Martyrdom in Islam and Christianity and its role in creating social solidarity

The Almighty Creator has created the institution and the secret of mankind in search of perfection. However, this God-given power, in order to become actual, needs a suitable container that anthropological thinkers have considered society as that container. They believe that human beings can experience their true perfection in the light of collective life and life in society. They also emphasize that not every community is able to lay a suitable table in front of him in order to achieve human perfection because the only kind of societies which can pave the way to perfection are the ones which enjoy perfection themselves since an object that lacks a feature, cannot give that feature to another object. Social cohesion and solidarity is undoubtedly the first condition for the perfection of any community and for this reason, it has become one of the main concerns of human societies, especially the industrial and technological societies of the present age. The rulers and officials of human societies, according to their epistemological and anthropological foundations, have taken various mechanisms to achieve this significant item. Relying on it, they try to unite the society and the people active in it in order to provide a suitable platform for reaching perfection in the light of it. In this research, the author, using religious teachings and objective facts, from a sociological perspective, believes that martyrdom is one of the most effective and important factors in creating social cohesion and solidarity. Therefore, in this research, it is tried to explain the social function, especially the coherence of martyrdom in society. For this purpose, in the first step, we will have an overview of the meaning and concept of martyrdom in religion (especially Islam and Christianity) and then, by emphasizing the martyrdom of the Seyedolshohada in the Karbala incident, we show the role of martyrdom in creating and deepening social solidarity.