5 - ‘Martyrs of Love’: Genesis, Development and Twentieth Century Political Application of a Sufi Concept

Summary

Abstract

Asghar Seyed-Gohrab analyses the concept of ‘love’ in the context of Islamic mystical martyrdom. As a concept, love was used increasingly in a religious and mystical context from the Tenth century onward in the Islamic world in such a way that it was often hard to make a distinction between profane and spiritual love. A true lover was often a pious person who would offer everything including his life for the beloved or for love itself. Love was frequently connected with death or to be killed by the beloved either in a metaphorical or literal sense. There are several examples referring to love death and how such a death is interpreted as martyrdom. After an analysis of the origin and the evolution of the concept of love-death to martyrdom in medieval texts, Seyed-Gohrab examines how love martyrdom was reactivated in 20th century Iranian political philosophy for a wide range of purposes. He focuses in particular on the cult of martyrdom, scrutinising how the concept was deployed during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) to propagate a militant ideology, to justify violence, and to convince soldiers that their fight was a spiritual quest to attain the immaterial beloved.

Keywords: Islamic mystical martyrdom, Sufism, love and martyrdom, Persian poetry, Iran-Iraq war

The concept of love, its working and effects are commonly contextualised in a paradigm of martyrdom in Islamic mystical literature. In mystical manuals written around the tenth century, love is treated as a dynamic force that annihilates the lover in order to lead him to the divine beloved. Lovers dance ecstatically to embrace death. One reason for the passionate longing to die and become one with God is that God is identified with love and this Love is the driving force for the creation of the world. Mystics believe that God was in an absolute rich Void, but He longed to reveal Himself, therefore He created mankind in His own image, and asked the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam as a sign of man's superiority, and appointed Adam as His vicegerent on earth (Quran 33:72). The often cited ‘holy tradition’ (hadith qudsi) ‘I was a hidden Treasure and I desired to be known, therefore I created the world in order to be known’ refers to God's love. Moreover, mystics cite the verse from the Quran (7:171) relating to the creation of Adam and his progeny, ‘Am I not your Lord?