 892 (or: 209 AH - 13 Rajab 279 AH), was a medieval collector of hadith and is clearly the same individual as the one whom the Bin Laden text cites as AtTirmithi, the two variants being simply different transliterations of the original Arabic. Anyway, I have this citation from Guillaume via a website titled Answering Islam, but it also neglects to provide the precise bibliographical details on the exact source of this hadith.

I'm curious about this particular hadith because it expresses the belief that a martyr can act as an intercessor, which means that the one can understand the martyr's death as a sort of expiatory sacrifice, i.e., a sacrifice to cleanse others of sins and thereby purify them for life in the hereafter with God.

In short, a Muslim martyr takes on the role that Christ has in Christianity, which seems odd since Muslims usually argue that the Christian concept of vicarious atonement -- i.e., Christ sacrificing himself to expiate the sins of others -- is nonsense because each individual is responsible for his or her own sins.

Be that as it may, I'm also interested in this specific hadith because I've found, again by Googling, that it's often cited in justifications for suicide bombings. For instance, Naim Ateek, in "What is theologically and morally wrong with suicide bombings? A Palestinian Christian perspective" (Cornerstone, Issue 25, Summer 2002), notes the use of this hadith (or a close variant):

In one of the sermons preached by Sheikh Isma'il al-Adwan and broadcast on Palestinian TV, the Sheikh said, "The shahid [i.e., Islamic martyr], if he meets Allah (Arabic for God), is forgiven [by] his first drop of blood; he's saved from the grave's confines; he sees his seat in heaven; he's saved from judgment day; he's given seventy two dark-eyed women; he's an advocate for seventy members of his family."

Ateek footnotes this:

Akiva Eldar, "Ask Clinton what he thinks about Camp David," in Haaretz, August 21, 2001. In an unpublished paper, Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway of Alquds University maintains that the reference to the "seventy virgins" is neither mentioned in the Qur'an nor in the most authentic compendia of Hadith. It is, however, found in Mu'jam Al-Tabarani.

These citations appear to be headed in direction other than toward Al Tirmidhi. I presume that Al-Tabarani is the Medieval Muslim collector of hadith who was born in the lifetime of Al-Tirmidhi (sometime in 260 AH). Anyway, I'm no closer to finding the foundational source.

Can anybody supply the citation ... or citations?