Description
Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition treated in this volume, from ascetic heroes who conquer their passions to save others by dying, to righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. At the same time, there are persistent disputes about the concepts used to justify these deaths, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. In this volume, renowned scholars bring their literary and historical expertise to bear on the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three examine contemporary movements with disputed classical roots, while eleven look at classical religious literatures which variously laud and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of death. Overall, the volume offers an important scholarly corrective to the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: On Death, Religion, and Rubrics for SuicideMargo Kitts2. To Die For: The Evolution of Early Jewish MartyrdomShmuel Shepkaru3. Performing Christian MartyrdomsGail Streete4. Collective Martyrdom and Religious Suicide: The Branch Davidians and Heaven's GateCatherine Wessinger5. Martyrdom and its Contestations in the Formative Period of IslamAsma Afsaruddin6. The Death of Musa al- Kazim (d. 184/799): Knowledge and Suicide in Early Twelver Shi'ismNajam Haider7. Apologia for Suicide: Martyrdom in Contemporary Jihadist DiscourseMohammed M. Hafez8. Hindu Ascetic DeathMary Storm9. SatiDavid Brick10. Dying Heroically: Jainism and the Ritual Fast to DeathAnne Vallely11. The Tropics of Heroic Death: Martyrdom and the Sikh TraditionLouis E. Fenech12. The Meanings of Sacrifice: The LTTE, Suicide, and the Limits of the Religion QuestionBenjamin Schonthal13. To Extract the Essence from this Essenceless Body: Self-Sacrifice and Self-Immolation in Indian BuddhismReiko Ohnuma14. Reflection on Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhist and Daoist TraditionsJimmy Yu15. Relinquishing the Body to Reach the Pure Land: Buddhist Ascetic Suicide in Premodern JapanJacquelyn I. Stone
