As events in the Middle East continue to unfold, there is
growing concern about the treatment of minority Christians by
majority Muslims. Sadly, that anxiety is being stoked by the more
antediluvian elements of both faiths. A film that will soon be
playing in major U.S cities deals with this issue forthrightly, but
tells quite a different story — a story symbolized by the recent
media coverage of Christians and Muslims protecting each other when
they prayed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Of Gods and
Men won the Cannes Grand Prize du Jury last year. It
too, is a story of Muslim-Christian solidarity. The film tells the
true story of a group of French Trappist monks living
in an impoverished Algerian community who must decide whether to
leave or stay when threatened by a band of terrorists during the
“Black Years” of the 1990s.
Despite pleas from the Vatican, French, and Algerian
authorities to leave their monastery for a safer place, the monks
stayed out of a sense of mutual dependence and deep friendship with
their extended family of Muslim villagers. The Trappists had lived
in harmony with their Muslim neighbors since their community was
established in 1938 — a harmony that continued until their
kidnapping and murder in 1996.
After the monks remains were discovered, the Algerian
government honored them with all the pomp of a state funeral.
Letters from chagrined Algerians flooded the Catholic bishop’s
office in Algiers: “It’s disgraceful…Islam’s teachings are clear
about the sacredness of live, love of neighbor, hospitality to the
stranger….Pass on to our Christian brothers and the families of the
victims our message of fraternity and friendship.”
A woman doctor wrote, “We must water the seeds bequeathed
by our monks. Our duty is to pursue peace, love God and respect
people who are different.”
This part of the story is sadly missing from an otherwise
wonderful and true-to-life film. Do such people sound as if they
are in a war with Christianity? Why were these monks so honored by
the vast majority of Algerians, even by Islamists, if a clash of
civilizations is occurring?
Because the clash — if there must be one — is less
between East and West, and more between religious and secular. As
men devoted to pleasing God, the monks often felt more at home in
Algeria among Muslims than in secular France. In the West
generally, people who take their religion seriously tend to be
viewed as odd, even radical. Such a person threatens the
materialistic assumptions of the consumer society and challenges
the modern idols of democracy and the nation state.
But if Muslims love Christians so much, why were the monks
killed? The question is like asking how Christians can be good
people who embrace universal love if they spawn the Ku Klux Klan,
kill abortion doctors, preach assassination of heads of state, and
hatred of other faiths? Once the labels “hypocrite” or “bigot” for
Christians or “fanatic” for Muslims are accepted caricatures,
thinking ceases. Let the cartoons begin!
It was said of the monks’ abbot, Christian de Chergé, that
he would judge specific acts, but not people or whole governments.
Condemn the sin but not the sinner. He was an optimist who believed
that under the right influences people and governments can
change.
Universal fraternal love may seem laughably naïve in a
post 9/11 world. But “love” has nothing to do with sentiment and
everything to do with good will, justice, and respect for others
who are different. Dehumanizing labels help soldiers to commit the
unnatural act of killing people, but empathy is needed to
understand and progress.
A Trappist monastery is a microcosm of the world: A
community of men or women, different by temperament, class,
education, race and nationality who make a life-long commitment to
love God by practicing the art of loving their neighbor. And it
begins with a very rational precept, The Golden Rule: As you would
want to be treated, so treat others. What a revolution if
governments learned to do the same.
