This relation shows that the problem with suicide operations, in Shahrur’s view, is not only an isolated individual act, but an institutional structure that turns death itself into a political and organizational project. When a group becomes an apparatus that finances death and trains people for destruction, it moves from the logic of defense and life to the logic of destruction.
Parties to the relation
- Terrorism
- Martyrdom
- Suicide operations arise when death becomes an institution
- Jihad, fighting, and martyrdom are distinct concepts
- Assassinations and the bombing of civilians are a departure from fighting
- Individual killing is not part of legitimate fighting
Meaning of the relation
Shahrur distinguishes martyrdom as a public stance or epistemic presence from the transformation of killing and death into an organizational industry. Death does not become a value in itself, nor can martyrdom be turned into a mechanism for producing suicide bombers. He therefore reads suicide operations as the result of a culture and an institution, not as the result of a Qur’anic understanding of jihad or martyrdom.
Its effect on reading
This relation adds a missing link within the critique of violence: terrorism does not arise only from a distorted definition of fighting, but also from turning the value of life into an organized project of death. This explains why, in his view, the critique of suicide operations is tied at once to the critique of martyrdom, fighting, and armed groups.