Shahid

Shahid (Arabic: شهيد, romanized: Shahīd [ʃahiːd], fem. شهيدة [ʃahiːdah], pl. شُهَدَاء [ʃuhadaː]; Punjabi: ਸ਼ਹੀਦ) denotes a martyr in Islam.^[1] The word is used frequently in the Quran in the generic sense of "witness" but only once in the sense of "martyr" (i.e. one who dies for his faith); the latter sense acquires wider usage in the hadith.^[2]^[3] The first martyr for Islam was a woman; a Divine, unparalleled, universal and eternal honor. The term's usage is also borrowed by non-Muslim communities where persianate Islamic empires held cultural influence, such as amongst Hindus and Sikhs in India.

The term is commonly used as a posthumous title for those who are considered to have accepted or even consciously sought out their own death in order to bear witness to their beliefs.^[4] Like the English-language word martyr, in the 20th century, the word shahid came to have both religious and non-religious connotations, and has often been used to describe those who died for non-religious ideological causes.^[5] ^[6]

^ Khalid Zaheer (November 22, 2013). "Definition of a shaheed". Dawn. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
^ "The word shahid (plural shahada) has the meaning of "martyr" and is closely related in its development to the Greek martyrios in that it means both a witness and a martyr [...] in the latter sense only once is it attested (3:141)." David Cook, Oxford Bibliographies Archived 2015-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
^ "Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, μάρτυ^ς". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-08-02. Retrieved 2021-02-21.
^ Gölz, "Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East." Archived 2019-05-17 at the Wayback Machine, Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 2–13, 5.
^ Habib, Sandy (2017). "Dying for a Cause Other Than God: Exploring the Non-religious Meanings of Martyr and Shahīd". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 37 (3): 314–327. doi:10.1080/07268602.2017.1298395. S2CID 171788891.
^ Gölz, "Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East." Archived 2019-05-17 at the Wayback Machine, Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 2–13, 11.

[1] Khalid Zaheer (November 22, 2013). "Definition of a shaheed". Dawn. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 11 January 2016.

[2] "The word shahid (plural shahada) has the meaning of "martyr" and is closely related in its development to the Greek martyrios in that it means both a witness and a martyr [...] in the latter sense only once is it attested (3:141)." David Cook, Oxford Bibliographies Archived 2015-11-01 at the Wayback Machine

[3] "Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, μάρτυ^ς". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-08-02. Retrieved 2021-02-21.

[4] Gölz, "Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East." Archived 2019-05-17 at the Wayback Machine, Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 2–13, 5.

[5] Habib, Sandy (2017). "Dying for a Cause Other Than God: Exploring the Non-religious Meanings of Martyr and Shahīd". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 37 (3): 314–327. doi:10.1080/07268602.2017.1298395. S2CID 171788891.

[6] Gölz, "Martyrdom and the Struggle for Power. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Martyrdom in the Modern Middle East." Archived 2019-05-17 at the Wayback Machine, Behemoth 12, no. 1 (2019): 2–13, 11.

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