The Line Between Honor & Hypocrisy
“how a society or a culture treats its dead says infinitely more about the culture itself, than it does the dead”
People, not politics: what would the world look like if we were less idealistic?
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On a recent trip to Los Angeles where one is so effortlessly thrust into traffic on freeways and side-streets at just about every hour of the day, I turned to the news for some comfort in distraction. Not long after pushing the buttons on the car stereo, I found the local NPR station, and I heard a story related to the Boston Marathon. Apparently, protestors had shown up at the funeral home that was initially schedule to inter a body, and lay it to rest. The story was referring to the body, of course, of one of the two brothers, who were both suspects in the bombing that had occurred just days before.
It’s not difficult to track down quotes and comments from protestors, even with just a cursory web search. According to a story that appeared on the Metro Desk section of Boston.com, the quote reads, “‘The devil is waiting for him!’ chanted Nelly Sanchez, 45, of Worcester, who was among a group of protesters gathered outside the funeral home this morning. ‘He needs to be fed to the sharks. I don’t think the sharks would want him, either.’”
I imagined that the story and scene looked something like this: not able to withstand such direct influence and passionate pressure from what must have been neighbors and fellow community members, the owner of the funeral home relented, and rescinded his decision to handle the body of the criminal. I wondered what happened after that. Maybe the body would get passed on to another funeral home, perhaps some portion of the government, maybe the FBI. I do not know what happens when law enforcement kills a suspected criminal. I have never wondered what happens to those bodies, and part of me is ashamed to admit that.
The next time I was around a computer, I did some research into the details of the story. Apparently, a funeral home director named Peter Stefan (owner of Graham, Putnam, and Mahoney Funeral Parlor), was “scrambling to find a cemetery that will bury a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings,” according to a story that appeared in USA Today. Stefan was allegedly “ignoring protesters gathered outside his business and saying everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of his or her death,” according to the story.
All of this got me upset. How is it that the protestors were not able to come to terms with the fact that their position of protest was uniquely similar to the two brothers, whose ideals allowed them to disregard their fellow humans, and commit an act of terror? Was it not their ideas and ideals that thrust the politics of their beliefs into a position of authority over their actions?
In order to kill another person, especially a stranger, I would think a person would have to be able to remove their victim’s humanity first. In order to kill another human, you’d have to spend time, or develop the ability, to think of them as being categorically “not like you.” They would have to become non-human. One’s beliefs, instead, take priority. One’s ideals.
In my mind, it does not matter what a person has done in their lives – how a society or a culture treats its dead says infinitely more about the culture itself, than it does the dead person who may be guilty of a crime. Without regard for the human being who killed others, whose ideals were more important than the people attending or participating in the Boston Marathon in 2013, how are the protestors any different?
So what exactly was the difference between the protestors and the bombers? Were the protestors not channeling their own anger, their own fear, their own ideals? Was their protest not, in summation, something like – What you have done, bombers, is so egregious and so deeply transgresses our collective beliefs as an American society, that you do not deserve a dignified burial? That you do not deserve honor as a fellow human who walked the earth, whether or not you were guilty of something we had (mostly) decided was a crime?
Perhaps their ideals are held in such high esteem, that they are unable to regard the humanity of the bombing suspect, so that we may all feel sadness, and shame, and guilt, and curiosity, and fear, and pity – all the things that make us uniquely human – and mourn not just the victims, but also the bombers themselves? Wouldn’t this display a kind of honor that might in turn allow future criminals or terrorists the possibility of taking a different path?
I ask myself these questions and wonder if collective thinking, be it positive or negative in its tangible outcomes, is just the price we pay as a society governed by laws and institutions. In order to group together, certain things must be agreed upon, and these laws or rules or beliefs must, by default, take precedence over individuals and their humanity. But at what price, we will never truly know.
Part of me understands and deeply empathizes with the grieving and angry protestors. I am part of their collective – I am American, I am alive during this time, and in my own way, I bore witness to the terrible acts that were committed at the Boston Marathon. I do not mean in any way to diminish their grief, their anger, or their fear. But I wonder how we often cannot see the hypocrisy in our actions at times when our humanity and compassion is needed the most.
On the plane flying back to Portland, I read a New Yorker article about a Syrian named Hisham, described as “a lanky, bearded man wearing black boots, black nylon pants, and a black pleather jacket,” who is responsible for pulling dead bodies out of the river that cuts the city of Aleppo in half. “Officially, he is the head of the Office of the River Martyrs,” according to the story by Luke Mogelson.
The river in question burrows its way through what was once the country’s “largest and most prosperous city,” entering at the northern end of the city and heading south. Along its path, the river starts out in parts of the city that are currently held by government forces, and before it exits the city, the river runs through the rebel-held eastern neighborhoods, too. According to the article, “If something is tossed in the Queiq [river] on the government side, eventually it makes its way to the rebel side. Jerricans, plastic jugs, tattered tarpaulins—all manner of detritus washes up […] In recent months, the jetsam has included bodies. At the end of January, a hundred and ten murdered men and boys were fished out and laid on a concrete bank, their hands bound behind their backs, their skulls broken by bullets.”
And Hisham’s job is to pluck the massacred bodies from the river as it wends its way through the rebel-held neighborhoods where he lives. Sometimes, this amounts to dozens a day, and many of them are unidentifiable children. In fact, most of the bodies are unrecognizable, either due to the violence that ended the victims’ lives, or because of the journey they took down the river, or both.
I bring this story up because of Hisham’s take on a similar situation – not only do the bodies of his fellow rebels and other innocent Syrians wash up on the shore, but the bodies of the government’s shadowy henchmen often do, too. These men are referred to as “shabiha.” During the late 70s, shabiha were basically gangs whose shared Alawite background, which gave them direct connection to the ruling family. They leveraged this connection and gained power through racketeering and smuggling, among other things. Al-Shabah means “the ghost,” and the gangs came be known as the shabiha due to their vehicles of choice: murdered out Mercedes Benzes with tinted windows and fake license plates. Now, it’s believed that President Assad has contracted these violent gangs to help him put down the rebellion in Syria.
But enough backstory – I only mention the article, the situation in Syria, and this character (Hisham), so that I might bring in a quote that directly relates to the situation in Boston, with protestors not wanting the body of the suspected bomber to be buried in any cemetery in the U.S.
“Hisham also collects the bodies of suspected shabiha who are killed […] although he takes them to another cemetery, where he leaves them outside the gate. ‘The hands that are used for burying martyrs should not be used for burying shabiha,’ he told me. ‘There are people who bury martyrs, and there are people who bury shabiha. Both have honor. The people who bury shabiha are not with the regime. But they bury them because shabiha are still human beings. Even they do not deserve to be thrown away.’”
Too many Americans perceive of themselves arrogantly, as the most honorable people alive on the planet. Too easily, we look down on others as being somehow less – less civilized, less privileged, less free – and from this vantage point, we dismiss of their humanity, their bravery, their cultural value altogether. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about the rest of the world in a different way.
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References:
1) Boston.com
2) USA Today
3) New Yorker