The recent arrival of ISIS in the international spotlight has demonstrated once again that there is no easy way to talk about religious extremism and the martyrs, real or imagined, that it produces.
There’s the understandable urge to breathe righteousness and meaning into the deaths of innocents with the powerful language of martyrdom, but there’s also the danger of competitive martyrdom, in which dying for or against a cause is seen as a good unto itself, which inadvertently lends ideological legitimacy to those perpetuating the violence. Can we sufficiently honor those who have been slain by ISIS without invoking such loaded and, dare I suggest, extreme terminology?
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