Islamic Conversions and Healing Hearts

There are always those gentle souls who feel personally obligated to do their utmost to aid those 'less fortunate' and whose lives are miserable and downtrodden.  People who see virtue and value in a religion they are unfamiliar with and find great solace within, impelling them to share the belief and to worship alongside those to whom they give compassion in a shared and charitable view of life.

There have been more than a few men and women of conscience and good nature who have gravitated toward Islam, forsaking their original religions and traditional values to embrace that of a religion that is a way of life foreign to them but which appears to have great appeal to them nonetheless.  And they dedicate their lives henceforth to alleviating the misery of people in disadvantaged states who pray to Allah.

There is a mystique that exists where people feel that if they convey adequate emotion and sympathy they will miraculously be spared condemnation and violence by those threatening  the well-being of others whom they find contemptible for not sharing the depths of their faith.  Apart from spreading terror because of their fanatical dedication to a faith that elevates martyrs who engage in mass murder for the greater glory of Islam, terror appeals to those who thrill to the prospect of instilling mortal fear in others.

While the mild of manner and humanely-dedicated martyrs of human goodness shared among the unfortunate go about their business spending their energies to a fixed idea of lifting the spirits of the oppressed, helping to feed them and to give them hope for the future, they are viewed, despite their studied ability to speak the language of those whom they serve, and pray to the higher spiritual order of those whom they serve, with indifferent contempt by those other martyrs to terrorism.

To the horror and disappointment of humanitarian aid workers who have converted to Islam and who dedicate their lives to working among the poor and the dispossessed Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world, they are no more guaranteed respect and gratitude than any other interfering Western aid worker who will be abducted and held for ransom.  And if that ransom is not paid, their lives will be forfeit.


Just as the lives become forfeit of those Muslims who dare defy Islamist sharia law by becoming apostates, and turning to another religion, defying tradition and the outrage of those who insist they comply or face death in straying from Islamic belief.  The decapitated body of the "gentle and caring" British aid worker, Khalil Dale represents just another individual who felt compassion and the call of another religion to alter his life irrevocably.


Pakistan, the very country that breeds fanatical jihadists committed to violence and martyrdom, has taken another life.  Four months in captivity as a helpless pawn in a trade-or-perish device of captive-for-money, he was finally sacrificed to the anger of the Taliban for whom the ransom of $30-million was not forthcoming from the International Committee of the Red Cross.


Khalil Dale, like others before him, was completely committed to humanitarian aid.  He was a Red Cross nurse, managing a health program in Quetta, Baluchistan province.  A man driven by his aptitude to help and heal.  Hostage-taking has proven to be fairly lucrative for the Taliban.  Not nearly as lucrative, one might imagine, as the opium trade, but fair enough. 


For his troubles in dedicating his life to the succour of the unfortunate, Mr. Dale, fine religious man that he was, ended his days wrapped in a cellophane covering, inside a plastic bag, discarded at the side of the road, outside the city where he worked to make life more palatable for the indigent ill.  A video is expected to be released shortly, of his execution.


It is doubtless meant to have instructive value to the international community.