NOVEMBER 22 2015
PRAY FOR PARIS? PRIEZ POUR PARIS?
There is a certain saying in Latin which today could refer to prayer: Deus ex Machina. It literally means “God out of the machine”. It comes from ancient drama where sometimes a god was needed, so the actors had a god figure suspended above their heads and some stage hand would lower it whenever a god was called for. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, put to death by Hitler weeks before World War II ended, used Deus ex Machina as an example of the sort of god that is needed only when special circumstances require his presence, which actually is the way Christians in general uses God as well. When all goes perfectly, we can do without God but when sickness strikes or death or unemployment or the Paris attacks, we want God there to heal our cancers or avoid death or get us a job or wage war on ISIS. For the rest, we don’t need him.
And then there is the Paris Climate Change Conference starting next week, on November 30, when 50,000 people from all over the globe will converge on Paris to decide on the fate of the planet. All churches in Canada –urged on by CPJ, an organization I have supported since it was founded in 1960 and on whose board I served for a while -are supposed to pray that the world will still has a lease on life. Has it? Should it?
In America people, by and large, couldn’t care less about Climate Change, so in that huge country no or infrequent prayers are offered to prevent us from killing off the planet. Too bad: the USA is supposed to be the most Christian country in the world, with the highest percentage of prayers, supposedly, and also the highest per capita polluters. So….
So are you going to pray for Paris? Of course we should pray for it, pray especially for these Muslim attackers, because in Matthew 5: 44 Jesus urges us to, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Last week my brother Drewes, living in The Hague, sent me an article he found in the Dutch daily TROUW. I translated it because it gives insights into ISIS that are deeply disturbing. It was written by a Robin de Wever.
Here’s what he wrote:
ISIS desires the end of the age, but its own demise may be the result.
It’s only a matter of time, according to the theologians of ISIS, before the true believers in Allah and the infidels from the West will face each other on the battlefield. That conflict will be the final battle, spelling the end of history. If we want to understand the Paris attack on Friday November 13 2015 we cannot discard the apocalyptic rhetoric of ISIS.
It’s on the fields around Dabiq where the last battle will take place according to a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed. ‘After a rather long interval,’ according to the Great Prophet, ‘the armies of Medina and the forces of Rome will meet there.’
Once the fighting starts a third of the Muslims will flee and a third will be killed. The remaining third ‘will be the conquerors of Constantinople.’
The ISIS theologians are fascinated by this prophecy. The Muslim faithful are ‘the armies of Medina,’ while the forces of Rome (read, The West) are the enemies of Islam. This prophecy has convinced them that the ISIS fighters are the bloodthirsty and self-appointed ‘army of Medina’ which in the end will be emerge as the triumphant warriors.
The quotation is found in a ‘hadith’, one of the many saying attributed to the prophet Mohammed. Most Muslims know and acknowledge the hadith of Dabiq, but the majority fails to implement it. That is not unusual because there are so many of these hadiths. ISIS, on the other hand, has made the prophecy of the battle on Dabiq the cornerstone of its theology. This simply means that ISIS wants to bring on the End Time.
This really implies that the Paris attacks on November 13 are connected to this apocalyptic belief. Yes, just as some Christian movements believe that the End Times, as proclaimed by John in Revelation, are near so the ISIS also is convinced that the Dabiq prophecy is about to happen, and, in contrast what the Christians believe, the ISIS militants are sure that they must cause the Apocalypse to come.
They have made a beginning with this in Iraq and Syria by creating what they think is a perfect rule where slavery is part of the package. All this indicates, according to the ISIS’ hadith interpretation, that the End of history is approaching.
‘The more the West reacts, the more people perish, the more convincing is the tale that the end is near,’ according to the terror expert Matthew Henman of the London-based HIS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center.
But creating the ‘Caliphate’ – the perfect religious state- is not enough and that too is clearly indicated by the Dabiq’ prophecy, according to these ISIS theologians. The End Time will come only when the Muslims (read ISIS fighters, as the others are not really true Muslims), engage the armies of Rome, that is to say, the West.
ISIS constantly speaks of this ultimate encounter. In the last few months there was a lull in the fight against ISIS because the West did not want to get mixed up too much into this conflict in Iraq and Syria, but the Paris event has changed all that. These attacks have resulted in the US and Russia and France uniting to engage these elements. (“We are at war” said President Hollande).
An apocalyptic struggle.
‘We must not underestimate the apocalyptic element in ISIS’, according to Matthew Henman of the London-based HIS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center. In an article in the Washington Post he points out that those who sympathize with ISIS interpret the bombing (by Russia, France, the USA and others) as indications of an apocalyptic struggle.
The spiritual leaders of ISIS are no doubt anxiously looking forward to this confrontation as the start of the great struggle between ISIS and the Satanic super powers. Even though the Western powers see this as a war against terror and a threat to national security, ISIS sees it is a holy war, a struggle with a possible apocalyptic outcome.
“The more the West bombs,” says Henman, “the more people perish, the more credible is the prophecy that the end is near.”
ISIS itself contains a queer mixture of different goals. Whether the average ISIS fighter is motivated by the end-struggle is very much in question. ISIS is a complex mixture of apocalyptic expectations, both trying to attain a pure Islam doctrine, but also one political opportunism, as well as simply blind hate toward neighbor enemies such as the Shiites and Yezidis and the far-away Western enemies. Last year it became plain from leaked ISIS documents that a segment of the ISIS founders had very religious motives, but that another section was composed of warlords whose aim was simply to overthrow the established power centers. Already for years they are assisted by fighters from elsewhere who have their own motivations. “The more enemies they create the more enemies are fighting them”, says terror expert Daniel Byman.
And yet, the Apocalypse, the aim of striving for the End of Time, is a recurring theme in ISIS propaganda. The glossy ISIS periodical called DABIQ is full with this stuff.
Escalation, yes or no.
It is quite possible that ISIS is going international to take revenge for all these bombing attacks by Western nations, so say people in the know: thus a simple message of retribution. That’s why they engaged the French on their own backyard, simply to scare the wits out of them, in the hope that this will teach them a lesson not to intervene. But it is far more likely that all this actually will make matters worse, will accelerate the conflict. The ISIS actually envisions both scenarios.
“ISIS has pictured the attacks in Paris as an attempt to discourage the West”, commented ISIS expert William McCants last weekend, “in order to stop further escalation in Syria and Iraq, but this does not make sense if its real aim is a cease-fire agreement. After all, they constantly have made statements such as: let them come on because we are at war with the entire world.”
Can ISIS really wage war with the entire world?
Well, they are doing it now, whether this is the proper thing to do for them or not. They are fighting in Syria and Iraq; they downed a Russian plane in Egypt; their attacks in the French capital are further proof. If ISIS is directly or indirectly responsible for all this, then it is, indeed, busy on multiple fronts.
“The more enemies you tackle, the more enemies will fight against you”, is the obvious conclusion of terror-expert and former advisor of the US government, Daniel Byman, writing in Foreign Policy. If the USA and France are really serious in tackling ISIS then ISIS better watch out. It may not end up as an Apocalyptic Ending for them and an eternal victory for the true Muslims, but simply a military defeat, not the End of Times, but a humbling military debacle. So far the TROUW article.
So what is my reaction?
If recent history is any indication then the US powerful military machine will crush the enemy and – see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan- will bungle the peace. On the other hand, if the ISIS movement is really set to unleash the End of Times, then the Middle East is the right place for it.
There some 1.5 billion people make their home. There also Climate Change will have its most calamitous impact, as millions of small-time farmers, perhaps the bulk of the population, have been forced off the land due to desertification, soil erosion and persistent drought. Desperate people do desperate things. They already experience End-Times. How would you feel if the land which has given a living to an untold number of generations, no longer is fertile and the buildings which were inherited from your ancestors all are destroyed? Multiply that by a few millions and the collective consciousness turns toward apocalyptic thinking.
I see as the prime danger there the presence of nuclear bombs: Pakistan is the real wild card. Its population is largely Islam and its rulers are principally the military, and we all know that the military mind is one-dimensional: for them the only solution lies in the use of weapons, and when the situation seems beyond remedy – and in religious conflicts there really is no solution – then the ultimate weapon may be called for, even when it means collective suicide.
How about the West?
Things at home are not too rosy either. As a matter of fact the West too is in the clutches of a suicide mania. Thus not all that different from the Middle East, which, a hundred years ago, was one of the world’s most peaceful regions; today it is the most violent, witness the millions of refugees, now striking at the heart of Europe.
The current disorder started in 1918 when the World War II winning parties, France and Great Britain, divided the region into several incoherent blocks, by creating artificial states screaming for dissolution. Ever since 1918 there never have been stable successors to the defunct Ottoman Empire, which, through its benevolent rule, used to keep the peace in the Islamic world.
Priez Pour Paris? Pray for Paris?
The Middle East mess has been typical of what politicians do. They look for short-term solutions and never extend their vision to the ultimate consequences. The same is true with the Climate Challenge. Do we really grasp what we have to pray for?
When we pray for a solution to Climate Change, then the Lord right away bounces it back to us: “what are YOU going to do about it? Are you going to throw your car keys away? Are you becoming a vegetarian, as beef cattle are the second highest emitters of methane? Are you willing to share your 2500 square feet house with 2 other families? If not: The West is as much on a suicide trip as is the dreaded ISIS.
Pray? Yes. Pray for forgiveness.