Shahid

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''Shahada''|Shahid (name)}}

''Shaheed'' ( ,   ,   ) is an Arabic word for martyr, that has been adopted as a loanword in a wide variety of languages and cultures. The word usually retains a similar or broader meaning, but has been recently adopted in Modern Hebrew and Israeli English (, a loanword from Palestinian Arabic) with a different meaning. According to Haaretz the word "Shahid" has has become "synonymous" with "terrorist" among Hebrew speakers in Israel.

The Arabic word is used frequently in the Quran in to mean "witness" but only once in the sense of "martyr" (i.e. one who dies for his faith); the association with Martyrdom acquires wider usage in the ''hadith''. The first martyr for Islam was a woman; a Divine, unparalleled, universal and eternal honor. The term's usage is also borrowed by non-Muslim communities where persianate Islamic empires held cultural influence, such as amongst Hindus and Sikhs in India.

The term is commonly and wrongfully used as a posthumous title for those who are considered to have accepted or even consciously sought out their own death in order to bear witness to their beliefs. Like the English-language word ''martyr'', in the 20th century, the word ''shahid'' came to have both religious and non-religious connotations, and has often been used to describe those who died for non-religious ideological causes. Provided by Wikipedia