The Monks of Tibhirine by John W Kiser
Cunningham, Lawrence S
'AS GOD WILLS' The Monks of Tibhirine Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria John W. Kiser Saint Martin's Press, $25.95,335 pp. Lawrence S. Cunningham The first Trappist monks arrived in Algeria in...
...The violently anticlerical Republican government of France ended the Algerian Trappist settlement in the last decade of the nineteenth century...
...As of this writing, the monks have not been replaced and Our Lady of the Atlas remains empty...
...A few monks returned to Algeria in the late 1930s...
...Fully aware of the precarious situation in which the monks lived, Father Christian left the letter in a sealed envelope, to be opened only at his death...
...He gives a good account of Algeria's complex political situation, and provides a fine account of the international efforts to free the monks...
...The monks toiled under the motto of "sword, cross, and plow...
...He lamented caricatures of Islam...
...The monks readily agreed to care for the wounded, but rejected the other two demands as blackmail...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham is John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and writes the Religion Booknotes column for Commonweal...
...What complicated life at the monastery of Our Lady of the Atlas was a militant Islamic group that terrorized the entire country by killings and assassinations as part of a strategy to disgrace and eventually overthrow the government...
...The monks themselves dispersed to various communities in Europe...
...The prior, Brother Christian, had studied Islam in Rome and participated in discussions with Muslims who were sympathetic to the life of the Christian marabouts...
...The monks provided a space for Friday prayers for their Muslim neighbors...
...He was at least partially inspired in this resolve by the words of his favorite French musician, the late Edith Piaf and her heartbreaking song "Je ne regrette rien"-"I regret nothing...
...The government valued the agricultural skills of the monks-a value well placed...
...In October 1993 the group (known as the GIA) issued an ultimatum: All foreigners must leave Algeria by December 1 under pain of death...
...No effort was made to convert Muslims...
...Brother Christian wrote that, should he lose his life through a terrorist act, he wanted everyone to know that he gave up his life for God and for Algeria...
...His final words are in Arabic: "As God wills...
...An extraordinary letter was written by the prior of the monastery two years before his martyrdom...
...He begged people not to condemn Islam or Muslims...
...It is a classic example of the literature of martyrdom...
...If, as one prays, these monks enter the ranks of those officially recognized as martyrs, one also hopes those who are in charge of the process will find that little fact a genuine sign of authentic sanctity...
...They were a key part of the mission ci-vilitrice of French colonialism-an ideology with traces in the attitudes of the saintly hermit of Algeria, Charles de Foucauld, who died in 1916...
...He concludes with the expectation that the two of them- two happy thieves (larrons heureux)-will meet in paradise if it is the will of God who "is the Father of both of us...
...In fact, a number of deaths did occur...
...Today, their remains (the bodies have never been discovered) rest in a small graveyard on the grounds of the monastery...
...such caricatures, he wrote, were not faithful to the Islam he knew...
...On May 21, the GIA announced that the monks had been executed because the Algerian government had not agreed to free some imprisoned Islamic militants...
...To this unknown person he says merci and adieu...
...The community grew after World War II, when a number of men had discovered the beauty of the land through their experiences in the French military...
...The small community (it never reached a dozen members) was poor, simple, and deeply committed to the contemplative life...
...In a final, powerfully moving paragraph he addresses his killer directly- he was sure that he would meet him in the world to come...
...The letter was opened in 1996, just months after his murder...
...This new monastic foundation was a far cry from the old one...
...John Kiser chronicles the trials of a Christian contemplative monastery set in a largely Islamic country-trials exacerbated by the struggle for independence from France, the decades of political struggle in the postindependence period, and since 1988, by the bloody struggle of Muslim fundamentalists against the Algerian government...
...The months after this encounter saw a dramatic escalation of attacks against Christian religious...
...One of the monks, an elderly lay brother named Luc, was a medical doctor who ran a clinic for the impoverished locals...
...They felt an obligation to stay in solidarity with their neighbors and in fidelity to their vocation as witnesses to peace and reconciliation...
...He finished his letter on New Year's Day, 1994...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham The first Trappist monks arrived in Algeria in the nineteenth century in the wake of the French colonial army that took Algiers from the Barbary pirates in 1830...
...One incident caught my eye in reading about these monks in Rene Guitton's Si Nous Nous Taisons (Paris, 2001...
...in 1865 Napoleon III himself came to inspect their well-kept fields and vineyards...
...Some weeks later, the heads of the monks were found...
...Then, three days after Christmas, members of the GIA invaded the monastery making three demands: medical care for injured militants, medicines and equipment to take with them, and money...
...Nor did he wish to be called a martyr at the expense of the many anonymous Algerians who had died at the hands of the terrorists and were not remembered, despite their terrible sufferings...
...The Trappist farms were sold in 1904 to a Swiss family consortium that continued to advertise their products as coming from "the Trappist Domain...
...Kiser's book adds a good deal to what has been written about the monastic martyrs of Algeria (most found, alas, in somewhat out-of-the-way places like Cistercian Studies Quarterly...
...After the first invasion of the monastery by the GIA, old Brother Luc, the eighty-year-old doctor and ex-soldier, was as determined as his confreres to remain at the monastery and not take refuge from the incursions ravaging the countryside...
...They started a monastery in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains...
...Kiser's book guides us through the complex story of the sociopolitical landscape of Algeria, to the story of the 1996 murder of the monks of Tibhirine...
...Religious houses were closed and their inhabitants expelled...
...What other kind of saint would we want...
...The monks were advised to leave their isolated monastery, but they refused...
...In March 1996, the GIA returned to the monastery and forced seven monks to go with them to the mountains...
Vol. 129 • August 2002 • No. 14
