Miguel de Unamuno Quotes
Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.
Unamuno, Miguel de. The Agony of Christianity. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960, p. 23.
Plunckett was the last Roman Catholic martyr to be executed in Britain. He was accused of conspiring against the state by allegedly plotting to bring 20,000 French soldiers into the country, and for levying a tax on his clergy to support 70,000 men for rebellion. The English have always feared ever since Henry VIII severed England from the Roman Catholic Church, that the Papacy was plotting to restore Catholicism to England and sponsor an invasion of Ireland. And indeed that was true in several cases, but nowhere near as many as the English imagined. In this case, paranoia prevailed, and the trial was pretty much a farce, but he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered which he was.
These “benefits” as well as males getting 72 virgins are constantly told to young and impressionable Muslims, some of whom take it so literally that they become suicide bombers. They actually believe that blowing themselves up feels only like the sting of a mosquito. This sales pitch for suicide bombers and other martyrs is also effective because with the poor education, high unemployment, and few political and civil rights, most young Arab males have no other way of obtaining “honor, dignity, and respect.”
Hill was tried for a murder he claimed he didn’t commit, but he refused to take the stand and explain his gunshot wound. He refused to provide the names of the people who were involved in his shooting. By today’s legal standard there was no proof of his guilt, but his refusal to testify or even provide the information to the Governor after his conviction. He was executed by Utah by firing squad in 1915.
It is hard to believe that there are any people in the world that would try and educate youth in this manner, but it is common amongst the ultra fundamentalist Muslims to day. However, it is very similar to what the Christians, including the Pope, preached a millennium ago and what the Japanese preached to their young Kamakasi in WWII.
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, philosopher, professor of Greek and Classics, and later rector at the University of Salamanca.
