Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide ed. by Margo Kitts (review)

Nova Religio readers will likely be drawn first in this volume to Catherine Wessinger's thorough and careful essay comparing the fates of the Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate, and then perhaps to Mohammed Hafez's essay on how contemporary Jihadist groups have constructed rationales for suicide bombings in the face of Qur'anic and other strictures against selfmurder. Both essays show clearly how in some cases the ostensibly violent act of taking one's own life has been re-categorized by euphemism into something that is seen as both necessary and praiseworthy.

Beyond those essays, this anthology offers a rich survey of attitudes toward suicide in the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish texts, early Christian traditions, several periods of Islam, Indian traditions including Buddhism, Jainism, and the Sikhs, Chinese Taoist and Buddhist traditions, and Pure Land Buddhism in pre-modern Japan. There is also an essay on the contemporary Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that investigates the role of rhetoric about religion in that movement.

Taken together, the essays show that suicide has generally been a controversial topic in many religious traditions. Early Jewish halakhic rules, for example, prohibit seeking out martyrdom; early Christian writers, despite the eagerness for martyrdom on the part of some, were generally ambivalent on the topic. The Hindu practice of sati, self-immolation of widows—sometimes voluntary sometimes not—was variously evaluated throughout its history. The concept of martyrdom was contested throughout the formative decades of Islam and a diversity of perspectives on martyrdom appears in the hadith.

Perhaps the greatest usefulness of this collection for students of new religions is how it provides both data and analytical perspectives that thoroughly undermine any necessary connections between a particular religious group and the practice of suicide. The pervasive negative stereotype of "cults" includes the expectation that cult members will do harm to themselves, others, or both. These essays show how rationales for suicide have been carefully constructed, frequently contested, and cannot be taken as representative of entire traditions even when they have been put into action in particular historical circumstances.

For example, Louis Fenech's treatment of suicide and martyrdom in the Sikh tradition helpfully illuminates the role that martyrologies play in shaping perceptions of voluntary deaths. He argues that "martyrs are created not only through their sacrifice, but also through the work of the martyrologist, who recognizes the sacrifice as such and conveys it to an audience, generally for the purpose of edification" (207). The public discussion of new religious movements, however, generally rejects any martyrological understanding of the deaths at Jonestown, the Mount Carmel center, or of members of Heaven's Gate, to state a few cases. The claim of Jim Jones in the final moments of the Jonestown community—"We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world"—has failed to shape public perceptions of his movement and others.

This book effectively challenges the widespread perspective that anyone who chooses a sacrificial death is necessarily a victim of a cult or other form of religious coercion. Such perceptions, just like the perceptions that someone has died a martyr's death, are the products of pro-cesses of interpretation that need analysis rather than simple affirmation or negation. Kitts' anthology constitutes a rich source for undertaking such analysis in a broad, comparative perspective.