Life has changed into a timeless succession of shocks, interspaced with empty, paralysed intervals. But nothing, perhaps, is more ominous for the future than the fact that, quite literally, these things will soon be past thinking on, for each trauma of the returning combatants, each shock not inwardly absorbed, is a ferment of future destruction.
- Theodor Adorno (Minima Moralia)
Early last month, I wrote about the martyrdom cult I encountered in the Middle East—"the cult of the Shaheed."
Exhibiting gritty yearbook-esque photos of familiar unfamiliars, of smiling 'martyred' Muslim youths backdropped by black and red, green and black, this 'cult of the shaheed,' as I described in the post, is a new mode of the old; the mixing of professional print, modern multimedia and Web 2.0 technologies with good will commemoration and ironic ascetic fundamentalism.
But what I did not know was that this shaheed culture is not unique to Islam as a modern phenomenon—it appears with shockingly similar aesthetics in the commiseration-commemoration pieces of Egypt's marginalized Coptic populations.
The Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities of the Middle East, have for decades been targets of violent hate crimes—and their unrest has fostered a propagandist/art culture of loss similar in style to that of the Palestinian liberation movements.
Pictures commemorating the dead of the most recent Janurary 7th Chrismas Day massacre and the el-Kosheh Massacres are included below. Note these photos' similarities to those I took in Sakhnin; and note, also, the Copt's ironic aesthetic borrowing from Islam. (Warning: Graphic images follow)
"What's after Nagh Hamaadi? Enough persecution of the Copts!"
"In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.- John 16:33"
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"The Glorious Day of Christmas: I change to the scream of a mother over a martyr!
Mourn the martyrs of Nagh Hamaadi"
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Below are pieces commemorating a different event, the 2000 el-Kosheh Massacres.
Maysoon Ghatas, 11 years old, the youngest of the 20 "Kosheh Martyrs" of the city el-Kosheh.
Masha'Allah! It was a good post.
It is sad, the condition of the Coptic Christians.
May their families no longer weep and fear....
And may they enter Paradise.
Allahu yarhamuhum!
Nice brief commentary. I never really understood the ME. And that passage from MMoralia is very memorable, what a great book of fragments that is....still to be discovered.
-G