It's an unfortunate symptom of our times that tragedy can so often invite cynicism, but what else can we expect in our politically-myopic age? A recent example of violence being appropriated as political spectacle came with the truly heart-wrenching mosque shooting in New Zealand. No doubt it represented the worst kind of racist, bigoted violence. But the zeal with which the mainstream Western media reported the incident tipped their hand. Religious persecution, including violent attacks targeting specific groups, is unfortunately common around the world. For instance, just recently 40 Nigerian Christians were killed as part of what some have called a "genocide" in the country. What makes one killing more newsworthy than another? One starts to wonder if the deciding factor in whether or not an attack is Facebook-status-worthy is whether or not the perpetrator supports Trump.
It's difficult not to feel cynical about a morality of convenience. After all, such a morality will consistently confirm the biases of your own political narrative and allocate sympathy solely to victims adjacent to your own provincial interests. And yet to some degree it's something that we all do. This is why German author Martin Mosebach's The 21: A Journey Into the Land of Coptic Martyrs is so essential. In a time when digital and social media have created narrow ideological ruts through which our news and opinions flow, it's important—necessary, really—to explore different ways of understanding. Not newer, mind you, just deeper alternatives to the anodyne. Perhaps even antecedent to it. And in the case of the Copts and their sense of martyrdom, we're talking about a very ancient way of understanding indeed.
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