Almost 20 years have gone by since the assassination of my oldest brother in Baghdad. A week later, my father died of a broken heart. Since then, at every juncture of my life, my journey has shown the need of seeking to practice the following principles of virtue and justice.
Law No. 196 of Hammurabi's Code, written 1755–1750 B.C. in Babylon, provides: "If a man has blinded the eye of a member of the awīlum class, his eye will be blinded." This is often interpreted as the principle of "an eye for an eye." It is a basic principle of justice: punishment should equal the crime.
If applied in modern times, this principle could help deal with chaos in our world, and promote peace and prosperity.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle, 13 centuries after Hammurabi, suggested that justice is the central virtue in the ideal state since it promotes the common interest of a community.
But what if we can’t obtain justice? What if instability leads to more harm to innocent people due to the absence of law, and the lack of sovereignty such as in Iraq in 2005? Or what if an enemy such as ISIS threatens not only Iraq, but threatens innocent people in neighboring realms.
The burden is heavy for any people to acknowledge the painful result of injustice.
In my motherland of Iraq, the successor of Hammurabi's Babylon, the fact is that our family couldn’t do anything to help achieve justice after the assassination of my brother which then led to the death of my father. It was not fair!
My brother was assassinated by the ISIS bad guys, who faced no justice for their wrongdoing. Meanwhile, my family and I had to escape the tragic loss of our eldest brother and then our father.
In the end, we lost our house and ran from war terror, seeking a better life for us and our children and families.
Do I long to go back to Iraq, and knowledge all these losses?
The answer I have found in The Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War: “Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet, Our God is marching on.”
Thankfully, we live in the United States of America, which I now call home!
What really helped me to try to overcome the hurtful experience in Iraq is my role as a mother. I find joy in every daily task towards my two beautiful sons. Knowing that God has granted me a beautiful family, and blessed us all with life in a safe home, America.
As I began to search for hope, I found that I could lift my spirit by seeing my experience of family losses within a broader picture. I believe that the sacrifices of my father and brother are what ultimately brought me and my family safe in this country.
In effect, my father’s spirit guided us to find, and my brother’s spirit helped execute our dreams to live a better life. In life, their motivation was to help us achieve all our dreams and to fulfill our needs! In their deaths, their spirits continued in this motivation.
My brother was the son who stood with my father for any plan to be implanted and needed swift execution. As for our enemies, the ones who murdered our beloveds, God finds them an answer to their well-being and guides us all to our peace, where our rewards for our righteous deeds.
The more I realize that it was unfair, the more I find comfort in my journey with a righteous end. This righteous end is a reward in many ways equal to the evil suffered in the absence of the rule of law, where no fear of God was found — only greed to spread a soulless agenda.
In his book Fear God and Take Your Own Part, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:
Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the end. When the Saviour saw the money changers in the temple, He broke the peace by driving them out. At that moment peace would have been obtained readily enough by the simple process of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong. But instead of preserving peace at the expense of righteousness, the Saviour armed Himself with a scourge of cords and drove the money changers from the temple.
My hope for Iraq is that the Iraqi people keep fighting for their sovereignty and the rule of law. The Iraqi people can draw strength from the Babylonian King Hammurabi, who ruled Mesopotamia around 1750 B.C.
The spirit of Hammurabi still speaks for righteousness in the face of the most wicked wrongdoing.
Hammurabi’s Code, combined with Theodore Roosevelt’s prescient acknowledgment that “Righteousness is the end,” presents an opportunity for reestablishing the rule of law in Iraq.
Rana Alsaadi is a refugee from Iraq and now a naturalized American citizen. Prior to co-founding PACEM Solutions International in Falls Church, Virginia, Mrs. Alsaadi held multiple Senior Executive positions and served with the US Department of State as a Cultural Advisor and the US Department of Defense as a Translator/Analyst in Iraq. Mrs. Alsaadi earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Baghdad University and her Executive Master of Business Administration from Georgetown University. Read Rana Al Saadi's Reports — More Here.
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