A couple of days ago, I walked to the grocery store near my home to purchase a copy of this week’s Time magazine, with its horrifying cover photo of 18-year-old Aisha, whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban when she tried to flee her abusive husband in Afghanistan.
As I looked over the large magazine rack, I couldn’t see a copy of Time anywhere. Then I saw a magazine with its back cover facing out, showing an ad for PNC Bank. I turned it over to find it was a copy of Time atop a stack of unpurchased Time magazines. Someone, either a customer or a store employee, had turned the magazine over so that passers-by would not see the cover. Good way to avoid upsetting customers, but a bad way to sell magazines.
To me, that moment represented how much of the United States citizenry seems to respond to our quandary in Afghanistan: The situation is just too difficult, so we avert our gaze and tend to other business (unless you have a loved one in the U.S. military). The choices we face range from bad to worse, with our military caught in an increasingly difficult position in a war our debt-ridden nation can’t afford to fight, amid the knowledge of what would happen, especially to women, if we leave.
Hence the very emotional approach to the story from Time, in which Aisha becomes a poster child for the potential future of all Afghan women. But while Time reminds us of what’s at stake, it offers little in terms of solutions. It does, however, convey Aisha’s response to the prospects of negotiations with the Taliban: “How can we reconcile with them?”
The cover stirred accusations of emotional blackmail against Time, but as Aisha’s face arrived on newsstands it was but one part of the larger story. There’s the new U.N. report on increasing civilian casualties. There are voices such as Andrew Sullivan calling for withdrawal, even as he recognizes the moral cost. And there is air base construction in Afghanistan that suggests the U.S. commitment is deepening, rather than wavering.
Add to all that the murders this past weekend of 10 civilian aid workers, many of them Christians, by Taliban soldiers. Tuesday’s New York Times ran a story examining the slain workers’ commitment to serve the needy in Afghanistan. As the father of one of the victims said: “They try to be the hands and feet of Jesus.”
I am neither smart nor wise enough to offer any profound solution to the war in Afghanistan. But if we are to find any sort of solution, however imperfect, it will require more than force. It also will require the grace, courage and commitment that matches, if not surpasses, that of those slain aid workers — not just in Afghanistan, but here in the United States as well.
As U.S. soldiers fight and die daily, and as other aid workers continue to risk their lives, what are we arguing about at home? The construction of a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero for the 9/11 attacks — along with resistance to the construction of mosques across the nation. Never mind that Muslims were among those who perished in the World Trade Center; all Muslims are treated as potential Islamist terrorists.
Newsweek, in fact, focuses on the mosque question this week with a cover that for many is just as emotionally charged as Time’s. The New York Times summarizes the debate well:
These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.
While interfaith groups have come to the defense of Muslim groups in many cases, we’ve also seen Christians take visible roles in the opposition to new mosques. When Christians do this, they allow fear to trump grace — even as both faiths share in the anguish over events in Afghanistan.
Think about it for a moment: Followers of the Christian faith often draw great strength in a history of perseverance amid persecution, which served to strengthen the church rather than weaken it. In fact, many believers today see themselves as a belittled group in a secular United States; they draw energy from this belief, not weakness.
Do these believers think for a moment about the irony of persecuting — yes persecuting — Muslims who share with them citizenship and share in the losses of 9/11, whose sons and daughters risk their lives to protect our nation? Do they think that Muslims’ faith will be diminished, weakened by this resistance? Or, like Christians, will they deepen in their convictions — or be left to harden against the followers of Jesus?
If you are a Muslim, what example of faith would mean more to you? The courageous, sacrificial service of those aid workers in Afghanistan? Or the church groups that cry out, “Not in our back yard”?
In the end, Aisha’s question born of terrible pain is one Christians need to ask of themselves — and then transform it into an act of grace:
How can we reconcile with them?
Signs of Grace 