From The Birmingham Jewish Federation

ISLAMIC TERROR VERSUS CHRISTIAN FAITH

By Richard Friedman

BJF Executive Director

His voice is soft and reflective, his tone introspective and his Christian faith unswerving as Dr. Ira Myers reflects on the death of his daughter two years ago.  Martha Myers was shot to death five days after Christmas, 2002, while working as a physician at a Baptist missionary clinic in Yemen.  Two others were killed in the same incident; one other person who was shot survived.  His daughter, Dr. Myers recalled recently, was determined, motivated, driven by faith and purpose – and a victim of Islamic terror.

“She was a victim of Islamic terror, I don’t have any doubts about that,” Dr. Myers said in a recent phone interview from his Montgomery home, as the two year anniversary of his daughter’s murder approaches. “She was killed by a fanatic who rejected all things not Islamic.  Based on statements he made afterwards, the killer did it for ideological and religious reasons.” 

“The reason given for this assassination was the fact that the individuals operating the hospital at that particular time were Christians.  That is true, but they were not allowed to proselytize out of sensitivity to the prevailing Islamic culture.  They were allowed to answer questions if people asked. The main reason for Martha and the others being there was to render good medical care, something the facility had done for at least 30 years.”

Dr. Myers, now 80, was Alabama’s state health officer -- state government’s top health official – for 23 years.   He retired in 1986.  It’s been a long two years for him; not only was his daughter murdered in Yemen but he lost his wife to illness.  And he’s done an awful lot of reflecting. You hear that in his voice as he tells the story.

‘DOCTURA MARTHA’

“Apparently my daughter, ‘Doctura Martha’ as they called her, was involved in a lot of things in Yemen – the hospital, the immunization program for that  particular area, with the help of the local government and UNICEF which supplied a lot of the supplies.  She had a real love to help the women with problems they encountered because they couldn’t see a male doctor – she had been helping the assailant’s family, him and his wife, with a fertility problem.  So he was known to her and had cased the joint.  Exactly what set him off, we are not really sure.  He explained after he was arrested that anybody who had as much influence over his wife as those people in the hospital ought to be killed.”

“He wanted to kill as many as he could, and kill them at a time when it made a statement of some sort.  I understand from the administrator, who I talked to afterward, that the assassin said his plan was to kill them on Christmas because of the significance.  The hospital was closed on Christmas, and he was going to do it the following week, but something happened so he waited until the day before New Years.”

As he recalls what happens, Dr. Myers slowly provides more details:

“The assassin came to the hospital office.  He said he was coming to get information about his family and apparently went to a pay phone and had her paged, and he knew she would come to the page. When she came he entered the room she was in, and as she was picking up the phone he shot her.  The hospital administrator was seated behind the desk; he shot him, and also shot the person responsible for the supplies, a lady. Then he turned and went to the pharmacy and shot the pharmacist three times through the abdomen.  He was going to shoot another woman but because of her garb recognized she was a native and didn’t shoot her.”

The killer -- Abed Abdul-Razak al-Kamel -- was convicted in a Yemeni court and sentenced to death.  He currently is in jail.

What goes through his mind when he thinks about it? Dr. Myers was asked.  “I’m going to put it in Christian terms,” he explained.  “I have been more concerned about the man’s salvation than his execution.  Hate is one of those things that eat up the individual who hates and the God I serve is a God of love. So because of that I am not going to hold a grudge against him.”

His daughter was 57 when she was killed.  “Martha was the kind of individual who would sleep in the hospital and not go to her apartment and would not leave the patients – she would just sort of work around the clock all the time and when not on official duty, she was visiting in the homes of the people there.  She really loved the people.” 

Martha felt called by God to go to Yemen and devote her life to the people there.  At the same time, neither she nor her father was immune to the fact that she was going to a volatile part of the world.  They talked about if something happened where she wanted to be buried.  She made it clear that Yemen was where she wanted to be buried.  Her father would ask her over the 20 years she was stationed in Yemen when she would be coming home.  “This is my home,” she would explain.  Dr. Myers thinks about those conversations now that she is buried in Yemen, near the hospital.  “If we brought her back home,” he said quietly, “it would have been a grave.  Her being buried over there is a testimony.”

‘SHE ACCOMPLISHED MORE THAN MOST’

Dr. Myers was asked how, over the past two years, has he dealt with what happened to his daughter.

“I believe what the Bible teaches – that God has a plan for every one of us and there is nothing we can do about it. I also have a strong basic belief that if you can’t do anything about something, then deal with things constructively.  I remain aware of the fact that if this was the way she was supposed to go, and her work was ended and God wanted to take her home, so be it.  That doesn’t mean that I haven’t grieved, but it’s a different type of grief; once she was dead there was not anything in the world I could do about it, I could not change it.  She had accomplished more than most.”

Dr. Myers has some thoughts about some overall issues as well, which have been brought into even sharper focus for him through the loss of Martha.   “I am very much concerned about the general attitude of the whole Moslem world. It seems like many have hate for Christians and Jews in particular, and they are dedicated to doing anything they can to destroy us and to take us over,” says Dr. Myers, who is Baptist.  He worries that the Koran promotes a vengeful God who sanctions violence such as suicide bombings, which, he notes, is vastly different from the Christian and Jewish concepts of God, which depict God as kind and loving.

Talking about Islamic terror and the Middle East in general, Dr. Myers believes America must do everything possible to support Israel, a belief he draws from the Bible. “According to my belief, Israel is God’s chosen people and He still has some plans and He is not finished with Israel, and anybody who fights against Israel is going to suffer great anguish at the hands of an almighty God.”

Dr. Myers was asked in closing, what will Christmas be like without Martha?

“I can’t grieve for Martha, because in my faith she is better off where she is now than she would be in Yemen. At the same time, I am greatly distressed.  She loved the people there so much and there were so many things she wanted to do for them.”  He paused for a moment, and then shared one final thought.  “She was here, she did what she was sent to do and now God has called her home.”