I recently bought a Kindle. That Kindle paid for itself with one International Herald Tribune article. The article was about a man named As’ad Shaftari. He was an intelligence officer in a Christian militia during Lebanon’s Civil War (1975-1990). He is still feared in parts of the Muslim community for the torture and killings that was carried out on his orders and the lives he ended personally. This is how Shaftari describes his mindset during that time:
At the end of the week I would go to church, after killing and torturing, to confess, but it was futile. I didn’t see killing Palestinians as a sin.
Ten years ago, Shaftari’s outlook changed. He published a sincere and complete apology for his war crimes, and has continued to repeat that apology to this day.
I’ve read the article about As’ad Shaftari a half dozen times already. I’ve also been composing this single post for over an hour as I contemplate what I’ve read. My life experience doesn’t give me the ability to fathom the atrocities committed in Lebanon. Nor can I truly quantify the change that must have taken place in Shaftari’s character. All I can say is that for the last ten years, his actions have been those of repentance. How is it that this man, who has committed the greatest of crimes in the eyes of men, can repent; yet, so many of us fail to do so in the “small” evils that we commit against each other?