News on All Saint’s Day
By mere coincidence, my eye fell upon two news stories yesterday, on All Saint’s Day.
First, a Syriac Church was attacked by Jihadists.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/baghdad-church-siege-survivors-speak
Fifty-eight people, most of them worshippers from the Chaldean Catholic community, are confirmed to have been killed in the massacre, which was carried out by al-Qaida […] Ghassan Salah, 17, had just arrived for the Sunday night service with his mother, Nadine, and brother, Ghaswan, when the gunmen burst through the cathedral’s huge wooden doors. “All of you are infidels,” they screamed at the congregation. […]
Then the killing began. […] Thar Abdallah, the priest who married al-Wafi was first to be killed – shot dead where he stood. Gunmen then sprayed the church with bullets as another priest ushered up to 60 people to a small room in the back. […] Mona Abdullah Hadad, 62, was in church with her family when the gunmen started shooting. “They said, ‘We will go to paradise if we kill you and you will go to hell’,” she said. “We stood beside the wall and they started shooting at the young people. I asked them to kill me and let my grandson live, but they shot him dead and they shot me in the back.” […] “I saw at least 30 bodies,” said Madeline Hannah, 33, who was seriously wounded by gunshots. Many appeared to have been blown apart…
Meanwhile, in other news, Apex Magazine is publishing an Arab/Muslim themed issue, #18. The editor is Catherynne M. Valente.
The table of contents includes “The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar, “50 Fatwas for the Virtuous Vampire” by Pamela K. Taylor, “The Faithful Soldier, Prompted” by Saladin Ahmed, “Kamer-taj the Moon-horse” compiled by Dr. Ignácz Kúnos.
The magazine’s guidelines ask for “What we want is sheer, unvarnished awesomeness. We want the stories it scared you to write. We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful. We want science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three—the dark, weird stuff down at the bottom of your little literary heart. This magazine is not a publication credit, it is a place to put your secret places and dreams on display. Just so long as they have a dark speculative fiction element—we aren’t here for the quotidian.”
I do not mean to single out this worthy publication for any sort of criticism, but I do interpret the editorial decision to publish a Mohammedan-themed issue (rather than, say, a Buddhist-themed, Hindu-themed, Confucian, Taoist, Sikh, Pagan, or Judaeo–Christian-themed issue) at this time in history, during this war, to be an indication of a certain type of weakness, or, rather, a type of temptation to which the spirit of the modern world is prone: an infatuation with dissent, which becomes in truth an infatuation with evil. It is the assumption that anything Christendom opposes, or that opposes Christendom, must have some good in it, and merits defiant and open support.
Naturally, I have no knowledge nor insight into what was behind the decision. I have not had spoken with the editor. My interpretation may well be far afield. Nor do I wish this particular publication anything but the best wishes: I confess I rather admire the tone of their guidelines, which contain an honesty and eagerness that I cannot help but like. Any editor who says she wants “sheer, unvarnished awesomeness” is worth cheering. You go, girl!
And yet there is a young pregnant bride killed by Islamic gunmen in the name of Islam, who also shot an unarmed priest, a young boy, and shot an old woman in the back while she was begging to be killed in place of her grandson.
I see nothing worth admiring in the current enemy, nor do I have any sympathy with their goals or methods. They are not the underdogs, not the victims of race-oppression, not the proletarian victims of capitalistic exploitation, not fighting on the defensive, nor do they spare civilians, woman, the young, or the old.
They are not fighting for freedom, but for theocracy: to put women in the burqa and in the hareem, to practice genital mutilation on young girls, and commit honor killings on young women, to stone homosexuals to death, to murder the Jew. That is what they are fighting for. The method they have chosen is Fabian-style law-war victimology combined with Communist-style political terror.
The main ploy of victimology is to claim that all opposition to the enemy is motivated by an illegitimate and despicable motive: Islamophobic bigotry. The possibility of legitimate and righteous opposition to craven mass murderers of priests, pregnant women, and grandmothers is not even discussed. Anything done to aid and abet the enemy can thus be characterized as noblest opposition to bigotry. See how simple it is? The ploy never wears out and never fails. It is idiot-proof, or, to be specific, useful-idiot-proof.
It is not, however, smart proof. Anyone smart enough to question the assumption on which the ploy is based is immune:
Is the greatest danger faced by the West in confronting Islam really and truly the danger of Islamophobic bigotry on our part? Is that what we should be bending our efforts in great things and in small to overcome?
If you answer in the affirmative, dear reader, I can utter no more words of persuasion. Saint James Matamoros, pray for us.
I ask my fellow Christians to pray for those Christians slain in the Middle East, where our faith is a small and despised minority, the subjected for centuries to horrific persecutions, and forms branches of our Church mostly ignored by the West. Remember that all of Turkey to Anatolia and beyond, all the Middle East, all of North Africa, was once Christian lands, occupied by Nestorians, Orthodox, Syriac, Monophysites, Melkites, Copts, disciples taught by St. Thomas: the martyrs of Christ in those lands outnumber the martyrs who perished in Europe, and their extra-millennium-long of suffering is almost unknown to us and unlamented.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
