The difference between death and Martyrdom in Iranian-Islamic culture is an irrefutable fact. Death is considered to be an inevitable fact, while martyrdom is considered to be a passage to the highest stages of human accomplishment. Devotion and self-sacrifice are critical concepts for understanding the discourse of martyrdom in Iranian culture.
Although the concept of martyrdom is not limited to the current era and has a long history in Iranian and Muslim culture, memories, ruins, and losses caused by the Iran-Iraq war that lasted eight years are the most prominent sources of augmentation of the discourse of martyrdom and self-sacrifice in the contemporary era. In this war, hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed with a vast majority of male inhabitants and soldiers; as a consequence, a large population of women lost their husbands.
This study uses the framework of sociological exchange theory and a qualitative approach to explore several aspects of self-sacrifice in the lives of widows of Iran- Iraq war martyrs, who have children and never remarried after the loss of their partners. The research sample was selected by random sampling, and in-depth interviews were conducted to explore rewards that have led war widows to choose not to remarry. Results show that emotional rewards and cultural-ethical values as a part of the discourse of martyrdom had a crucial role in shaping war widows’ ongoing social exchange process with their deceased husbands.
Published by Ladan Rahbari
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