Not long ago, a couple dozen black-clad jihadis led twenty-one men kidnapped from their bedrooms in Egypt along the Libyan coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was February 2015, in the height of the Syrian Civil War that would, months later, snowball into a historic refugee crisis still reshaping the cultural and political landscape of Europe even today. These were the pre-pandemic years, if you can remember them, when the Western world could rightfully condemn Islamic jihad with earnest derision. Before COVID, before the collapse of Afghanistan and triumphant return of the Taliban. Before Putin made his Ukrainian play. Before October 7th and the ensuing dumpster fire of TikTok geopolitics indoctrinating global youth and taking over college campuses. Before young Americans would read bin Laden’s letter to their country and weep in grief over his death.
These were the ISIS years, and 2014-2015 served the outfit Obama touted as junior varsity jihadis[1] with their time to shine. A decade after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi founded the al-Qaeda affiliate, the group seized opportunities afforded by the dysfunctional power vacuum caused by Syria’s Assad’s ongoing crimes against his country. In June 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS, locally known as Daesh) took swathes of eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq and declared itself the ambition of every faithful Muslim since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire: the resurrected Islamic Caliphate. You may remember their genocidal massacre of Yezidi communities in and around Sinjar Mountain that summer.[2]
ISIS quickly built a multifaceted media production company to serve their recruitment and propaganda interests; the worst of their features leveraged Hollywood-level equipment to showcase their executions of Western journalists and aid workers, or the time they live-streamed burning a captured Jordanian pilot alive in a cage while bystanders cheered and gawked. Every video release created new “worst nightmare” scenarios that now seem benign when placed alongside Hamas’ GoPro footage of their pogrom against Israelis in the Gaza envelope on the dark morning that was the Black Shabbat. To all our misfortune, disciples of Muhammed are in a worldwide competition to outdo one another’s atrocities and crimes against humanity. After all, how else could one secure 72 virgins to abuse in the afterlife?
In February 2015, Daesh militants raided the apartment complex of Coptic Christian Egyptian laborers and kidnapped hostages out of their beds as they slept.[3] (Sound familiar?) The victims were taken next door to Libya, dressed in orange jumpsuits, and paraded single-file along the lapping Mediterranean waters—“the sea [Westerners, who ISIS collectively referred to as Crusaders] have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body in,”[4] to be mixed with the blood of the martyrs.
Jihadi John,[5] the only figure in camo, called them “the people of the Cross.”[6]
And then, in unison, Jihadi John and his jihadi thugs cut the heads off the men he made martyrs.
What he meant as an insult is perhaps the most beautiful title we could possibly be known as: the people of the Cross. This is the origin of our now-too-familiar term Christian, denoting “little Christs.” We can all put our messianic complexes to rest and egos to death; we are not heroes. We are the people dragging our own instruments of our own death down the narrow way carved for the cruciform. “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ,”[7] said Paul.
This is the only way to make it to the finish line of life in this present evil age.[8]
The lost souls clad in black and camo that fateful mid-February morning made it clear in their script that they still see the world as a war between the Caliphate and Crusaders, though with eerie and misguided vindication in mind (they believe Jesus, a prophet, never died and will return to kill all non-Muslims). Perhaps their inability to acknowledge the divine beauty and strategy of the Cross is the fundamental fault line in their worldview, warming them to the demonic delusion that is the “different gospel” of Muhammed’s proclamations.[9] Yet the Lord illuminated the purpose of the Cross through the pen of Paul:
But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.[10]
There’s much to mine from these words, and we will meditate on them for eternity. But for now, consider that the Word who was, is, and will be, the Word present in the beginning both with God and is God, the Word through whom, for whom, and in whom everything is created and sustained, “took on flesh” in an incarnate witness of the One unseen to both demonstrate the Father and trade our criminal unrighteousness for His perfect righteousness that we might be spared from the liar who steals, kills, and destroys and kept for life and life abundant.[11] Meaning, God took on the form of His Image-bearers to bear a better Image, live a better obedience, and die a perfect death to condemn the curse that has ensnared us since our exile from Eden so that we have a chance to return to a perfection that cannot be corrupted. “God will provide Himself a lamb,”[12] and indeed He did.[13] He is the propitiation that demonstrates His righteousness in such a way He can both uphold the integrity of His own law (remain “just”) yet clear the record (“be the justifier”) of those who believe in Him, confess His name, and repent of what caused their death to begin with (“the one who has faith in Jesus”). Our lives then themselves become an incarnate witness, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians:
…this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.[14]
If we are walking mirrors meant to bear His Image, we were shattered in “the mighty disaster theologians call ‘the Fall.’”[15] Jesus’ judicial propitiation for us through the Cross offers a regenerative work through the Spirit that resurrected Him from the grave, a mighty transformation of all our broken shards into a restored reflection of the Holy One who made us. We can look like Him again. We can bear His Image in appropriate ways again, and bear witness in word and deed. In the words of Paul, we put God’s manifold, illuminating wisdom on blast to the very rebels who underestimated the death of Jesus to begin with.[16] In the words of Jihadi John, we are the people of the cross. We are reshaped by that day at the Place of the Skull into our own cruciform witness of the slaughtered and resurrected King. Back in the days of the actual Crusaders whom ISIS insisted on referring to the Western world as, many who confessed the name of Jesus from their lips did so inappropriately, and exploited the Name above all names to justify pagan military raids against Jews and Muslims alike— similar to the kinds of raids Muhammed relied upon and his followers have replicated since the seventh century. It wasn’t okay then, and it isn’t okay now. But in that era, one man broke rank and called his countrymen to lay down their swords and pick up their crosses instead.
His name was Ramon Llull. He was born in Mallorca and died in Tunis nearly twenty years after the siege of Acre set jurisdiction of the Holy Land squarely into Malmuk hands, but gave decades of his life to bearing cruciform witness of the Gospel of the Kingdom to the Muslim world his peers were fighting to literal death. Llull’s death is a mystery; he may have died at sea on the way back to Mallorca. Alternatively, he may well have been stoned in Tunis’ public square for his proclamation of the cross and crown of Christ.
I mention Llull because we are not here to wage or win a culture war.[17] It is clear in Scripture we are to bear witness of the Gospel of the Kingdom, “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ,” and teach everyone everywhere how to walk in liberating obedience to Jesus.[18] To be clear, I’m neither anti-military or a pacifist. All war is hell; some wars are worthwhile. Ending Hitler’s Third Reich, for example, was a brutal, costly, worthy endeavor. Picking up your proverbial sword against people who’ve not yet seen the illuminating revelation of God in the beauty of Jesus is neither worthwhile nor biblical. Laying down your life to bear witness to His beauty is worthwhile. Maybe that’ll look like getting beheaded on Libyan shores. It’ll probably look like being faithful and proactive in your very predictable neighborhood. Can you “overcome by the blood of the Lamb, the word of your testimony, and love not your life even unto death” [19] when life feels boring? Can you faithfully steward the integrity of the Gospel of the Kingdom without distorting it, regardless of whatever inflammatory content comes across your TikTok or Twitter feed?
As “All Eyes on Rafah” is replicated by millions and the nations begin to quantifiably turn against the nation-state of Israel, can you hold the line on God’s fidelity to Israel and Jerusalem until the Day “all nations will be blessed”[20] through His covenant with Abraham? As you carry the grief of the carnage of October 7th and fear for the lives and unknown fate of all hostages, can you relate to Israel’s enemies with the compassion displayed by the One who begged, “Father, forgive them! They don’t know what they’re doing.” as He breathed His last in a tortured end?[21] Indeed, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” [22] I wish there was an easier way. I wish we had the luxury of polarized opinions. I wish we could pick our favorite team, choose a side, and fight for the people we like. It is easy to fight against the people we don’t.
But we don’t have those luxuries. We are not our own;[23] we are, in the words of Jihadi John, the “people of the Cross.” And it is the crosses we carry that become bridges to the Just One in the lives we lay down for our friends—and our enemies.
Those men on the Libyan beach have each beat me to the finish line and wait for their vengeance on eternal shores. Frankly, I envy them.
For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.[24]
Stephanie Quick is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Kessler, G. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/09/03/spinning-obamas-reference-to-isis-as-a-jv-team/
[2] ISIS genocide of Yezidis and Christians. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://us.gov.krd/en/issues/isis-genocide-of-yezidis-and-christians/
[3] Jared Malsin. (2015). Coptic Christians executed in Libya shows Isis’s new reach. Retrieved from https://time.com/3710610/libya-coptic-christians-isis-egypt/
[4] Liere, L. van. (2020). Chapter 9 Conquering Rome: Constructing a global Christianity in the face of Terror. A case study into the representations of the beheading of twenty-one migrant workers in January 2015. Retrieved from https://brill.com/display/book/9789004444867/BP000016.xml?language=en
[5] Casciani, D. (2015). Islamic State: Profile of Mohammed Emwazi aka “jihadi john.†Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31641569
[6] Liere, L. van. (2020). Chapter 9 Conquering Rome: Constructing a global Christianity in the face of Terror. A case study into the representations of the beheading of twenty-one migrant workers in January 2015. Retrieved from https://brill.com/display/book/9789004444867/BP000016.xml?language=en
[7] 1 Corinthians 11:1
[8] See Hebrews 12:1-2; Galatians 1:4
[9] See Galatians 1:8-9
[10] Romans 3:21-26
[11] See John 1:1-2; 10:10; Colossians 1:9-20; 2 Corinthians 5:21
[12] Genesis 22:8
[13] See John 1:29
[14] Ephesians 3:8b-12
[15] Tozer, A.W.. The Knowledge of the Holy. Fig, Kindle Edition, Location 170.
[16] See 1 Corinthians 2:8
[17] Quick, S. (2020). To hell with your culture war, FAI. Retrieved from https://fai.online/articles/hell-culture-war
[18] See Colossians 1:24; Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20; Acts 1:6-8
[19] Revelation 12:11
[20] See Genesis 12:1-3
[21] Luke 23:34
[22] Matthew 5:9
[23] See Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 6:19
[24] Philippians 1:24
