Should those who fall in Gaza be described as killed, as victims, or as martyrs? This question dominated Lebanon for an entire month and also resonated in other Arab countries not led by Islamist forces, after the “October 7 raid” and the Israeli response that has continued for two years. In Lebanon, the right and Hezbollah went so far as to exchange reproaches: whoever insults the sanctity of our martyrs, we will not spare their martyrs.
Yet anyone who reads the Qur’an in full will not find a link between death and martyrdom. “Never think of those martyred in the cause of Allah as dead. In fact, they are alive with their Lord, well provided for—” (Aal Imran 3:196). God does not call them martyrs. After the battle of Uhud, Umar ibn al-Khattab (second Rashidun caliph) told Abu Sufyan (who was among the leaders of the Qurayshi opposition to Muhammad): “We are not equal: our dead are in Paradise, yours are in Hell.” He did not say, “Our martyrs are in Paradise.” A martyr is alive and does not die; just as in “God is witness (shahid) to what we say” and refers to a witness of an event: “those of your women who commit illegal intercourse—call four witnesses (Shouhada) from among yourselves” (An-Nisa 4:15).
Political Islam, however, bestowed a sense of sanctity on its fighters, distinguishing them from others. Hassan Nasrallah (the third secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militia, assassinated in 2024) even described those accused of killing Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as “saints,” meaning untouchable.
The use of the sacred for authority is not new. After the end of the Rashidun era and the fall of the Umayyads, the Abbasids revived sacralization, drawing on their ties to Persia and its Shi’a base. What sets modern political Islam apart is the precision with which it instrumentalizes sacred concepts, converting notions like jihad (a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam), divine sovereignty, or “enjoining right and forbidding wrong” into electoral slogans. Likewise, in Shi’a politics, “loyalty to the blood of martyrs” has become a tool for electoral trade in South Lebanon and the Beqaa.
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The Iranian model is perhaps the starkest example. There, the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) evolved into a full political system, granting the jurist powers equal to those of the Prophet. Ayatollah Khomeini rewrote Islamic history, elevating the jurist into God’s representative, and thus established the Islamic Republic. The state claims to rule in God’s name, while thirty million Iranians search for their food in garbage containers.
On the Sunni side, Sayyid Qutb (an Egyptian political theorist and revolutionary) developed the concept of divine sovereignty into the backbone of political Islam, dividing the world into two camps: “a single party for God, which does not multiply; and other parties, all belonging to Satan and tyranny.” The irony is that the so-called party of God reproduces the same corruption as those it condemns. It recalls the Roman god Janus, guardian of heaven’s gate, who had two faces, one leading to paradise, the other to hell.
For both Sunnis and Shi’a, political Islam stands on the legitimacy it claims from sharia. This state must be Islamic, and its function must be jihadist; “to guard the sharia”, as al-Mawardi (a Sunni polymath and a Shafi’i jurist) wrote. But Islamic history, and the history of Islamist movements that have ruled or still rule, show the opposite: sharia is what guards the state, not the other way around. And the “Islamic state” seeks to rival the European nation-state yet always fails.
From this, it is not an exaggeration to conclude that political Islam rests on the illusion of an Islamic state. When this state collapses, so too does the sacred foundation of Islamist rule, exposing its union with the profane in a fatal contradiction. How can a movement that claims to enforce God’s law also practice a democracy built on the sovereignty of the people? How can a party claiming to be “divine” engage in worldly compromises?
Ultimately, Islamists have appointed God as their political attorney. But their own practice exposes what might best be called “the tragedy of political Islam.” Movements that claimed to carry the banner of religion ended up distorting it. Instead of embodying justice and mercy, they became symbols of failure and authoritarianism.
The intention of sanctification is not enough. For the souls of Islamists, like all others, are prone to political evil. And sharia itself differs little from communism or any other creed: its political failures do not stem from its essence, but from those who imposed themselves as its guardians and executors.
