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Jewish World Review April 1, 2005 / 21 Adar II, 5765 A culture of life vs. a culture of death By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What do Robert and Mary Schindler, Mansour al-Banna, Hanim Surucu
and Kofi Annan have in common? Absolutely nothing. Really. By
chance, though, they have all passed through, or, in the case of the
Schindlers, remained, in the spotlight of the news in recent days
because of their relationships with their children.
The Schindlers, of course, are the parents of Terri Schiavo. They
famously and fruitlessly labored to restore their 41-year-old
daughter's right to life after her husband-cum-guardian discovered
her right to death in the shadows and penumbras of his memory —
seven years after her brain-damaging accident.
Mansour al-Banna is the Jordanian father of Raed al-Banna, who has
been identified as the perpetrator of the most lethal terrorist
bombing in Iraq. On Feb. 28, the 32-year-old al-Banna is believed to
have killed 132 people, injuring 120, outside a health clinic in
Hilla, 60 miles south of Bagdhad. According to the Middle East
Research Institute's analysis (on www.memri.org), the killer's
bereaved family celebrated with a party — a 'wedding of the martyr'
to symbolize the son's wedding in paradise with 72 virgins — that,
not incidentally, has ignited a diplomatic crisis with Iraq.
Hanim Surucu is the Turkish-born mother of the late Hatun Surucu,
who, on the night of Feb. 7, is believed to have become the sixth
victim of a so-called "honor killing" in Berlin in as many months.
German police have charged the 23-year-old Hatun's three brothers in
her slaying. The mother, "wearing an ankle-length green-and-blue
print dress and matching hijab," told the Los Angeles Times, "My
sons didn't do this. They went to work and then were taken away in
handcuffs."
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is the father of Kojo
Annan, who is at the reeking center of the oil-for-fraud scandal at
the United Nations. Annan pére doesn't really belong in this
parental lineup since his son is facing not death, but disgrace. But
Kofi's parental plan of attack is striking. As a London Telegraph
headline put it, "Annan will sacrifice son to save himself." So much
for Annan family values. Of course, no matter how big a zero Kojo
might be, Kofi isn't going to enhance his own reputation by trashing
his son's. But it's the thought that counts.
Kofi and Kojo aside, do these wholly disparate stories of parent
life and child death tell us anything? Again, these people have
nothing to do with one another except for the fact that none of
these adult children died a natural death. Terri was starved to
death at her husband's behest by the state; Raed was a family-feted
suicide-bomber; and Hatun was murdered, allegedly by her brothers,
to restore "honor" to her family. In other words, some considerable
measure of family approval sanctioned all these deaths. Their lives
were determined to be worse than their deaths.
Somehow, this combined experience put me in mind of something I
recall from an earlier year in the "war on terror." I can't recall
if it was in an Osama rant, a Zarqawi lament, or whether it was just
the rhetoric of some frothing jihadi on the Internet. But I do
remember taking pride in the blunt, cross-cultural attempt at a
put-down: "You love life the way we love death," it went.
You bet. Or so I thought. Maybe, after what Terry Schiavo, even in
her profoundly diminished state, has revealed about her fellow
citizens, it would have been more accurate for that jihadi to have
accused us of loving quality of life, a conditional state of being
that is none too categorical. And much less so than I thought back
when "mercy death" conjured up the release of a comatose,
machine-dependent, painwracked mortal to his maker — not the
starvation of a brain-damaged lady who needed just three liquid
squares to make it through the day.
You love some life, the jihadi might have said, the way we love some
death — for what is paradise without 72 virgins? A bad dream, to
say the least, but hardly worth the trouble of infidel-murder and
self-detonation. It is a paradox, surely, that the "martyr's"
afterlife in paradise is defined by fleshy rewards — a brothel
everlasting — while, in theory and in faith, a Western "culture of
life" on earth makes no physical promise. But a culture of the
quality of life may be something else again. It only loves some life
better than death. Which makes me wonder if it can ward off a
jihadi.
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JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Diana West |
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