Two authors and researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara presented a lecture last night in Braker Hall regarding their six month-stint in a Palestinian refugee camp.
"The Road to Martyrs' Square" discussion was led by Anne-Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg, authors of the recent book, "The Road to Martyrs Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber."
The lecture attempted to illustrate the mind of a Muslim martyr through passages read by Oliver and Steinberg along with video footage from actual martyrs of the Palestinian region.
Oliver and Steinberg posed the question: "How does one turn him or herself into a suicide bomber?"
"Faith without 'aqida' and without action is something that does not exist," said a young male martyr presented in one of the videos. "Aqida" is the Arabic word for creed, ideology, or conviction.
According to Oliver and Steinberg, this belief emphasizes the appeal for action for the cause of justice, and to follow the path to Allah.
Anne-Marie Oliver was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in the Deep South. "[I] never knew about the Palestine-Israeli Conflict and never heard anything about Israel as a state" she said. "I went to Jerusalem to study religion, and languages such as Hebrew and Arabic," she said.
She said that this is how she was drawn into the region and eventually the topic of martyrdom.
Paul Steinberg concentrated on Religious Studies at the University of California at Berkley, where he was interested in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and studied the tactics of Muslim Fundamentalists.
Steinberg discussed the methods he and Oliver used to study the Muslims of the region. "We translated mainly primary sources such as graffiti and posters of Arabic containing slogans," he said.
"The graffiti was often speaking against the Jews, encouraging boycotts, but others were more extreme slogans encouraging revolutionary ideas and encouraging the idea of martyrdom," Steinberg said.
During their time in the Palestine, Oliver and Steinberg encountered rallies and martyr-related celebrations.
"When we began working, we hadn't planned on writing about suicide bombers," Steinberg said. "It wasn't until later when this arose as a common problem."
Some of the videos shown indicated why the examination of Muslim martyrs was significant. A video of Dr. Abdullah Azam, associated with The Giants - a Muslim fundamentalist group - expressed some central ideas of the Muslim martyr: "Killing and fighting was written for us," Azam said, in reference to sacred texts.
"It is inevitable that you die standing on the field. There is only one death so let it be the path to Allah," Azam said in the video.
Steinberg and Oliver showed footage of men advancing extreme ideas, yet they commented little on their ideas and made no attempt to connect them or validate them in accordance with Islam.
Steinberg and Oliver concluded by trying to end on a less violent and jarring note.
"We are planning future projects of focusing on the story of ordinary individuals who put themselves at risk or refuse to kill. We are also looking to promote alternative visions of the future in the region, such as alternative modes of heroism that do not involve violence" said Steinberg.
The lecture was sponsored by the New Initiative for Middle East Peace, a student think tank and cultural outreach research group within the Institute for Global Leadership.
