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This article is about those who carry out assassinations and their history. For other meanings of the word assassin, see Assassin (disambiguation)
thumbnail Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald in a very public manner.
In its most common use, assassin has come to mean someone who kills (assassinates) an important person, usually for ideological or political reasons. The immediate motivation for an assassin may be money (in the case of a hitman), opposition to a person's beliefs or belief systems (in the case of a fanatic, for example), orders from a government (often carried about by a subversive agent such as a spy), or loyalty to a competing leader or group.
Thus an assassination is a kind of murder, but sometimes with the less negative connotation of killing an enemy.
Assassin, like companion terms such as terrorist and freedom fighterFreedom fighter is a relativistic local term for those engaged in rebellion against an established government that is held to be oppressive and illegitimate. The terms "freedom" and "rebellion" are often controversial, as often both sides in armed conflic, is often considered to be a loaded termA language construct, such as a word or a question, is said to be loaded if it carries meaning or implications beyond its strict definition (its denotation). Loaded words are words or phrases which have strong emotional overtones or connotations and which. The definition of assassin is generally much clearer than the others. Most assassins appear comfortable enough with their deed to describe it as such publicly, whereas few call themselves terrorists.
1 Etymology
The term originally referred to a hereticalHeresy according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a "theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church IslamCairo Egypt Islm (In Arabic: , "submission (to God)"; In Persian and Urdu: ) is a monotheistic faith and the world's second-largest religion. Followers of Islam, known as Muslims believe that God (or, in Arabic, Allh revealed His Will to Muhammad (c.ic order known as the HashshashinThe Hashshashin (also Hashishim , or Assassins were a religious group (some would say, a cult) of Ismaili Muslims (from the Nizari sub-sect) with a militant basis, thought to be active in the 8th to 14th (?) centuries as a group of brigands on the medieva, an offshoot of Ismailism, and originated in a castle called AlamutAlamut was once a mountain fortress in the arid hills south of the Caspian Sea, near Quazin, about 100 km from present-day Tehran in Iran. Only ruins remain of this fortress today. In 1090 the fortress was invaded and occupied by the powerful Hashshashin in the mountains of Northern Iran in the 11th century. This sect was said to carry out assassinations of the enemies of the order, or Muslim rulers they believed to be impious. The earliest known record of the word in English (dating from the early 17th century) refers to this sect rather than its more general modern sense. Similar words had earlier appeared in French and Italian.
Marco Polo provided the first western account of the sect, although his account is probably fictionalized in part. He said that recruits were promised Paradise in return for dying in action. They were drugged, often with materials such as hashish (although some suggest opium and wine instead, all being, nonetheless, condemned by Islam) then spirited away to a garden stocked with attractive and compliant women and fountains of wine. At this time, they were awakened and it was explained to them that such was their reward for the deed, convincing them that their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah, could open the gates to Paradise. The name assassin is derived from either hasishin for the supposed influence of their attacks and disregard for their own lives in the process, or hassansin for their leader.
An attempt was made to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. He was shot and injured, and thereafter appeared in public in a custom-built " Popemobile" featuring bulletproof glass.
