**5. By Way of Analogy: From Christian Witness to the Crucified Peoples**

As a complex case in its own right, embedded with this adapted performance, the example of Frans van der Lugt poses a challenge for Muslim-Christian comparative theology: How do we make sense of his complex *theological* performance? The first aspect of this challenge regards the Christian tendency to evaluate Christian martyrdom in terms of persecution and a restrictive conception of the term. The second is how to relate the settings and theologies of people who inhabit radically different political and religious situations. Given the apparent interreligious significance that he seems to bear, the question about *how* we characterize Frans van der Lugt matters inherently from a Catholic standpoint.

Based on a specific set of assumptions, Christians may be predisposed to a specific way of interpreting the case of Frans van der Lugt in terms of persecution. Consider, for instance, the opinion of the distinguished Catholic journalist John Allen, Jr., who asserted shortly after van der Lugt's death that he should become the "patron saint of persecuted Christians". As he tells us, due to his profile, van der Lugt's name made the headlines when others never do. Similar cases abound, he claims.<sup>31</sup> For Allen and others, theologian Lawrence Cunningham confesses, the sheer difficulty to imagine martyrdom otherwise: "[it is] very difficult for me to bracket the nearly two-thousand history of the memory of the Roman martyrs".<sup>32</sup> On the other hand, others may wish to stress van der Lugt's importance as a figure to promote a human rights agenda. However, it matters how those images either exclude or embrace certain persons. At one extreme, we might suppose, the risk is that his name is rendered so as to make its meaning unrecognizable form his life as lived and, at the other, to dilute his purpose in a way that robs his example of its special theological power.

As a general rule, from an ecclesial perspective, the core criterion for determining Christian martyrdom is death "out of hatred of the faith" (*odium fidei*). In other words, as typically stressed, the recognition of a Christian as a martyr depends on the motive of the murderer. Moreover, this stance presupposes that the martyr accepts death voluntarily. Much has been written of this internal Catholic debate that will not be reproduced here. Rather, it should be asked: But how closely does this narrative tradition and its conception of martyrdom resemble the case under consideration? Concerning the particularities of the case of Frans van der Lugt, it seems, there are a number of problems. At this point, for instance, it is impossible to ascertain the murderer's motive. The notion of an act of martyrdom, moreover, seems to overemphasize death at the expense of a wider scope. Plus, if both the funereal visitations and the performance are any indication, Syrians honor him for more than his violent death. Such a conception, furthermore, seems to highlight religious otherness at the point of violence and then to disregard otherness when shifting from moment to death to theological implications. Theological speaking, how might we respond to this penchant and also to the novel issues that the van der Lugt case poses? Case reasoning itself might offer a mode of reflection to identify similarities to standard and relevant cases that shed light on the distinctiveness of cases that present novel problems.

Responding to the political and religious reality in El Salvador specifically and Latin America more widely, the Jesuit and liberation theologian Jon Sobrino perceived a "paradoxical situation". Based on the set of assumptions regarding martyrdom, as outlined above, Sobrino observed that there are those who are attempting to live out the gospel and who model what it means to incarnate Jesus'

<sup>30</sup> See "Pleurs et prières autour de la tombe du père Frans, le 'saint' de Homs", *L'Orient Le Jour* (16 May 2014), p. 10. Available online: https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/867509/pleurs-et-prieres-autour-de-la-tombe-du-pere-frans-le-saint-de-homs. html (accessed on 6 April 2020).

<sup>31</sup> (Allen 2014). For a scholarly project with a maximally broad definition of Christian martyrdom, see (Johnson and Zurlo 2014); van der Lugt is cited on p. 682.

<sup>32</sup> See (Cunningham 2011, p. 13).

mission and yet the church does not deem martyrs because they are killed by those who are nominally or at least believe themselves to be Christian. Since Karl Rahner argued for a "certain broadening" of the Christian conception of martyrdom beyond the restrictive sense,<sup>33</sup> the topic is the subject of a well-chronicled debate within Catholic theology. Plus, as Ernesto Valiente proposes, the contributions that Sobrino's work offers is better understood in the context of Christian discipleship.<sup>34</sup> For the case under question, I want to outline briefly how similar cases help reframe the question of martyrdom in Christological terms of witnessing.

For Sobrino, first of all, the general rule determining Christian martyrdom did not fit the circumstances of the Salvadoran reality. Instead, in *Jesus the Liberator*, he argued the priority should be the choice of "setting". For him, the war-torn situation of El Salvador in the wake of its own civil war provided the hermeneutical backdrop for his reconsideration of Christ, martyrs, and the challenge of justice. As far as his theological agenda is concerned, it will have to suffice to summarize as he does: "from the standpoint of the poor we think we come to know Christ better, and it is this better-known Christ, we think, who points us to where the poor are".<sup>35</sup> To this end, particular figures become vital as interpretive keys for this hermeneutical circle.

As a major example, the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero (1917–1980) provides another relevant case by which reframe the theological question of Christian martyrdom. It was in light of Romero's example that Karl Rahner posited a fundamental distinction between the classical conception of Christian martyrs and one emergent through such significant figures. Whereas the former reflect a "passive" sense of "endurance", the latter are engaged in an "active struggle", that is marked by "a supreme act of love and fortitude".<sup>36</sup> From El Salvador, following Rahner, Sobrino also sought to highlight such "non-poor" intermediaries who through their witness to the "situation to the poor" exemplify how setting operates by "allowing oneself to be affected by it".<sup>37</sup> Turning to an example like Romero, Sobrino claimed that there are "innumerable martyrs who have given their lives out of love and who are still present and active, and this helps us understand the martyr Jesus who was raised from the dead".<sup>38</sup>

Understanding martyrdom in terms of Jesus' death does not focus exclusively on the cross, as Sobrino teaches, rather the example of martyrs sheds light on Jesus. In this manner, Sobrino starts to retrieve the Christological roots of martyrdom, as evidenced particularly in the gospel narratives. In *Jesus the Liberator*, at times, Sobrino supposes theatrical language may imply heresy and, at its worst, distance a praxis of justice from real inequities.<sup>39</sup> On the other hand, it does begin to capture the disposition of denunciation by which Jesus addresses hope and the situation of the poor: "In systematic language, Jesus has the audacity to proclaim the outcome of the drama of salvation, the overcoming, at last, of the anti-Kingdom, the unequivocally saving coming of God".<sup>40</sup> In *Christ the Liberator*, having identified Jesus as the "definitive witness",<sup>41</sup> Sobrino elaborates how Christian "praxis", by which he means all those activities Jesus used to transform social reality in the direction of the Kingdom of God, while "unmasking" the anti-Kingdom.

By way of analogy, according to Sobrino, certain examples cast a similar figure through their "call to struggle against the anti-Kingdom".<sup>42</sup> Just as the disciples see themselves as "witnesses" (Acts 2:32), similarly, these figures model an "imitation of Christ" (*imitatio Christi*). Like Jesus, in life and death,

<sup>33</sup> (Rahner 1983).

<sup>34</sup> See (Valiente 2014).

<sup>35</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 35).

<sup>36</sup> (Rahner 1983, p. 10). Sobrino credits Rahner for paving the way for this understanding of Christian martyrdom from a Latin American perspective.

<sup>37</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 30).

<sup>38</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 8).

<sup>39</sup> See, e.g., (Sobrino 1993, p. 118).

<sup>40</sup> For uses of "drama" to describe Jesus' praxis, see (Sobrino 1993, pp. 76, 118, 239).

<sup>41</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 137).

<sup>42</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 116).

these figures shed light on both the identity and relevance of Jesus for the present political and religious reality. So Sobrino asserts: "therefore, theologically, those who today bear witness with their lives to God's Kingdom, like Jesus, are martyrs and in them we find the *analogatum princeps* of martyrdom".<sup>43</sup>

In 2018, Pope Francis canonized Romero as a saint. For Sobrino, the importance of this figure is that "when we call these victims martyrs, we mean that they reproduce the life and death of Jesus and they shed a great light". In a fundamentally relational sense, thus, Christian martyrs point toward a wider "constellation of witnesses" according to Sobrino, specifically to "all of those who today resemble Jesus by living and dying as he did".<sup>44</sup> In his view, as a "dynamic sacrament", the poor as victims also call Christians to conversion. If Romero' case exemplified "martyrdom in terms of the anti-Kingdom's response to those who struggle actively for the Kingdom", the case of those who "unprotected masses, who are put to death in huge numbers innocently and anonymously" reveal martyrdom in terms of "bearing the sin of the anti-Kingdom". In this sense, Sobrino refers to them as "martyred people".<sup>45</sup> In *Christ the Liberator*, he adds: "And when we call these victims martyrs, we mean that they reproduce the life and death of Jesus and they shed a great light".<sup>46</sup> It in this context, that Pope Francis's appeal to Syria from the memory of his fellow Jesuit to Syria as a whole is understandable, as he identifies, Syria as "my beloved country" and a "the crucified people". In this respect, turning to "victims", they seek to discern a "difficult" hope between death and life.

Regarding the case of Frans van der Lugt, how close does he resemble this standard case?

Of course, his case is not identical with Romero's. In *Christ the Liberator*, Sobrino assumes his reflections by suggesting a point about the finite and limited nature of all interpretations, and his "as an essay" and so "to write from the *reality of* faith, set in motion by the event of Jesus Christ, and from the *situation of victims* at the present time". Although his reflections are grounded and set against the backdrop of El Salvador, he explicitly acknowledges that new Christological essays such through interreligious dialogue "introduce various forms of *otherness* into christology, not only that generated by *oppression*".<sup>47</sup> Precisely with respect to this issue, the witness of Frans van der Lugt commends fellow Catholics to reconsider their Muslim neighbors as those who give witness to God's mercy. As such, we shall turn from witnessing truth in the dramatic examples of Christian martyr to witnessing truth in the "shadow-play" of divine self-disclosure.

## **6. Towards a More Receptive Heart: Witnessing Signs of Mercy in Dialogue with Ibn 'Arab¯ı**

For Muslims, the meaning of "witnessing" bears profound theological import and ethical implications. Of course, when they recite the *bismillah* in salat prayers, Muslims witness liturgically to ¯ God's mercy and compassion. Concerning Muslim-Christian relations, the term has also become a source for misunderstanding. In dialogue, witnessing permits the kind of nuance and opportunity to address mutual misunderstandings. "To engage in witness, then, is also to challenge and correct false witnesses", Joshua Ralston contends, "and to invite one another into dialogue and dispute in the 'most virtuous manner' (Surat al-'Ankabut, 29:46)".<sup>48</sup> In the context of Muslim-Christian dialogue, the term *shah¯ıd* tends to be associated with martyrdom on the battlefield. However, this hardly exhausts the range of meaning and depth that the term carries.

In 1890, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare's *Romeo and Juliet* debuted in Cairo under the marquee as *Shuhada al-gharam* ("Witnesses of love").<sup>49</sup> Some Muslims and scholars of Islam have seen this play as traversing comparable terrain as that of *Layla wa Majnun¯* , that classic Arabic fable of a lover driven

<sup>43</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 268).

<sup>44</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 340).

<sup>45</sup> (Sobrino 1993, p. 271).

<sup>46</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 8).

<sup>47</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 2).

<sup>48</sup> (Ralston 2017, p. 33).

<sup>49</sup> For background of this production and Arabic reception-history, see (Bayer 2007).

into madness for the beloved. As the love between the couple is related, many will hear a praise of God as the creator of such love and beauty. The term itself, moreover, is not limited to a "martyr", but is embodied more widely and diversely as a literal witness to God's mercy. In the quranic usage of *shah¯ıd*, the "martyr" connotation rarely occurs and the basis is tenuous.<sup>50</sup> Within the Qur'an, on one ¯ occasion that is especially pertinent for Muslim-Christian solidarity, the call to witness emerges in the context of the *'ahl al-kitab¯* (an honorific term for Jews and Christians as "People of the Book"). The authorial voice urges Muslims to reach out, inviting all to "come to a common word". Yet if *'ahl al-kitab¯* should turn their backs on God, that is, "if they turn away, say, 'Bear witness that we are *muslimun¯* " (Q 3:64). The objective here is not to provide a vast survey, more modestly, rather in what follows let us consider how a distinctive way of Islamic thinking cultivates an affective response.

Take, for example, the notion of "witnessing truth" that Ibn 'Arab¯ı develops in *Fusus al-Hikam ¯* 51 specifically one of the central chapters called the "Fass of Shuayb".<sup>52</sup> As the *Shaykh al-Akbar* (the "Greatest Master") explains in this chapter, the heart of the one who knows is like the "setting of the stone of the ring", and that setting corresponds, conforms, and accords with whatever shape the stone itself has. If the basic concern is attaining human wholeness, each chapter explores the perfection of the figure from it draws its inspiration. For investigating the "wisdom of the heart", as James Morris notes, his specific chapter has served as a *locus classicus* for the essential question of discerning the human "face", that is, whether to turn one's face toward or away from God.<sup>53</sup> As with most of his probing reflections, it is a work impossible to summarize. At a point of departure, as he explicates, witnessing is a condition that is acquired through a wisdom that is derived from diviner mercy. In the chapter, he guides his readers through the dynamic interplay between God's self-disclosure and the "heart of the knower". Accordingly, Ibn 'Arab¯ı is elaborating theologically the various meanings of "signs" (*ay¯ at¯* ) that the Qur'an pro ¯ ffers. First, in the basic sense, this refers to the quranic self-reference to verses themselves as signs of deeper meaning. Second, it refers to the potentiality of what might be deemed "cosmic phenomena" to reflect divine reality. Third, with respect to the one who would inquire, it connotes the self-understanding of the seeker. This ambiguity is deepened, when the term "witness" is drawn upon not only to conjure the one who is seeking God as the beloved, but also to articulate a divine attribute of God, namely "the witness" (*al-shah¯ıd*).<sup>54</sup> As each chapter reflects a different form of receptivity, the work elaborates a deepening sense of the religious reality as a "shadow-play", the metaphorical image that Ibn 'Arab¯ı employs to guide the seeker in this spiritual discipline of perceiving between light and shadows, the seen and unseen. In similitude, he evokes suggestively, a dramatic sensibility to these actual occasions of divine self-disclosure.

For his readers, Ibn 'Arab¯ı showcases the heart in this specific chapter. Like a stage for this "shadow-play", the heart is drawn into an act of "unveiling" (*kushf*). Occasions of such divine manifestation, as Ibn 'Arab¯ı sets forth, the heart "expands" and "contracts" as the play alternates between unveiling and witnessing. In moments of unveiling, as Ibn 'Arab¯ı states: "He raises the veil between Himself and the servant and the servant sees Him in the form of his belief". Recognition of divine self-disclosure comes to mirror the very content of the knower's witnessing. At the crux of the chapter, as it is revealed, inquiring into the meaning of "witnessing" is itself a function of what the Qur'an prescribes in Surah Q ¯ af: "Surely there is a reminder in that for whoever has a heart, or gives ¯ an ear attentively, while he is witnessing" (Q 50:37). Nonetheless, readers may notice an appreciable acceptance of play. Take, for instance, how the name Shuayb itself becomes a site for wordplay. The

<sup>50</sup> For a useful overview of the term *shah¯ıd* and its variants, with suggestions for further reading in the secondary literature, see (Rippin 2005; Kohlberg 1997).

<sup>51</sup> There are several reliable English translations: see (Austin 1980; Dagli 2004; and Abramamov 2015). Translated passages are Austin's, unless otherwise noted.

<sup>52</sup> Many Muslims claim that Shuayb is the biblical figure Jethro. For a thorough discussion of scriptural references and allusions of each chapter in Ibn 'Arab¯ı's *Fusus al-Hikam ¯* , see (Chittick 1984).

<sup>53</sup> (Morris 2005, pp. 131, 333 n32).

<sup>54</sup> This divine attribute is used in the Qur'an on several occasions (see, e.g., Q 85:9). ¯

name is rooted in Arabic with connotations of branching (*tash'ib*), diverging, and so Ibn 'Arab¯ı uses this to point how each "belief" has a particular pathway. For him, this pertains specifically to the inspired state that each prophetic figure represents in each chapter. Regarding the wisdom that coheres this chapter, as a reminder, the verse elucidates the careful process of discernment. Regarding all the diversity of forms of divine self-disclosure, if one possesses a heart, witnessing happens. Just as in prayer, when one listens, so too witnessing happens. By attending carefully, Ibn 'Arab¯ı's readers are shown momentary glimpses into divine mercy that shapes and perfects the heart as alternating between unveiling and witnessing (*shuhud*). In the Akbar¯ı sense, witnessing is not to be confused with a developmental spectrum, rather it establishes as a particular spiritual "station" that opposes the state of "heedlessness".

By contemplating this sense of witnessing truth, in the concluding reflection, Ibn 'Arab¯ı identifies the movement of divine mercy that courses through reality as like breathing. Rather than alternating between inhalation and exhalation, however, he elevates the relation between "Lord" and "servant" as a "mutual dependence" insofar it is divine mercy breathing out in creation and, simultaneously, being inhaled from creation. For Ibn 'Arab¯ı, one might presume, as with most cases, that the dead are more fully aware of this reality than are the living. In kind, carefully attending to the transmutation of divine mercy into all of its multiplicity of forms can shape the heart of a servant. It is an insight that, analogously, may elucidate a "constellation of witnesses".

The comparative theological tactic usually is to return to a Christian source, typically, a text in order to show how the non-Christian source sheds new light. Indeed, regarding Sobrino's retrieval of Christological roots of martyrdom, such a move can be fruitful. Sobrino himself suggests two martyrdom traditions in the New Testament, the Pauline and the Johannine.<sup>55</sup> This heartfelt sense of receptivity, correspondence, and mutual dependence can highlight the prototypical characterization of the Jesus as "witness", a martyr that Luke portrays as not quite like Socrates, rather in a "long lines of martyrs", whose innocence and equipoise cannot be for one who "cheerfully accepted poison".<sup>56</sup> Consider how, like Jesus, Stephen the one whom Luke describes as "witness" (*martos*), utters, "Lord, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:52). It is an echo of those unforgettable words Luke places on the lips of the crucified Jesus, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46). Alternatlvely, by returning to Sobrino's theology of martyrdom in light of Ibn 'Arab¯ı, the key question shifts: From "How should I as a Christian disciple bear witness to truth in the face of this anti-Kingdom injustice?" to "How could these signs of mercy and compassion be received?" In other words, critically, the Akbar¯ı notion of "witnessing" unveils and deepens an affective response. Thus, out of solidarity, this exercise returns to that crucial scene to read whether if offers a momentary unity between audiences and performers. To this end, the performance itself can serve as a foundational source for Muslim-Christian comparative theology, the goal of which is to critically stimulate a deeper case discussion. In a key of mutuality, Christians and Muslims could assist each other in reading them correctly.
