An End to Martyrdom?

Earlier this week I heard two stories recounted by Andrew White, the ‘Vicar of Baghdad’. To his credit, he told them without commentary or elaboration, simply offering them to his audience as examples of life in Iraq.

They both concerned fathers named Josef, both of whom had phoned him in great distress. The first father was distressed because members of the Islamic State had burst into his home, demanding that he recant his belief in Christianity and declare belief in Islam. If they did not, his children would be shot. He recanted, his family was spared and he was filled with guilt at ‘denying’ Jesus. He wanted to know if he could be forgiven; Andrew assured him that he was.

The second father phoned Andrew a week later, sobbing on the phone as he talked. The Islamic State had entered his home in a similar fashion and demanded that all family members recant their Christian faith. His children held hands, refused to do so as they declared very personal faith in Jesus and they were shot one by one. The father was left alive to suffer his loss. Andrew comforted him as best he could.

The barbarity of the Islamic State, the distress of both men and the courage of the children are all beyond doubt, but these stories raise troubling questions not only for Christians but for any followers of a belief system, from Buddhism to Communism.

If, as is surely right, the first Josef was not culpable for pretending to convert in order to save his family, was the sacrifice of the second Josef’s family unnecessary or even misguided? At the very least, is this sacrifice in some way not devalued if a public denial (albeit a false one) of faith can be dismissed because it was effected under duress.

Equally pertinently, is it right even to suggest that God (if we allow for the moment that God exists) connives in human evil by expecting children to confess faith in the face of threatened execution? What sort of God would that be? If, however, God does not collude in such appalling human ‘tests’, does that diminish the sacrifice of courageous martyrs down through the centuries?  Again, similar questions can be asked of secular causes.

I feel that I need to state again that I am not devaluing the distress of the victims involved, the courage of the children who were killed or the barbarity of the Islamic State, but I can’t help but wonder….

Animal Rights: Food for Thought

Not so long ago animals were habitually treated with casual cruelty. They were viewed as little more than flesh and blood robots; this is spite of the fact that it was obvious that they could feel pain and pleasure and that they were capable of forming relational bonds.

In much the same way that public executions fell out of favour as our tastes refined, gross cruelty to animals fell out of vogue: animal welfare was born. It was, at first, patchy and selective: flogging cart horses in the street was frowned upon as was working donkeys in mines until they were arthritic and blind, but slaughter house practices went largely unreformed, farmers were left to their own devices as to how they treated their animals and foxes were fair game for the velvet jacketed classes to hunt, corner and savage, albeit vicariously via their hounds (most of the time). Eventually the scope of animal welfare widened, poking its often unwelcome nose into aspects of the food industry with varying degrees of success.

I welcome this movement, but a deeper question underlies this slow progress: as well as meriting welfare do animals have rights? For many years I thought not, but I have recently revised my opinion.  I have been an advocate and supporter of human rights for many years; I based this, in part, on the belief that rights were necessarily bound to personal autonomy.  In other words, individual humans have a will with desires and intentions that ought to be respected and defended through a code of rights. This much remains true.

Another, complementary, basis of rights, however, is found in the idea of ‘interests’. In other words, certain things are in human beings’ interests and these things ought to be enshrined in rights. For example, it is in our interests to be protected, nurtured and to be given freedom to develop to the best of our potential. In this understanding of rights, babies, the comatose and the severely mentally disabled are afforded rights even though they have limited, if any, personal autonomy.

This argument, however, can be extended to other sentient creatures. Animals too, have interests; they benefit from nurture, protection and conditions that enable them to fulfil their natural potential. This transforms the ways in which we think and treat animals; perhaps annoyingly so.

At a personal level it has underscored by decision, a little over a year ago, to become vegetarian. My thinking runs that either animals enjoy their lives and have an interest in staying alive or else they do not enjoy being alive because of the misery of the conditions in which they are kept in which case I do not want to have any part in the process of their ‘production’.  Of course, as with all rights, there are many instances of rights conflicting and it is by no means a simple matter to respect, protect and promote the rights of all, especially if animals are included, but nonetheless, food for thought?