By: Harold E. Clitus

“I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and must it be so very bright?”
– Joan of Arc, Leonard Cohen

I would like to have a conversation with a martyr, but, of course, that seems impossible. So I would settle for a conversation with a potential martyr, which is, someone who truly wants to be a martyr.

Such persons, who apparently burn from the inside with longing for their own beautiful deaths, such persons seem so strange and interesting when they pause along the rushed way to their goal and speak to those of us still fatally attached to life.

Recently, there was such an opportunity. Not for me personally to speak with potential martyrs, but for many of us to hear from them along their way. As it turns out, in this particular case, the way to martyrdom had been held up by certain practical issues, and at least one would-be-martyr took the occasion to complain about the delay. I, too, would be irritated if I were to be put off unduly in the pursuit of such business.

The person in question is (if, in fact, he still IS) one Kabir Ahmed from Derby, England, a city previously well known for inventing funny hats and making the natives in far-off places wear them during colonial times. A few of these, like the men of the Niger Delta, still wear them. They really do. For the most part, though, times have changed. And along the way, many years of progress have left their mark on Derby itself. As such, it is now home to persons like Mr. Ahmed, a man who just can’t wait to die and who is not afraid, due to the protections afforded him as a citizen and resident of Great Britain, to name names when it comes to those who are getting in his way.

Mr. Ahmed, as it turns out, had revealed to the BBC the existence of a waiting list for potential martyrs. That list was or is comprised of persons who wish to martyr themselves for the sake of ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). While it is surely disturbing that ISIS has such a wealth of potential martyrs on its behalf as a glut could be formed by them on a waiting list, I found myself more interested in the existence of the list itself and the necessity for it.

I, too, have been on waiting lists and been frustrated by them, especially at the local branch of the motor vehicle department when trying to renew my driver’s license. I can only shudder to imagine, then, how agonizing such bureaucratic time-gobblers would feel when the desired end is so much more dire and glorious. One would think that if anything, anything at all in this world, could be free of such mundane and prosaic little difficulties as to require a bureaucracy in order to handle them, it would be martyrdom. Not so, it seems. This burning rush of like to like, wherein the fire in the heart seeks to meet the holy fire of sacrifice, there to be joined and consumed by it, this too requires mediation by red tape and rubber stamps.

Alas, like all such mediation and like all bureaucracy, this frail and vulnerable human contrivance is subject to corruption and folly. Not long after Mr. Ahmed revealed the existence of a waiting list, a man named Kamil Abu Sultan al-Daghestani, dubbed a pro-ISIS preacher by Radio Free Europe, elaborated upon the former’s complaint. This elaboration involved charges of favoritism and nepotism with regard to the waiting list.

Some potential martyrs are getting put ahead of others and some are getting left behind, based on a number of venal criteria. The culprits, according to Mr. Abu Sultan, are none other than the Saudis. I confess to finding it strange that he would find the culprit to be someone other than the Jews. He might have thought that the Jews would have a vested interest in stopping would-be-martyrs for ISIS. Perhaps Mr. Abu Sultan is mistaken upon this point, or perhaps he is just an honest man. It is also possible that the Jews are playing both sides here and that he hasn’t considered that. In any event, Mr. Abu Sultan’s charge is that Saudis with loads of money and from established families are using these things to get their people bumped up in line.

If this is true, it seems rather like a version of the infamous abuses during the High and Late Middle Ages of the Catholic Church’s practice of indulgences. Perhaps a reformation is in order on these grounds. No-one should have to be rich or well-connected in order to take a stand against worldly injustice and inequity. That seems absurd. As if one should master what one objects to in order to earn the right to renounce it.

Martin Luther, in that case, before he objected to the alleged view of Johann Tetzel that, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs”, should have established a flourishing pay-for-forgiveness racket of his own and only then condemned it. And yet perhaps it is not so absurd after all. Perhaps there is a logic in it. I would like to consider that, too, in the next part of this series. But for now, I must note that whichever journalists were responsible for the reports on Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Abu Sultan and their fellow, oppressed would-be-martyrs, they did not ask the questions that I would have asked.

I would have liked to ask the potential martyrs if they think that it is it nobler to die or to suffer. Why do they they think, after all, that death should be the ultimate price for anything? Is losing one’s life truly the worst thing that could happen? Are they so base and vulgar in their understanding as that? Do they consider mere life so good? It is inherently sweet in it’s fleeting way, to be sure, but could the forfeit of it really purchase happy eternity? Could it be that the smallest cost might be paid for the greatest gain? These people act as if life were the best thing that they have to offer, even as they affirm a belief in something much better. If their faith is strong, and they believe in the promised reward, haven’t they made a calculation of interest, rather than a sacrifice?

These are questions meant for those who would be martyrs. But as I have no direct access to such people, I address them instead to the little martyrs that lurk somewhere still inside each of us.

(Note: I learned, in the course of writing this article, that Mr. Ahmed of Derby IS NOT any longer. He apparently found his way to the end that he so desired by acting as a suicide car bomber in Daiji, Iraq, taking with him a senior Iraqi police officer in November of 2014.)

To Be Continued…