An Ideology of Martyrdom

"Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" The Arabic pronouncement that "God is great" sustained the Iranian revolutionaries as they marched through the streets of Tehran in demonstrations against the Shah. The invocation was heard again as students attacked the U.S. embassy, and as mobs last week marched about the captured compound, demanding death for the hostages.

To what extent was the student action--and the Ayatullah Khomeini's endorsement of it--in accordance with Islamic law? Experts differ. Zaki Badawi, Egyptian director of the Islamic Cultural Center in London, argues that "the demand for the return of the Shah to face trial in Iran is in agreement with Muslim law." Islam holds that "no one is above the law and law is supreme. If a crime is committed by a ruler, an emperor, he is as liable to punishment for it as the meanest and commonest of his subjects." As a precedent, one Cairo expert notes that in 1964 the late King Saud of Saudi Arabia was tried, deposed and banished by an Islamic court for conduct unbecoming a Muslim ruler--namely, drinking, gambling and womanizing.

Islamic scholars are virtually unanimous in condemning the seizure of the hostages as contrary to the Shari'a (Islamic canon law). Says Badawi: "There is no basis in Islam for this. Islam does not justify the taking of hostages, and it also clearly states that one person cannot be punished for the crimes of another." Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, a devout Muslim, has denounced Khomeini as a "lunatic" and forthrightiy condemned the seizure of the hostages. "This is not Islam," he said. "Islam teaches love, tolerance and mercy." One of the ranking experts on Islamic law, at Cairo's ancient Al Azhar University, charges that the Ayatullah's "evil hunger for the death of a sick man is a towering crime under Islamic law." Islam "considers any sick or dying person with extreme humility," he says. Rouhollah Ramanzani, an Iranian scholar teaching at the University of Virginia, points out that according to the Islamic code, "if an undesirable individual enters into the Muslim domain, then that person must be protected and escorted to the boundaries of that domain to let him out safely."

Most authorities doubted that the students would physically harm the hostages, or that Khomeini would tolerate their torture or death. Says Thomas Ricks, an Iranian expert at Georgetown University: "Nothing in Islam could justify the slaughter of the hostages, and it is unthinkable that the captors would do so, unless they were threatened by an outside attack." Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California at Berkeley notes that the Shari'a permits both the exchange of hostages and their unilateral release by captors. He also observes, however, that "one tradition is that hostages may be kept permanently."

Islamic authorities point out that the vast majority of Iranians are Shi'ite Muslims, who have what one student in Tehran describes as an "ideology of martyrdom and expectation." Says Berkeley's Algar: "The Shi'ites are given to martyrdom--to defy the whole world. In the Shi'ite mind there is no compromise." Far more than in the dominant Sunni branch, the tenets of Islam can be and are used by Shi'ites to obtain political objectives. This is particularly true in Iran, where the ayatullahs and mullahs have a long tradition of calling on the faith as a weapon against secular rulers in Tehran or unwanted foreign influences. Says Jean Calmard, a French expert on Shi'ism: "Once again the religious leaders are adapting Islamic rules to serve political ends." Sadat puts it more strongly: "I feel both angry and sad at what Khomeini is doing in Iran, because he is in flagrant violation of all Islamic principle. He is using Islam to exploit himself. He hides behind the students. He takes advantage of them and he deceives them into committing crimes for which there is no justification in Islam."

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