Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Interaction of Canon and History: Some Assumptions
- 2 The Changing Worlds of the Ten Rabbinic Martyrs
- 3 lsquo;Who Were the Maccabees?’: The Maccabean Martyrs and Performances on Christian Difference
- 4 Perpetual Contest
- 5 ‘Martyrs of Love’: Genesis, Development and Twentieth Century Political Application of a Sufi Concept
- 6 Commemorating World War I Soldiers as Martyrs
- 7 The Scarecrow Christ: The Murder of Matthew Shepard and the Making of an American Culture Wars Martyr
- 8 Icons of Revolutionary Upheaval: Arab Spring Martyrs
- 9 Yesterday's Heroes?: Canonisation of Anti-Apartheid Heroes in South Africa
- 10 The Martyrdom of the Seven Sleepers in Transformation: From Syriac Christianity to the Qur’ān and to the Dutch-Iranian Writer Kader Abdolah
- 11 ‘Female Martyrdom Operations’: Gender and Identity Politics in Palestine
- 12 Hollywood Action Hero Martyrs in ‘Mad Max Fury Road’
- List of Contributors
- Index
11 - ‘Female Martyrdom Operations’: Gender and Identity Politics in Palestine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Interaction of Canon and History: Some Assumptions
- 2 The Changing Worlds of the Ten Rabbinic Martyrs
- 3 lsquo;Who Were the Maccabees?’: The Maccabean Martyrs and Performances on Christian Difference
- 4 Perpetual Contest
- 5 ‘Martyrs of Love’: Genesis, Development and Twentieth Century Political Application of a Sufi Concept
- 6 Commemorating World War I Soldiers as Martyrs
- 7 The Scarecrow Christ: The Murder of Matthew Shepard and the Making of an American Culture Wars Martyr
- 8 Icons of Revolutionary Upheaval: Arab Spring Martyrs
- 9 Yesterday's Heroes?: Canonisation of Anti-Apartheid Heroes in South Africa
- 10 The Martyrdom of the Seven Sleepers in Transformation: From Syriac Christianity to the Qur’ān and to the Dutch-Iranian Writer Kader Abdolah
- 11 ‘Female Martyrdom Operations’: Gender and Identity Politics in Palestine
- 12 Hollywood Action Hero Martyrs in ‘Mad Max Fury Road’
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Ihab Saloul investigates the phenomenon of ‘female martyrdom operations’ in relation to the issue of women's agency in society, particularly women’s political participation and gender roles in contemporary Palestinian society. In the context of the conservative social climate promoted by the Islamists through their emphasis on the religious rather than the nationalist dimensions of martyrdom operations, female martyrs had nationalist motivations and aimed at restoring their position as politically active participants in Palestinian society. Three operations in 2002 (Wafa Idris, Dareen Abu Aysheh and Ayat Al Akhras) managed to open up new spaces for women's participation on the nationalist front and women were indeed accepted as active participants in the military struggle. On a religious level, these three female martyrdom operations represented a significant challenge to the interpreted religious notions of women’s political participation in relation to contemporary Islamic discourse of martyrdom and warfare. A fourth operation (Hanadi Jaradat, 2003) was carried out on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Movement, which justified her operation also from a religious point of view.
Keywords: female martyrdom operations, gender and Islamic martyrdom, Palestinian national struggle, secular and religious dichotomies, women’s political participation
In the last fifty-three years of the history of the Palestinian armed resistance movement, the role of women has been primarily limited to traditional cultural, religious and gender roles. However, in October, 2003, when the 28-year-old apprentice lawyer, Hanadi Jaradat, blew herself up in a crowded restaurant in Haifa City killing nineteen people besides herself, this action did not raise any questioning or debate in relation to women's participation in the armed struggle and their traditional gender roles in Palestinian society. One of the reasons for this non-questioning is that Hanadi's act was not the first of its kind, but was the sixth ‘female martyrdom operation’ carried out by women during the Second Intifada (2000-2005). In January 2002, the 27-year-old medic, Wafa Idris, kicked off female martyrdom operations and became the first female martyr killed in a suicide attack in the history of the Palestinian resistance movement.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- MartyrdomCanonisation, Contestation and Afterlives, pp. 255 - 282Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020