Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik

To be a Muslim, one has to first testify that there is no god but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his (final) prophet. This is the shahada or the testimony. And the one who chooses to die, rather than retract this testimony, is the martyr, the shaheed. And the martyr is the witness of God, the shaahid, who from highest paradise, witnesses the testimonies and martyrdom of those who live on earth. And since God is visualised as the Ultimate Judge, we realise the entire vocabulary of Islamic mythology is embedded in a rather judicial vocabulary: full of judges, and witnesses, and testimonies, and martyrs. The words shahada, shaheed and shaahid - all telescope into each other, making one realise how core it is to the faith. Incidentally, the first martyr in Islamic lore was a woman who was killed for embracing Islam in the Prophet's lifetime. Not many remember her today.