In Arabic, the word shahid means "witness". The pronunciation of our word martyr hails from the Greek word mártys (μάρτυς) translated to 'witness'.
From the days of Perpetua of Carthage through the ages the stories of martyrs are endless. Pop culture names have carved out a vision of what a martyr means.
Though martyrs serve in different ways and their ultimate demise differs, usually their lives are taken from them mid stride. In the breadth of service, that is an important distinction.
Martin Luther King Jr knew of his impending death as a ‘feeling’ he couldn’t shake and confided in a friend about it. But he didn’t go looking for death. He kept his stride steady in service and remained steadfast to his Higher Power. The date and time came like a thief in the night.
I can think of no stronger modern-day martyr than Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny, described by Wiki as a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner.
In truth, no matter what it cost him, (and it cost him plenty) Navalny dedicated his life to educating his fellow man about how they’ve been routinely sanctioned, blindfolded, lied to, bullied, extorted, gaslit, and generally subjugated into an oppressive patriotism of Russia’s most notorious leader in generations. Like, the corrupt kings of Exodus, it is said that Putin greenlit the killing of Navalny as a 70th ‘birthday gift’.
When I learned that Navalny was killed successfully this time—remember they unsuccessfully poisoned him with nerve agents previously—I thought about what the word Martyr means.
Dr. David Cook, who studies the apocalyptic and millenarian tradition in Islam, wrote that the concept of martyrdom is a masthead in all the major monotheistic religions. He saw it as a testament to the truth of the faith. Martyrdom became a central feature of jihad as early as the 9th century according to his writings, but in his version of martyrdom “Modern-day globalist Muslim radicals want to return the concept of martyrdom to its original meaning of battlefield death.”
This concept of martyrdom focuses on the death of a member of religious and socio-political theorists and focuses less on his leadership, communication, socio-political work, research, and revelations.
One of my personal favorite martyrs in history would be Isho Yeshu īšōʕ who was murdered by state-sanctioned violence in the order that they might stop his socio-political and societal revelations to the population. I think if you were to ask Him today he wouldn’t say “I died for religion”
I believe Navalny would have preferred to ‘go on.’ In fact his foreshadowing of his moment, his words were “If they are successful in killing me, this means we are strong, do not give up, continue.”
If given the choice, I believe the true martyr would go on, even in the face of having everything taken from them, one by one by one. Death is not their pinnacle, their biggest sacrifice, but their legacy in trial is.
In Navalny’s case, this wasn’t a small grassroots movement that one day rolled into legislative actions to change a part of a nation’s movement in the world. He took on an entirely corrupt and deadly Russian governance and at the same time attempted to persuade Russian citizens that they would one day have freedom of the press, freedom of ideas, freedom of information, and freedom of enterprise.
I don’t believe the true martyr calls themselves martyrs.
I’m grateful for Navalny’s sacrifice of lived experience for a legacy. He knew he would be jailed but continued. In the face of the very worst, he became the leader agitator, and powerful continuum that Putin could only dream of. In a way, one might say his death had made him more powerful. For Putin, it backfired. In a time yielding so much death, I hope to have the energy to keep taking in the legacies. We have to believe in its gestational power. A seed planted.
