A Remembrance Day Prayer

By Michael Symons

Last week saw Remembrance Day in Canada: the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, when we remember those soldiers who never made it home. We're taught never to forget them, nor the places where they died, the glorious battlefields of Europe, Asia, Africa. We watch on TV as veterans shed tears for their friends they'll never see again, and politicians wear poppies, and successive generations of children read "On Flanders Fields," with its grizly rhythm:

If ye break faith
With those who died
We shall not sleep
Though poppies grow
On Flanders Field

I remember Remembrance Day as a child. I'd run my fingers over a photograph of my uncle who'd died in World War II. It was one of my only connections with human death, and it was so far away. He was a young man in a sharp uniform with trimmed, well-groomed hair and handsome eyes, a kind smile, too young to die. Of course, I'd never met the man, and in fact my father had hardly known him either, which made remembrance difficult--you can't remember that which you'd never known to start with, and some of us (and I'm speaking now of us in the West, especially of the younger generations) have never known that kind of death. We may chant our mantras: "God bless his soul," or Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oun (From God we come, and to God we will return), but we're lucky--so lucky--never to have learned firsthand the insanity of mass death.

My wife is a teacher. She says her school doesn't hold assemblies for Remembrance Day any more. The school band plays, but students watch it on video. Apparently, the rest of Canada shows the same apathy to Remembrance Day. We still wear poppies, but that's likely because of norms and mores moreso than conviction: polls show less and less of us bother to attend any kind of Remembrance Day ceremony at all. Fewer and fewer of us remember the grand conflicts of the previous century. There are only three surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War, all of whom are over 100. Only 30 percent or so of Canadians can name Vimy Ridge. How many of us can remember the names of any of the Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, or worse yet, what they were doing when they died?

Regardless, we must try to remember, or there's no hope.

We hear every day of more insanity in the world: 50 people killed in Baghdad, nine in Ramallah, six in Tel Aviv, 32 in Sri Lanka (I'm paraphrasing now). They're just numbers after a while, no connection to the human beings behind them. We rarely think, for instance, that every one of the 45 or so civilians reported to have been killed in Sri Lanka last week was somebody's son or daughter. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oun, we'll say maybe, and bow our head, but it's just numbers. I work with numbers every day, working to make those numbers mean something to other people, working to bring stories and narratives out of numbers to help influence change, and after a while, when I hear about another bomb exploding, I just see the numbers too.

B'Tselem, an Israeli Human Rights group, publishes figures on the current Intifadah dividing Palestinians and Israelis. Again, more numbers: 3,857 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces since the start of the conflict, 697 Israelis killed by Palestinians. You've probably seen these numbers before, or numbers very like them, and I doubt any of them come as much of a shock to any one of us. Politicians, pundits, clerics, medics, and teachers all push them back and forth across tables around the world. They use the numbers to bolster points and win arguments--they're trading them, after a fashion, for the currencies of righteousness or utility or fanaticism. I do it too. I run through these numbers and create angry percentages, self-righteous standard deviations, and trendlines of outrageous indignation. "The conflict is obscene," I might say, "because 17.31% of victims were minors, and 6.5% were collateral damage in extrajudicial executions, and blah were victims of blah blah blah." And so on. I'm lost plotting numbers.

B'tselem publish these numbers, yes. But they also publish lists of names and situations, short narratives, of every single human being that makes up each number:

Muhammad Salah Muhammad Abu Sakran
20 year-old resident of Gaza city, killed on 26.07.2006 in Gaza city by gunfire. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed while on his way to his parents' home, to make sure they were safe, during an IDF incursion into the northern Gaza Strip...

Maria Samir 'Ata 'Okal
5 year-old resident of Jabalya, North Gaza district, killed on 26.07.2006 in Jabalya, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a tank. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with her mother and sister while sitting in their yard...

Haim Amram
26 year-old resident of Netanya, killed on 05.12.2005 in Netanya by explosion. Additional information: Killed in a suicide bombing at the entrance of the Sharon shopping mall in Netanya. Over 50 people were wounded...

Nissim Arbiv
26 year-old resident of Nissanit, North Gaza district, injured on 02.01.2005 at the Erez Checkpoint by gunfire, and died on 12.01.2005. Additional information: Died ten days after being wounded by a Qassam rocket fired at the Erez industrial zone...

Nadav Kudinski
20 year-old resident of Kiryat Gat, killed on 07.12.2004 at the Karni Checkpoint, Gaza district, by explosion. Additional information: Killed with his dog, in the Canine Corps, in an explosion while they were combing an area near Karni Crossing...

Hani Bani Maniya
22 year-old resident of 'Aqraba, Nablus district, killed on 06.10.2002 in 'Aqraba, Nablus district, by gunfire. Additional information: Shot and killed by settlers while harvesting his olives...
Source: B'Tselem, October 2006

Run your eyes over each page of the pages and pages of data there until your eyes can focus, and read the first one you see. Now close your eyes and pray. Move to the next. Repeat. Pray for every single human being killed in this insanity. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oun. Can you? I doubt it. I can't.

In the summer of 2001, prior to the terrorist attacks against the human beings in New York City's World Trade Center, Chris Hedges wrote a series of articles about this particular insanity. He describes it well. He ought to: he's immersed himself in insanity for decades, across Bosnia, El Salvador, Palestine, Iraq. Read how well he describes what he sees: a boy has been shot by soldiers after throwing rocks at armoured personnel carriers. He's describing the funeral.

Ali's small body is loaded onto the back of a truck. A cadre of young men, some bearded and in robes, others dressed in black and wearing wraparound sunglasses, march in three rows, with automatic weapons pointed in the air, behind the bier. The crowd of several hundred, egged on by the speakers mounted on the truck, chant Islamic and anti-Israeli slogans.
"Mothers of Jews!" they shout. "We will make you weep like Palestinian mothers."

Ibrahim Abu Awad, a dirty and disheveled boy of ten, pesters me for a shekel, and finally stands and stares intently at the post. I ask him what he wants to do in life.
"Kill Jews," he says.
Source: Chris Hedges, "A Gaza Diary"
Harper's Magazine, October 2001

Can you imagine that? Think of a ten-year-old boy you might know, and think of the opportunities open to that boy. When you're a ten-year-old boy, you can be anything. You haven't even begun exploring the blessings in this world. You are a child, and the whole world around you should respect that and keep you safe, keep you secure, nurture you and love you. This boy's ten years have been surrounded by the insanity of an impossible conflict, without safety, securty, nurturing, and love. It's an insanity that has replaced the safety, security, nurturing, and love for countless boys and girls across history. Imagine what a ten-year-old Sioux boy might have thought during the conquest of his people's homeland as he saw his future erode in front of him: his leaders and elders executed, his land and birthright usurped. What would he have said if asked what he wanted from life? The outrage of this Palestinian boy willing to throw away his future in the continuation of insanity is likely little different. He's herded toward insanity within and without. Friends and enemies alike will push Ibrahim Abu Awad to throw rocks at armoured personnel carriers, and if he survives that, they will push him to pick up guns or Qassam rockets, or more terrible yet. I can't think about it. Forgive me. I can't even bring myself to search through B'tselem's lists; Ibrahim Abu Awad’s name may be there already.

Now remember--never forget--that Palestine is only one of many insanities. We Muslims fixate on it, but there are others, and others more terrible. Mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, children in Darfur cry every night, and beat their chests for their dead. Mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, children in Sri Lanka do the same. In Thailand, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan--on every continent on earth, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, and children cry for their dead. While they cry, war cheerleaders take their profits and war pundits jab their fingers in the air while they pass around more numbers, and they fight about what causes the insanity. It's Islam! It's the West! It's the Crusaders! It's the Jihadis! We want peace--just not with you!

We Shi'a of Imam 'Ali (as) know death well. We cry for the deaths of the martyrs. We beat our chests and shout for them, we sing mournful kasidas for them. We feel their deaths deep inside us and that does not scare us. Let us now try to feel these deaths, and pray for their souls, Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oun. And for the people left behind: May Allah (swt) grant you the strength to bear His will. And for those who march their fellow men to death for nothing: Allah is al-Muhyi and al-Mumit, al-Awwal and al-Akhir. And Allah (swt) knows best.

Ameen.

Michael Symons serves as technical officer for Child Aid International,an emerging Vancouver-based organization that helps Iraqi orphans. He writes on his blog at abdiel.ca, where he focusses on positive Muslim experiences, particularly in North America.You can reach Michael at michael@abdiel.ca.