In the context of the clinical demolition of Fallujah where an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi was shot by a US Marine, there are deaths that pierce the soul in a way that even that death in a war zone cannot. Among the teeming billions of humans on this planet, the death of a single human is statistically insignificant.
There are some events however — perhaps one of those statistically insignificant deaths — which call the idea of “humanity” as a concept associated with humans into question. Such is the case with Margaret Hassan. She was killed by fellow human beings who were products of a culture that they would no doubt call civilized, who never stated their cause but merely had her read prepared statements demanding the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. No banners, no gun toting figures in balaclavas, religious recitations or political statements provided a background to her humiliation and final death.
The sheer cold brutality of what now proves to have been the inevitable progression to the murder of a thoroughly decent and caring soul, who had done nothing but care for the poor of Iraq for 30 years, bears the signature of evil if there ever was an act which did.
The manner of her kidnapping indicated the manner of person the killers were dealing with. When Margaret was driving to work, she was, reports say, flagged down by two men in police uniform. Her driver and an unarmed guard were pulled out and pistol-whipped by gunmen who suddenly appeared. Margaret demanded they stop the beating and said she would go with them.
Her killers must surely have known who she was and what she had done for the ordinary people of their country, probably hoping that this quality of saintliness would provide added pressure on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to accede to their demands. She certainly would have told them and been understood as she was fluent in Arabic.
On Oct. 25, about 200 people, many who had been helped by Margaret Hassan or Care International, rallied at the agency’s Baghdad offices. They carried pictures of her and banners calling for her captors to set her free. These people are presumably the ones her captors wish to free from oppression?
Her kidnappers, hoping for some kind of support from the militant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi threatened to hand her to his group, which has definitely been involved in beheadings — notably the American businessman Nick Berg and construction worker Ken Bigley, unless British troops withdrew from Iraq.
A message claiming to come from Al-Zarqawi, however, had the effect of distancing him from the kidnapping and called for her release.
The message, which promised to free Margaret if she fell into their hands, spiked the kidnappers’ guns and effectively distanced Al-Zarqawi from the situation. The message even called on the kidnappers to publish any information they had to support their contention that Margaret was a spy and contended that, “In true Islam, they don’t kill women and young children. We never kill people who we are not supposed to kill. We only kill those who fight us and kill our people.”
Margaret Hassan could not have been further from that description of fighter or killer yet in a nightmarish Kafkaesque way, anonymous people for no stated reason shot her.
“We are in the holy month of Ramadan and my wife has been helping Iraq for thirty years and loved this country,” her husband Tahseen Ali Hassan said Wednesday on Al-Arabiya television, just before she was killed. “In the name of humanity, Islam and brotherhood, I appeal to the kidnappers to free her; she has nothing to do with politics.”
Humanity, Islam and brotherhood — the appeal fell on deaf ears.
If Al-Qaeda or any other militant Islamic organization wants to associate itself credibly or believably with the principles of peace and tolerance Islam is built upon, the time for them to do so is now. The pure and simple evil that pulled the trigger on this good woman, Margaret Hassan, is abroad in the world and it should be condemned loudly and repeatedly by those who are Muslim as well as by every other human being.
Perhaps Margaret Hassan’s captors had learned a grim lesson: Kill an American soldier and the West receives a body count. Kill an Iraqi as collateral damage and almost no one notices. Kill a Western woman and the world will hear about it. In the cynical world of the media — of which this article is a part — their vicious approach may yet have some effect.
And in the interconnectedness of all things, where no man is an island, are we not all therefore to some extent responsible in some degree for her brutal and pointless death?
