Ride Till We Find Them; Kill Them All

(First published in Bali Advertiser, November 9, 2005)

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them … as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Deuteronomy 20:16-17

The news of the beheading of three school girls in Sulawesi sickens and terrifies in a way that hearing of thousands dead from earthquake, hurricane, or tsunami cannot. Natural disasters may inspire awe or the feeling that an angry God needs to be appeased; people may get angry at God for allowing or sending death by flood, fire, famine, and pestilence.

But unless one is personally swept up in a disaster, it doesn’t have the same numbing effect as hearing that men (or women) have taken to murder and mutilation to purify their corner of the earth – if that indeed is what is happening again in Sulawesi.

It is easy to point to religious conflict as the motivation behind the beheadings of Saturday, Oct. 29. Thousands, after all, were killed in clashes between Christians and Muslims in Sulawesi and Maluku provinces from 1999-2001, and in May, a market bombing in Tentena killed 22. One Indonesian observer (Lian Gogali on the political blog www.laksamana.net), though, says that blaming it all on religious rivalry simplifies a situation that owes as much to corruption and economic and political power struggles.

Rev. Andreas Yewangoe, Chairman of the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI), “dismissed speculation that religious motives were behind the murders” and called on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to “capture the perpetrators … and unearth the real motive behind the crime,” according to an Oct. 31 article at www.adnki.com.

Din Syamsuddin, chairman of the Muslim organization Muhammadiyah, said the “incident … has nothing to do with ties between Muslims and Christians," according to the Jakarta Post.

On the other hand, it seems naïve to say, “No religion teaches us to kill our brothers and sisters,” as former Indonesian president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid did after the girls’ murder at the end of October. Religions that have at one time or another instructed people to kill their “brothers and sisters” sometimes seem in greater supply than those that don’t. The quote from the book of Deuteronomy is just one of several places in the Christian Bible where God supposedly commands death for enemies of his people. The Koran, too, has its bloodthirsty passages allowing for or commanding the killing of unbelievers, and some primitive belief systems are built around the taking of heads. Even if a religion doesn’t itself teach people to kill their brothers and sisters, there are usually religious leaders willing to make up for God’s oversight.

In Sulawesi, whatever the motive – whether religious or racial cleansing, or the creation of chaos for some political and economic end – six men thought their goals and beliefs justified the murder of three teen girls. And the men didn’t have the decency to off themselves a la the Bali bombers in the making of their “statement,” which means there are still at least six men in Sulawesi comfortable with a leisurely beheading come a Saturday afternoon.

The disturbing thing about that, the thing that chills in a way that wind, water, and unstable earth cannot, is not how different those six men must be from us, but how similar they and we are. We are all capable of such brutality. Or, at least, we are all only a few generations removed from ancestors that had to be just as brutal to live long enough to pass on their genetic seed.

The question to ask isn’t, “Can’t we all just get along?” The real mystery is that we are getting along as well as we are. Human history is one long account of peoples and nations trying to wipe out most everyone else. Western Europeans didn’t stop killing each other by millions until the middle of last century; political ideals were behind the extermination and starvation of countless persons in Russia and China; the US has stockpiled weapons with the explosive power to destroy the earth many times over; and it’s only been sixty years since our last world-wide killing spree. Since then, we haven’t been able to get really going again, but the six men in Sulawesi are proof that our old, familiar instincts are still there.

Those six men remind us of the thin line that separates us from our “primitive” forefathers of 10,000 years ago, or even of 1940 and 1914. None of us are far free from the kind of thinking that can justify the beheading of three school girls. And if anyone thinks that understanding and tolerance of cultural differences are effective weapons against mobs intent on murder for a cause, then I’d rather someone else watch my back when the barbarians come over the gate.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi