Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide 1st Edition

Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide 1st Edition – Ebook Instant Download/Delivery ISBN(s): 9780190656515, 0190656514

Product details:

• ISBN-10: 0190656514
• ISBN-13: 9780190656515
• Author: Margo Kitts

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 contents:

1. Introduction: On Death, Religion, and Rubrics for Suicide
2. To Die For: The Evolution of Early Jewish Martyrdom
3. Performing Christian Martyrdoms
4. Collective Martyrdom and Religious Suicide: The Branch Davidians and Heaven’s Gate
5. Martyrdom and its Contestations in the Formative Period of Islam
6. The Death of Mūsā al-Kāzim (d. 183/799): Knowledge and Suicide in Early Twelver Shīʿīsm
7. Apologia for Suicide: Martyrdom in Contemporary Jihadist Discourse
8. Hindu Ascetic Death
9. Sati
10. Dying Heroically: Jainism and the Ritual Fast to Death
11. The Tropics of Heroic Death: Martyrdom and the Sikh Tradition
12. The Meanings of Sacrifice: The LTTE, Suicide, and the Limits of the “Religion Question”
13. To Extract the Essence from this Essenceless Body: Self-Sacrifice and Self-Immolation in Indian Buddhism
14. Reflections on Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Traditions
15. Relinquishing the Body to Reach the Pure Land: Buddhist Ascetic Suicide in Premodern Japan

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