The contract establishes neither a shared matrimonial regime nor

dePned as shelter, food, and clothing 4is the wife 9s right and the husband 9s duty. A wife is entitled to nafaqa only after consummation of the marriage, and she loses her claim if she is in a state of nushuz (disobedience). The contract establishes neither a shared matrimonial regime nor identical rights and obligations between the spouses: The husband is sole provider and owner of matrimo- nial resources and the wife is possessor of mahr and her own wealth.<br><br> The only shared space is that involving the procrea- tion of children, and even here the wife is not legally com- pelled to suckle her child unless it is impossible to feed it otherwise. Likewise, only a man can enter more than one marriage at a time (four permanent contracts in Sunni schools of law; and, in Shi a law, as many temporary ones as he desires or can afford). Only the husband can terminate each contract at will: He needs no grounds and neither the wife 9s presence nor her consent.<br><br> Wives can, however, through the insertion of stipulations in the contract, modify some of its terms and acquire, for example, the right to choose the place of resi- dence or to work, or the delegated right to divorce if the husband contracts another marriage. Muslim jurists claim that this construction of marriage, based on their readings of the sacred texts, is divinely or- dained. But marriage as lived and experienced by Muslims involves a host of customary obligations and social relation- ships that have always gone far beyond juristic constructions.<br><br> Some of these are rooted in the ideals of the shari a and enjoy its moral support, though they are not reQected in legal rulings. In Muslim societies, marriage in practice not only creates a matrimonial regime but takes a wide range of forms, varying according to customary practices, individual inclina- tions and characters, the social origins (rural/urban, class) of the partners, and their economic resources. Men 9s uncondi- tional legal rights to divorce and polygamy are often checked in practice by social mores, the pressures of the extended family, and the stigma usually attached to both polygamy and divorce.<br><br> With the emergence of modern nation-states and the creation of modern legal systems in the early part of the twentieth century, the juristic rules of marriage were selec- tively reformed, codiPed, and grafted onto a uniPed legal system (as in most Middle Eastern and Asian Muslim coun- tries) or were left intact to be applied by Islamic judges (as in most African and Persian Gulf countries). Turkey was the only state in the Muslim world to introduce a Western code to replace juristic rules, though these continued to govern marriages in rural areas and among religious groups. In most Muslim countries during the twentieth century, as women 9s access to education and work, and consequently their aspira- tions for equality, increased, so did the gap between juristic and social notions of marriage widen.<br><br> On the whole, until the rise of political Islam in the 1970s, marriage was acquiring a more egalitarian legal structure in the Muslim world. More recently, the patriarchal juristic model has been widely reas- serted. Despite wide-ranging variations and changes in prac- tice, the jurists 9 notions continue to dominate both the reality of marriage in contemporary Muslim societies and debates about the issue.<br><br> Not only do most Muslims believe the juristic conception to be divinely ordained, but it informs the legal rules in most Muslim countries. An image of a young Muslim couple in traditional wedding attire appears in the volume two color insert. See also Divorce; Gender; Law; Mahr.<br><br> BIBLIOGRAPHY Abd Al Ati, Hammudah. The Family Structure in Islam. Indianapolis: American Trust Publication, 1977.<br><br> El Alami, Dawoud. The Marriage Contract in Islamic Law. London, Dordrecht, and Boston: Graham & Trotman, 1992.<br><br> Anderson, J. N. D.<br><br> cThe Eclipse of the Patriarchal Family in Contemporary Islamic Law. d In his Family Law in Asia and Africa. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba.<br><br> Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law: Iran and Morocco Compared. London: I. B.<br><br> Tauris, 1993. Nasir, Jamal J. Islamic Law of Personal Status.<br><br> 2d edition. London: Graham & Trotman, 1990. Ziba Mir-Hosseini MARTYRDOM The idea of martyrdom in Islam is rooted in the fact that from the beginning of the religion, Muslims died in the struggle to establish and expand the Islamic state, and their deaths in the course of this struggle were remembered and celebrated.<br><br> The Martyrdom I s l a m and the Muslim World 432 Qur an encourages martyrdom by assuring believers that death is illusory: cAnd say not of those slain in God 9s way, 8They are dead 9; rather they are living, but you are not aware d (2:154). God also promises ample rewards to those who die < sabil Allah, cin the way of God d: Count not those who were slain in God 9s way as dead, but rather living with their Lord, by Him provided, rejoicing in the bounty God has given them, because no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow, joyful in blessing and bounty from God, and that God leaves not to waste the wage of the believers. (3:169 3171) Other passages elevate death in the course of struggle for Islam (e.g.<br><br> 3:157 3158, 4:74; 9:20 322; 47:4 36; and 61:11). Martyrdom in Early Islam While the idea of martyrdom is clearly rooted in the Qur an, the technical terms for martyr, shahid, and for martyrdom, shahada, arise from a different context. When the term shahid appears in the Qur an, as it does frequently, it never means martyr, but only cwitness, d in the legal sense or in the ordinary sense of ceyewitness. d The extension of the meaning of shahid to martyrdom was likely a borrowing from Syrian Christians for whom the connection of martyrdom with an act of witnessing was deep rooted and reQected in linguistic usage.<br><br> The terms martys in Greek and sahda in Syriac both carried the dual meaning of witness and martyr, and A. J. Wensinck and Ignaz Goldziher plausibly argued that the Arabic shahid is borrowed from the Syriac.<br><br> This connection between martyrdom and witness made sense to Christians, for the Christian martyrs were those who witnessed by their manner of death to the reality of heaven and the inevitable victory of God. But for Muslims the connection was a stretch for the simple reason that the Qur anic idea of death in the way of God required no act of witnessing. Muslims were thus left with the uncomfortable problem of discovering a link between the two ideas, and they came up with a variety of creative suggestions: Martyrs are called cwitnesses d because their souls witness Paradise, their deaths are witnessed by angels, they will serve as witnesses against those who rejected God 9s prophets, Muhammad will be a witness on their behalf at the Day of Judgment, or their wounds will testify to their exalted status in the afterlife.<br><br> The awkwardness of these suggestions, as Keith Lewinstein points out, suggests that later Muslims had no idea why the two ideas came together and that the connection had to be invented to explain linguistic usage. Early Islamic martyrdom, then, was an inevitable corol- lary not of witnessing to the truth but of struggling on its behalf. Thus jihad, or struggle, provides the chief context for the earliest ideas of martyrdom in Islam.<br><br> Accounts of the earliest Muslim martyrs reQect this context. The martyrs most celebrated in biographies of the Prophet are those who threw themselves into battle with courage and abandon. Ibn Ishaq 9s account of the Muslim victory at Badr (623/624 C .<br><br> E .), for example, is peppered with accounts of martyrdom. In one account, Umayr was eating some dates when he heard the Prophet promise Paradise to any who died in battle. At this he immediately Qung the dates aside and threw himself into the battle exclaiming, cIs there nothing between me and entering Paradise save to be killed by these men? d Another Muslim, Asim, asked Muhammad, cWhat makes the Lord laugh with joy at His servant? d Muhammad answered, cWhen he plunges into the midst of the enemy without mail. d At this Asim threw off his mail coat, plunged into the battle and was killed.<br><br> Incentives for this kind of battlePeld martyrdom are colorfully elaborated in the tradition literature. Martyrs are Prst of all spared from the normal pain of death. They then proceed directly to the highest station in Paradise, without waiting for the Day of Judgment, and without enduring interrogation in the grave by the angels Munkar and Nakir.<br><br> Once in Paradise they share the place closest to the throne of God with the prophets, wear jeweled crowns, and are each given seventy houri s (virgins of paradise). Martyrs are puriPed of sin and do not require the Prophet 9s intercession 4indeed, according to some traditions, martyrs are themselves second only to the prophets as intercessors. While Pghting unbelievers on the battlePeld has re- mained a basic and consistent emphasis in Muslim under- standings of martyrdom, conQicts within the Muslim community took the idea in new directions.<br><br> Martyrdom was an especially potent ideal among some Kharijite Muslims who called themselves shurat, or vendors, in reference to Qur anic praise for those who sell their earthly lives in exchange for Paradise (4:74; 9:112). The idea of deliberately seeking martyrdom ( talab al-shahadat ) by cselling d one 9s life came to be especially associated with Kharijites. One Kharijite ideologue, for instance, exhorts his followers to strive against cthe unjust leaders of error, and to go out ( khuruj ) from the Abode of Transience to the Abode of Eternity and join our believing, convinced brothers who have sold ( ba u ) this world for the next, and spent their wealth in quest of God 9s good pleasure in the Pnal reckoning d (Lewinstein, 2002, p.<br><br> 85). As this exhortation makes clear, the conQicts that provided the Kharijites with opportunities for martyrdom were not strug- gles against unbelievers, but struggles for justice and purity in the Muslim community. More importantly, martyrdom was not merely an inconvenient by-product of struggle for which the martyr needs to be compensated, but a goal worth pursuing in its own right.<br><br> The Shi a and Martyrdom Internal struggles within the umma also shaped the construc- tion of martyrdom among Shi ite Muslims, for whom the Martyrdom I s l a m and the Muslim World 433 death of the Prophet 9s grandson Husayn became the dePning event of their history as a community. Husayn was martyred in 680 at Karbala in Iraq when his small band, accompanied by women and children, was attacked and massacred by the army of the Umayyad ruler, Yazid. Shi ite interpretations of Karbala took Muslim ideas of martyrdom in completely new directions.<br><br> Husayn 9s suffering and death came to be seen not just as an individual contribution to the struggle against injustice, meriting individual reward, but as a deliberate redemptive act of cosmic signiPcance. By choosing martyr- dom Husayn ensured the ultimate victory of his community and earned the place of mediator for his people. Martyrdom became such a central value for the Shi a that all the Shi ite imams were held to have been martyrs, and the major ritual and devotional expressions of Shi ism are celebrations of martyrdom.<br><br> Types of Martyrdom To celebrate martyrdom is not the same as to seek it, however. Shi ite scholars were happy to revere Husayn but they resisted the impulse to emulate him. In this they were part of a broader scholarly tendency to dilute the value of martyrdom.<br><br> In the hands of mainstream scholars, both Sunni and Shi ite, the category of martyr was enlarged to include many kinds of death, including drowning, pleurisy, plague, or diarrhea. According to other traditions martyrs also include those who die in childbirth, those who die defending their property, those who are eaten by lions, and those who die of seasickness. A special category of martyr is made up of those who suffer the pangs of unexpressed and unrequited love, patiently keeping their passions concealed to death.<br><br> The trend culminated in the transference of the value of martyr- dom to other pious acts, so that death was no longer the most important prerequisite. The band of martyrs came to include anyone who conscientiously fulPlls his or her religious obli- gations, those who engage in the cgreater jihad d against their own evil tendencies, and, signiPcantly, scholars who engage in the cjihad of the pen. d According to one well-known hadith, the ink of the scholars will outweigh the blood of the martyrs. The incongruity of equating battlePeld martyrs with vic- tims of unrequited love or those who died quietly in bed did not go unnoticed by legal scholars.<br><br> Thus battlePeld martyrs are put in a special category as cmartyrs in this world and the next d and are honored with special burial rites. The martyr 9s body, in most circumstances, is not washed; he is to be buried in the clothes in which he was killed. Some hold that no prayers over the martyr are necessary since he is automati- cally puriPed from sin.<br><br> The lesser categories of martyrs are cmartyrs of the next world d meaning, chieQy, that they are not eligible for special burial rites but must be satisPed with divine approbation and the rewards of Paradise. Even if battlePeld martyrs retained a special status, how- ever, the trend in medieval Muslim treatments of the subject was to render the major benePts of martyrdom common currency, readily available to any pious believer. Several characteristics of medieval Islam contributed to the trend: the pervasive inQuence of SuPsm with its characteristic focus on the spiritual value of an act rather than its externals, scholarly quietism in reaction to the militancy of the Kharijites and other Islamic rebels, and the simple fact that opportunities for martyrdom in the struggle against unbelievers were severely diminished after the initial century of conquest.<br><br> Outside the dePnitions of martyrdom discussed in the legal literature, an independent tradition of martyrdom was kept alive among SuPs. The paradigmatic SuP martyr was Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922), who was cruciPed by Muslim authorities in Baghdad on the charge of blasphemy.<br><br> Al- Hallaj, along with other SuP martyr heroes like Suhrawardi (d. 1168), Ayn al-Qudat (d. 1131), and Ibn Sab in (d.<br><br> 1269), died the victim of his own inordinate love for the Divine, thus exemplifying the SuP ideal of extinction in the Divine and acting out the tragedy of the mystic lover, caught between the conQicting demands of love and law. This style of martyrdom belonged to the spiritual virtuosi, however. For the ordinary Muslim, the benePts of martyrdom are only experienced secondhand, by visiting a martyr 9s shrine, or mashhad, or for Shi a, by reenacting the passion of Husayn in ta ziya celebra- tions during the month of Muharram.<br><br> Militancy and Martyrdom The sublimation of the martyr ideal in pious devotion has continued in Muslim societies, but the modern experience has also given some Muslims abundant reason to revive more militant ideas of martyrdom. Modern Muslim treatments of martyrdom have been intertwined with changing attitudes toward jihad, and are shaped by reaction against the quietism of the medieval tradition. Whereas for medieval jurists both jihad and martyrdom were spiritualized and internalized, the colonial experience suddenly gave the idea of militant strug- gle new relevance.<br><br> Thus a common early response to coloni- alism was the emergence of anticolonial jihad movements like that of Sayyid Ahmad in India. Nineteenth-century Mus- lim apologists and modernists like Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817 31898), Chiragh Ali (1844 31895), and Muhammad Abduh (1849 31905) departed from the medieval tradition in a different way by reinterpreting jihad to accord with West- ern preconceptions. Jihad, the modernists argued, amounts to no more than the right of a state to defend itself against attack.<br><br> The effect was to encourage a secularization of mar- tyrdom whereby any soldier who died for his country could be counted a martyr. Against both the quietism of medieval scholars and the apologetics of modernists, revivalists have called for a return to militant jihad and a revival of the ideals of physical martyrdom. Hasan al-Banna (1906 31949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and a celebrated martyr in his own right, offers a stirring invitation to martyrdom: Marwa, Muhammad I s l a m and the Muslim World 434 Brothers!<br><br> God gives the umma that is skilled in the practice of death and that knows how to die a noble death an exalted life in this world and eternal felicity in the next. What is the fantasy that has reduced us to loving this world and hating death? If you gird your- selves for a lofty deed and yearn for death, life shall be given to you .<br><br> . . .<br><br> Know, then, that death is inevitable, and that it can only happen once. If you suffer in the way of God, it will proPt you in this world and bring you reward in the next. (Hasan al-Banna, 1978, p.156).<br><br> For al-Banna and other revivalists, waging jihad is held to be an individual duty ( fard ayn ) of all Muslims. It is thus incumbent on every Muslim to prepare him- or herself for martyrdom, and it is on the basis of this duty that al-Banna calls on Muslims to become skilled at dying and to master cthe art of death d ( fann al-mawt ). Since all must die, the wise will learn how to get the most benePt out of the exchange (Q.<br><br> 4:74). Such advocacy of martyrdom echoes the ideology of the Kharijites and comes close to encouraging the seeking out of martyrdom, talab al-shahada, a practice condemned in classical scholarship. The recent pattern of suicide bombings sponsored by militant Islamic movements, many of them offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, Pts comfortably into the framework of the call of Hasan al-Banna to be cskilled in the practice of death. d Modern Shi ite treatments of martyrdom have tended to run along parallel lines, emphasizing the ideological value of martyrdom.<br><br> When an individual gives his or her life for a cause, according to Ali Shari ati (1933 31977), this life be- comes valuable in proportion to the value of the cause for which it is spent. A martyr expends his or her whole existence for an ideal, and that ideal is given life through martyrdom. Martyrs thus exchange their lives for something greater and more lasting, leaving behind a permanent and valuable leg- acy.<br><br> Similarly, Ayatollah Taliqani (1910 31979) invokes the SuP poet Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 31273) to argue that martyr- dom is part of a chain of sacriPce whereby the imperfect is perfected. Just as vegetation is eaten by a lamb and becomes Qesh and blood, so a martyr loses his existence to partake in a higher cause. These justiPcations for martyrdom are clearly modern in their emphasis on the ideological value of martyrdom.<br><br> Such ideas have more than theoretical relevance. Modern conQicts in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq, and Iran have produced a large crop of martyrs, along with a huge volume of popular literature celebrating their deeds. Conse- quently, activist and militant forms of martyrdom tend to be the most visible and dramatic expressions of the idea in the modern Islamic world.<br><br> The prominence of such militant forms should not, however, be allowed to obscure the contin- ued importance of other enduring expressions of martyrdom in popular devotion and especially in Shi ite ritual. See also Banna, Hasan al-; Expansion; Husayn; Ibadat; Imamate; Jihad; Kharijites, Khawarij; Ta ziya. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ayoub, Mahmoud.<br><br> Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver Shi ism. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Banna , Hasan al-.<br><br> Five Tracts of Hasan al-Banna (1906 31949): A Selection from the Majmu at Rasa il al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna . Translated by Charles Wendell. Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1978.<br><br> Goldziher, Ignaz. Muslim Studies. Edited and translated by C.<br><br> R. Barber and S. M.<br><br> Stern. London: Allen & Unwin, 1971. Husted, W.<br><br> R. cKarbala Made Immediate: The Martyr as Model in Imami Shi ism. d Muslim World 83 (1993): 263 3278. Kohlberg, E.<br><br> Medieval Muslim Views on Martyrdom. Amster- dam: Noord-Hollansche, 1997. Lewinstein, Keith.<br><br> cThe Revaluation of Martyrdom in Early Islam. d In Sacri<cing the Self: Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion. Edited by Margaret Cormack. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002.<br><br> Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.<br><br> Rosenthal, Franz. cOn Suicide in Islam. d Journal of the Ameri- can Oriental Society 66 (1946): 239 3259. Shariati, Ali.<br><br> Martyrdom: Arise and Bear Witness. Translated by Ali Asghar Ghassemy. Tehran: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, 1981.<br><br> Smith, Jane I., and Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981.<br><br> Taleqani, Mahmud; Muttahhari, Murtaza; and Shari ati, Ali. Jihad and Shahadat: Struggle and Martyrdom in Islam. Edited by Mehdi Abedi and Gary Legenhausen.<br><br> Houston: Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986. Wensinck, A. J.<br><br> cThe Oriental Doctrine of the Martyrs. d In Semietische Studien uit de Nalatenschap. Leiden: A. W.<br><br> Sijthoff, 1941. Daniel W. Brown MARWA, MUHAMMAD (D.<br><br> 1980) Muhammad Marwa (Maitatsine) was a Qur anic teacher from Cameroon in West Africa who followed shari a (Islamic law). After he moved to Nigeria, his teachings inspired a religious, millennial revolt against the government in the northern province of Kano in 1980. A mystic, he resembled the Mahdi of Sudan in that he claimed revelatory knowledge, which supplemented, and even superseded, the teachings of the prophet Muhammad.<br><br> In 1979, he apparently declared himself

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