The Martyr, the victim and the dead

One of the things that dazzle me the most in the Arabic world is the difference between a martyr and a victim and a dead. We think that a martyr is a person who gets killed while defending his country or his religion (Islam of course) and we are told that this person is going straight to heaven, while the victim is a person (mainly civilian) who is killed by accident or caught in a cross fire and the dead is the one that dies from natural reasons. Right?
OK, so you listen to Aljazeera and you hear that a number of persons were killed in Iraq by American strikes or in Palestine by Israeli Defence Force and they would call these persons martyrs, the next piece of news is about a number of persons killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber but these guys they call them victims!! And it gets worse some would call the guy who blew them up a Martyr. This is very confusing right?
So let's leave the militant guys for now and look at the ordinary peaceful Iraqi guy who is sleeping in his house and bang the house is struck by an American bomb this guy gets killed and he is a martyr while his neighbour is not that lucky he wakes up in the morning goes to his work and bang a suicide bomber strikes, the guy gets killed and he's a mere victim!
The conclusion I got is if you are killed by a foreign force (even if you are attacking them in their country) you are a martyr, but if you get killed by one of your own you're a victim.

And as I said the martyr goes straight to heaven I mean god doesn't even look at the person's life and what wrong or right he did, no god will be sitting up there watching Aljazeera and when the person stands before him he would tell him they called you a Martyr take him to heaven, while when the good victim stands, god would say OK let's see ......so you stole a cookie when you were in 3rd grade .......hmmm.

Waldorf