Compassion for Enemies

The acronym SPICE was brought up in today’s Meeting for Worship, with each letter explained: S for Simplicity, P for Peace, I for Integrity, C for Community, and E for Equality. I wondered, why couldn’t the C stand for Compassion instead? And my thoughts swam backwards towards a subject I’ve been thinking about for a while: the Armenian Genocide and the role of Ottomon Turkey in the genocide (and modern-day Turkey in its denial).

Since some of you don’t know me personally and don’t read my livejournal, you may not know that my dad’s family is ethnically Armenian. They lived in Lebanon for a number of years before relocating to America in 1965. We are proud to be Armenian. I’m proud to be Armenian. But part of being Armenian is knowing about what’s been called the “first modern genocide”, that of the Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, where over a million Armenians, including pregnant mothers, elderly men and women, infants, children… everyone, were killed by various horrific ways. But it didn’t start then, not really. The first massacres started in 1896, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed.

Turkey has denied that the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 was a genocide, calling it “civil unrest”, etc. No one except Turks and those paid off by Turkey believes this. But because modern-day Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide, there’s a lot of anger between modern-day Armenians and modern-day Turks. It’s part of being Armenian today, knowing that you’ve lost relatives in the Genocide and knowing that there’s a possibility Turkey will never accept it as genocide, much less apologize.

I’m reading a book now that gives me hope. It’s called “A Shameful Act”, and it’s written by a Turk (who is now barred from Turkey, of course). Most books about the Armenian Genocide focus on the slaughter, the brutality, the sadness, and the official decisions that led to them. This book focuses on the history that made the Genocide possible, what was actually going on in the Ottoman Empire such that the conditions were there for a genocide to happen.

And reading about how scared the Ottoman Turkish government was of losing everything: country, identity, religion, I’ve come to understand that it was fear, not hate, that led to the genocide. And as I was sitting in Meeting for Worship this morning, a wave of compassion swept over me and I found myself thinking, “I forgive you. I forgive you for what you did to my ancestors and what you are still doing by denial. I forgive you.”

Even more than that, I found myself imagining how soul-destroying it must be to be so consumed by fear that one thinks genocide is the only way. Can any of you imagine what that must feel like? To be so afraid of something, of your identity being swallowed by Others, that killing those Others is the only solution?

I can’t imagine that kind of fear.

And then, an uncomfortable thought rose in me, spurned by a message in Meeting: what if we Armenians hadn’t been so Other? I’m not in any way blaming the Armenian Genocide on Armenians. The Ottomon Turks were responsible for how they reacted to their fear, not the Armenians. But I do wonder: if we hadn’t been so intent on maintaining our ethnic and cultural integrity, if we had intermingled more with the Muslims and the Turks, maybe we wouldn’t have been so Other.

There’s no way to know, of course. And intermingling would have required the cooperation of the Muslims and Turks of the time as well: it’s a two-way street, not a one-way.

But what about those of us today? Not just Armenians, but all of us in our cultural or ethnic groups, who worry about losing our integrity by intermingling with the dominant culture? What about Quakers, who worry about losing our cultural integrity if we stop numbering the days of the week instead of using their normal names? What about LGBTQ folks who stick together in one big group where anyone S is made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome? What about ethnic groups in the US who refuse to learn English to any degree past “Thank you”, etc., and instead go on speaking their native language? (And I’m not talking here about people in ethnic groups who speak their native language when they’re gathered together at family functions, but those who speak their native language all the time.)

Let’s go back to Quakers. What about our Quakerese? What about our sacred peculiarities?

There’s value in cultural integrity. I love being with my Armenian family at parties, hearing four languages (French, Arabic, Armenian, English), the music, the food, the dancing! I’m not in any way saying those things should be less valued or diminished.

What I am saying is that we need to reach out to each other. We need to reach out to people who consider us Other and invite them in, not by forcing them to learn our language, but by showing them our own culture in ways they can understand: why these things are important to us, what we love about our language and our customs.

Most of all, we need compassion for those who consider us Other and whose lives are ruled by fear. We need a great deal of compassion for those who persecute us because they are afraid. And we need to recognize that we have a responsibility to those people, that it is just as much our job to make them unafraid of us as it is theirs. And, of course, we need to be aware of those Others we are afraid of, and reach out to them as well.

“Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.”

He wasn’t kidding.