Captive audiences, hostages and history

No one wants to be taken hostage. Yet it is happening all the time. Sometimes the outcome for the hostage is good, sometimes not.

Just this past week Lea Laping Patrisa, a hostage in the Philippines, escaped barefoot from her al-Qaeda-linked captors. Sadly, a British tourist taken hostage last January in Mali in north-west Africa was not so fortunate. It seems that Edwin Dyer has been beheaded by his captors, who are also linked with al-Qaeda.

Nevertheless, stories of captivity can also be a great inspiration. Irishman Brian Keenan was a hostage in Lebanon from 1986 to 1990. On last week’s Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, Piers Morgan chose Keenan’s book An Evil Cradling as his selection to read in his supposed isolation on an island.

Evil though hostage-taking is, it is often driven by a sense of injustice on the part of the captors. In a visit to Egypt, President Obama tried to reach out to Muslims feeling that injustice. Time will tell whether it is an effective strategy, although one militant website called him the ‘wise enemy’.

Justice, however, is two-sided and Obama’s speech recognised that the treatment of Israel is also crucial to a lasting peace. The possession of land is not just an issue of power and prestige. For those who have suffered, it is also a question of security.

The world of Genesis and Abram may seem remote from us. Yet this week’s readings contain the seeds of the issues in these news items. Whoever said ‘history is bunk’ was very wrong.

Emlyn Williams