Reflections on the 21:  

History Lessons for the President

 

The holy season of Lent is now upon us. As one of my penances I am trying to cut down on some of my activities in order to have a little silence to hear and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  Fortunately, recent snowfall has helped this cause. Today, as the snow fell, I thought first of a relative who had an important operation yesterday (love her so). I sent her a text and was happy and relieved to receive one back. She sounded cheerful and said she was looking forward to my cross-country visit later this week – a journey I have selfishly postponed for years and will now finally make.

The 21

Then, after appeasing my concern with one so very close to me in the blood of family, I couldn’t help but think once again of my brothers in Egypt – the 21 Coptic Christians who were executed by ISIS terrorists on February 15. Their blood is the very blood of Christ and connects them to me as true family. I’ve been meaning to write a blog in their honor and today is the day. (The readings from the Ash Wednesday service earlier this week spoke to me: “Now is the acceptable time.”)  

This blog is dedicated to these man who died as innocent, nonviolent followers of Christ:

Milad Makeen Zaky
Abanub Ayad Atiya
Maged Solaiman Shehata
Yusuf Shukry Yunan
Kirollos Shokry Fawzy
Bishoy Astafanus Kamel
Somaily Astafanus Kamel
Malak Ibrahim Sinweet
Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros
Girgis Milad Sinweet
Mina Fayez Aziz
Hany Abdelmesih Salib
Bishoy Adel Khalaf
Samuel Alham Wilson
Worker from Awr village [name unknown at this time]
Ezat Bishri Naseef
Loqa Nagaty
Gaber Munir Adly
Esam Badir Samir
Malak Farag Abram
Sameh Salah Faruq  

 

Within hours Pope Francis acknowledged them as martyrs: “Today I read about the execution of those twenty-one or twenty-two Coptic Christians. Their only words were: ‘Jesus, help me!’ They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. …The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ. As we recall these brothers who died only because they confessed Christ, I ask that we encourage each another to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood. The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

How strongly this response from the Holy Father contrasts to the relative coldness of President Obama, who spoke through a memorandum from his press secretary. Taking political “correctness” to an extreme, the memo referred to the martyrs as “Egyptian citizens,” not as Christians.  (This was similar to the way he referred to the Jews an Islamic extremist targeted in a Parisian deli  on January 11, which the President referred to not as Jews but as “a bunch of folks” that were “randomly” shot. The very President whose administrative is hypersensitive to “hate crimes” against other minority groups refuses to see it when hate is directed to Jews or Christians.)


It's clear from the statements and actions of the terrorists themselves that that their actions are religiously motivated - theirs is a one-sided unholy war waged by Islamic extremists against all who will not accept their brand of Islam. President Obama may think that it is too risky to tell the plain truth about the obvious religious dimension of the motives and targets of terrorism - but in that case he is on a slippery slope.  At what point does denying the truth of a matter become a problem unto itself? Denying a Holocaust does not make it go away - and will only blunt the collective intelligence and sensitivity of humankind.  

The “Egyptian citizens” memo followed a similarly wrongheaded statement by President Obama at a February 6 Prayer Breakfast, when made excuses for the slaughter of innocent Christians (and no doubt emboldened their persecutors) by intoning as follows, "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”   

This odious comparison—including the word “terrible,” which would suggest a kinship with terrorism—was dangerous since ISIS in paranoid fashion has in fact accused the West of a modern crusade--which is patently false. (There is no evidence of any religious motivation in the defensive military actions the United States and our allies have taken against terrorism. As I mentioned, this unholy war is one-sided.) 


Moreover, the comparison  reveals the President’s ignorance—both of historical facts and of history itself as a field of study.

The Crusades – A Defensive War

First, the facts. The Crusades were not an unprovoked, aggressive action by Christians seeking to convert or harm others, as President Obama’s remarks suggest. Rather, they were a defensive military action launched on November 27, 1095, by Pope Urban II following centuries of unprovoked attacks by the first followers of Mohammed. The main themes of Pope Urban II’s speech,  captured in the notes of several sources, were as follows (translated from Latin): necessity of aiding brothers in the East, appeals for aid from the East, victorious advances of the Turks, sufferings of Christians, desecration or destruction of churches and holy places, sufferings of pilgrims to Jerusalem, importance of preserving Jerusalem as a holy site. These were the motives of the Crusades. Were the battles they inspired (fought in the standard military fashion known at the time, on both sides) such “terrible deeds”?  Even read centuries later in a hopefully more civilized time, they sound justifiable. (Indeed, the harms being done to Christians and their places of worship in the 9^th and 10^th centuries, as listed by Pope Urban II, sound worse than the offenses of King George of England against the American colonies, and no one, not even President Obama (yet) has called the battles of the American Revolution “terrible deeds in the name of liberty.”

The Inquisition - A Political Move

As for the Inquisition, the historical record shows that it was the creation not of clergy but rather of politicians—namely King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who established it by royal edit in 1492 as part of their Edict of Expulsion aimed at Jews, People of the Book, who were given four months to convert or leave the country. To atone for this movement (which spread throughout Spain, and lasted for three more centuries, generally focused on forcing conversion), King Juan Carlos of Spain wore a white yarmulke to pray alongside Israeli President Chaim Herzog. Terrible deeds, yes, but not done in the name of Christ. In fact the only mention of Christ per Se in the Edict that launched the Inquisition is found in its date (translated from the Castilian, “the year of the birth of our lord Jesus Christ one thousand four hundred and ninety-two years.”

In Closing: What is History?

As these lessons show, it is important to learn from the past. Importantly though, we can’t just pull facts out of past eras and juxtapose them against our own.  As a field of study, history understands that the actions of a particular era need to be understood in their own context.  So was it fair for President Obama to compare events that happened several hundred years ago to the actions of ISIS today? No.  

Comparisons across time fail to appreciate the full character of a people; each must be judged by standards of its own time. For example one might decry the seeming violence in parts of Hebrew Scripture. But we must bear in mind that this Scripture was written thousands of years ago during an era that could be called “tribal.” Indeed, it is clear that the Jewish people from the beginning possessed a sense of mercy extraordinary for their time – forgiving debt after seven years, caring for widows and orphans, showing mercy to the poor. Even the statement “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” represented extreme gentleness in comparison to the harsh standards of the time—when one might seek not merely revenge against an enemy but death to him and his whole family.

Fast forward to the year 2015 when most of the world is living under modern standards of fairness widely recognized, not just by Jews and Christians but by people of every faith and form of seeking. In this world of fair play, there is only one organized movement that would throw us all back to savage, pre-Abrahamic times. And that is Radical Islam.

We deserve a President who will call it by name and decry its crimes with passion – and not heap cool scorn upon its victims by ignoring their faith. He should bear in mind that the Jews these radicals target are the sons of Abraham - the first to know the Lord and to practice mercy. They endured a real Holocaust; we cannot ignore this new one. As for Christians, the President's reference to their "terrible deeds" as a group at any time in history is exactly wrong. Christians are the most harmless and defenseless group in the world because we follow a Lord who asks us to love and forgive our enemy—even as family members of the 21 are already doing. 

Let us honor these brothers, who are surely now in heaven interceding for us all.

 

Eternal rest, grant unto them O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May they and all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.