week 25, 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

A Modern Martyr

          Folk of my generation were brought up in the belief that in our wonderful 20^th Century, the age of Christian martyrs, like the ‘age of miracles’ was over.  Martyrs were those who were ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday – thrown to the lions in the arena in the reign of the Emperor Nero or slaughtered in some other agonising way for their refusal to renounce their Christian faith. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the protestant half of Christendom honoured as saints and martyrs their co-religionists who were tortured and burned alive by zealous Catholic monarchs like Queen Mary Tudor (‘bloody Mary’),.  The Catholic half gave similar honour (observed in the Church of Rome to this day) to recusant priests hung, drawn and quartered by her half-sister Queen Elizabeth I.

            There have, of course, been martyrs since those days – in the wake of the French and Russian revolutions for instance, though much of the anti-clericalism of those times resulted from the perceived support of the established churches for the tyrannical former regimes in those countries, and the contrast between the splendour and riches of the ‘princes’ of the Church and the abject poverty and squalor of the people.  The fate of the Jews in the Nazi regime was different (and worse) than martyrdom. Martyrs could often save themselves by repudiating their faith. In the holocaust the victims were condemned not by their faith but by their ethnicity.  None of us can change or repudiate that.

Suicide bombers, unlike their victims, are not martyrs.  They are cold-blooded murderers who compound their crime by killing themselves as well, thereby evading human retribution for their crime.

Meriem Ibrahim (an attractive 21^st century young woman threatened with a medieval punishment. She could be ‘that friendly and helpful young woman next door’ to you – or me)

A modern martyr (who may yet be saved from martyrdom) is Meriam Ibrahim of North Sudan.  She had a Muslim father, who deserted the family, and a Christian mother who brought her up as a Christian.  She married an American Christian man and has a young son and a daughter, the latter born in prison while she was shackled to the floor of her cell.  She has been condemned to death for having converted from Islam to Christianity and, before being hanged, is to be flogged with one hundred lashes for her ‘adultery’.

She is deemed to have been a Muslim because her father was Muslim. Sharia Law as interpreted in Sudan declares that death is the punishment for conversion from Islam to atheism or any other faith.  Since that same law also forbids a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man, her relationship with her Christian husband is ‘adulteus’; hence the flogging before the hanging!

‘Humanely’ (well, Islam does claim to be compassionate and merciful) they won’t hang her for two years (presumably to allow the new baby to become less dependent on her mother) and they won’t hang her at all, if only she’ll repudiate her Christian faith and return to Islam.  This she refuses to do.  She can’t in any case ‘return’ to a faith that she has never embraced.

Baby Maya, Meriam’s daughter born in prison to a mother condemned to death.  Her name is the same (though spelt differently) as that of my little German ‘adopted niece’ who was featured in this blog two weeks ago.

Meriam’s case is so outrageous to western minds that it has attracted world-wide condemnation.  Barak Obama (Meriam is married to a US citizen and that baby, born to a mother in shackles, and her brother, are half Americans) has expressed his outrage, as have David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.  A petition, of which I am one of the 800,000 (so far) signatories, is to be presented to the Sudanese authorities.

Sadly, I have heard nothing of British Muslims making their voices heard, yet apart from Meriam and her family, it is they who are likely to suffer most from Meriam’s martyrdom.  Incidents such as these, and the wholesale murder and abduction of Christians by militant Islamists in Nigeria, lend fuel to the intolerance and prejudice of such neo-fascist and anti-Islamic  groups as the English Defence League, the BNP and at least a minority of the Ukippers.

            I very much hope that the Sudanese government will bend to world-wide anger and release Meriam and her children unscathed to join her husband, the children’s father, in the USA.  Already one Sudanese government spokesman has said that she would be released within a few days – but that was quickly denied.  Sadly, those who are convinced that Meriam was convicted in accordance with a law laid down directly by God to his prophet nearly a millennium and a half ago, are unlikely to be impressed by an appeal to ‘Universal Human Rights’ in 2014.

Better or Worse? – or just Different?

          Writing about Islam and Sharia law has brought to my mind the fuss that there has been about the accusation that the governing bodies of a number of Birmingham Schools had been infiltrated by Muslim extremists who were changing the schools’ characters and possibly using them to ‘radicalise’ the younger generation and possibly make them recruits for terrorism.   I think that we’ll probably hear a lot more about this in the days to come. 

My knowledge of the situation has been gained entirely from tv news bulletins and broadcast interviews with parents, governors and – of course - national politicians.   It must be said that Muslim parents seemed for the most part to be thoroughly approving of the very schools that have been causing most concern. Some of the practices of these schools reminded me of my own schooldays – now some eighty years ago!

Our school day began with an assembly and an act of worship; Christian worship of course.  Throughout my eleven years (5 to 16) of full-time education I never even met anyone with any other religious faith.  There was a hymn, a prayer and a reading from the New Testament. The handful of Roman Catholic pupils were excused this part of the assembly.  They joined us to hear the Head Master give out any notices and dismiss us to our classes.

In the 1930s.  Boys’ School on the right, Girls’ School on the left.  Utility block, shared but at different times, in the middle.  Note the fence between the two playing fields.

There was a Boys’ School and Girls’ School.  Ours were adjacent but quite separate.  There were separate playing fields with a high wooden fence separating them.  There was even a ‘trip wire’ a few feet from the fence over which we were forbidden to tread - to stop our watching the girls play hockey through the occasional ‘knot hole’!

There were no ‘sex education classes’ and certainly no contraceptive advice!  There were a few co-educational secondary schools.  As a schoolgirl my wife went to one, but they were the same in that respect. The very thought of mixed classes in such subjects would have provoked embarrassed shock and horror among even the most ‘progressive’ parents!   I am sorry that my school wasn’t co-educational.   It would probably have made me less agonisingly shy and ill-at-ease with the opposite sex than I was during my late teenage years.  I’m not so sure about the sex and contraceptive classes though – I really don’t believe that teaching these things to ever younger children is the best way to reduce premature sexual activity and teenage pregnancies.

            I am sure that there are lots of things about educating children and fitting them for the world of the 21 century that Muslims can and should learn from the ‘western world’ – but we shouldn’t be so reluctant to admit that there are one or two things that we can learn from them.