Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation

Margo Kitts is a professor of humanities and religious studies at Hawai'i Pacific University.

• 1. Introduction: On Death, Religion, and Rubrics for SuicideMargo Kitts2. To Die For: The Evolution of Early Jewish MartyrdomShmuel Shepkaru3. Performing Christian MartyrdomsGail Streete4. Collective Martyrdom and Religious Suicide: The Branch Davidians and Heaven's GateCatherine Wessinger5. Martyrdom and its Contestations in the Formative Period of IslamAsma Afsaruddin6. The Death of Musa al- Kazim (d. 184/799): Knowledge and Suicide in Early Twelver Shi'ismNajam Haider7. Apologia for Suicide: Martyrdom in Contemporary Jihadist DiscourseMohammed M. Hafez8. Hindu Ascetic DeathMary Storm9. SatiDavid Brick10. Dying Heroically: Jainism and the Ritual Fast to DeathAnne Vallely11. The Tropics of Heroic Death: Martyrdom and the Sikh TraditionLouis E. Fenech12. The Meanings of Sacrifice: The LTTE, Suicide, and the Limits of the Religion QuestionBenjamin Schonthal13. To Extract the Essence from this Essenceless Body: Self-Sacrifice and Self-Immolation in Indian BuddhismReiko Ohnuma14. Reflection on Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhist and Daoist TraditionsJimmy Yu15. Relinquishing the Body to Reach the Pure Land: Buddhist Ascetic Suicide in Premodern JapanJacquelyn I. Stone

...this anthology offers a rich survey of attitudes toward suicide in the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish texts, early Christian traditions, several periods of Islam, Indian traditions including Buddhism, Jainism, and the Sikhs, Chinese Taoist and Buddhist traditions,and Pure Land Buddhism in pre-modern Japan. ...Kitts' anthology constitutes a rich source for undertaking such analysis in a broad, comparative perspective.