The theme of war in literature is a long-standing tradition that nearly always leads to a discourse about the ethics of violence and the effects it has on the people involved. The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra is no different, though the perspective through which the author explores these themes is atypical to be sure. Khadra gives us an unnamed narrator, a former student whose personality is eerily relatable to contemporary student readers. The Sirens of Baghdad takes place after the attacks on 9/11 and tells the story of a young man who willingly plans a terrorist attack using himself as a weapon, joining the disturbing custom of suicide bombers. Throughout the novel, the narrator shows us multiple scenes of violence between Iraqis and Americans and creates for us the evolution of a terrorist, from an observant and frightened student to an enraged militant, to a man willing to give his life to the violence and war that has consumed his beloved country. From Sirens of Baghdad, we learn that war carries with it many justifications, but that it is never ethical because these justifications come after a long train of abuses, terror, and corruption of innocent citizens.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the book is the narrator himself. He returns to his hometown after the University of Baghdad is blown up by the United States military. By seeing this and other occurrences through the narrator’s eyes we learn that he is a caring, sensitive, and most significantly, intelligent man. The idea that a terrorist can be shrewd and wise is frightening. We assume that acts of war, especially kamikaze missions like that of the suicide bombers, surpass all logic. We believe that violence comes from rage and madness, not reason. However, this narrator is respectably smart, a young man that, in another time and place, might have been our peer and friend. Khadra uses these characteristics to show the potential for violence that lies in everyone, and that violence begets violence. Without all the turmoil the narrator observes, he may have gone on to graduate from the university and make a life for himself instead of joining the war. Javed Ghamidi claims in his exploration of Islam and the idea of Jihad that, “war cannot be waged in the way of Allah by disregarding ethical limits. Moral values have to be given priority on everything in all circumstances” (Ghamidi 7). It seems that Khadra would agree with this concept, that the idea of accepting war as a holy institution would negate any type of rationale or intellect that would tell us that war is innately unholy because it entails violence. War violence can not be justified because it causes witnesses and victims to neglect their reason in favor of a newfound desire for violence, as is the case with Khadra’s narrator.
This is one reason that war is unethical—because the most loyal warriors are ones who have already been tarnished by war violence. The narrator sees a mentally handicapped man gets shot by the US military and goes on to see a raid at his father’s house, in which his father is forced into humiliation and sacrilege. These images never leave the narrator and contribute significantly to his motivation to make himself a weapon. This shows readers that the war created terrorists by exposing them to such horrors. The once innocent, wholesome, respectable young man has become a victim of war because it alters his mind and makes him someone he is not—someone capable of bringing death and destruction to numerous innocent lives. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his summation of the nature of war, states that ““It would seem that it is always sinful to wage war. Because punishment is not inflicted except for sin. Now those who wage war are threatened by Our Lord with punishment, according to Mt. 26:52: ‘All that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ Therefore all wars are unlawful” (Aquinas 1). The idea that “All that take the sword shall perish” certainly applies to Khadra’s work. Not only does Aquinas’ statement denote the many lives inevitably lost to war, but the phrase extends to the death of the narrator’s hope as well. Even though the narrator lives through the bombing of his university and the raid on his home, a part of him has perished. He no longer possesses the innocence and simple love for life that he would have if he lived in a peaceful time and place.
There are laws that determine when a war is just, but war is never just. There is even a concept of “just war” in which thinkers have attempted to rationalize the need for war. “…the “Just War Theory” has been brought to the front page of the secular press, primarily by politicians attempting to use it as a justification for some particular armed conflict” (Benson 1). It is true that the rationalizing and justification of war are usually employed by those who see a profit in combat, whether it be monetary or egotistical. Generally, war is accepted in most cultures as a necessary evil. War must be committed in order to maintain or gain control and to protect our country’s people. War is also justified in the hypocritical argument that it protects and brings peace. As Aquinas states, “…war is contrary to peace. Therefore war is always a sin” (Aquinas 2). It is ridiculous to imagine that an act of violence can create peace because once that violence is created it causes a ripple effect that brings the violence and the violent mentality to many more than the immediate victims. War only creates victims, the dead, the injured, and their loved ones. In fact, anyone living in a country at war is a victim because it teaches the warring country’s citizens that the mentality that violence is the only solution and is sometimes necessary, which manifests itself in violence on domestic levels as well as international levels.
Khadra’s point with The Sirens of Baghdad is that war has brought brutality to both sides of the conflict, that it is self-perpetuating, and that the war mindset has settled into the people for generations to come. War can not be justified, even in the case of Islamic holy war, which seems to justify war in the name of God. The majority of Muslims, however, do not buy into the idea that war is ever ethical. “Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad“ (Cook 165). In this sense, we see that even the people we claim as terrorists do not seek to justify war. War introduces a level of violence that is nearly inconceivable; we see the death count in this war rise nearly every day, and the fact that our government continues to be involved shows us that our leaders believe that our lives are expendable, and that violence is acceptable. We learn from history that war only causes more war; in the case of the world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, it is widely believed that the turmoil of the Germans after the First World War led directly to the outbreak of the second. Also, we can not avoid the implications that our current war has on our mindset and that of our children. We are growing up in a culture that sends our sons off to war only to never return, or to return with physical and psychological scars that will prevent them from leading a normal life. This mindset will affect our generation and that of our children, and that of our children’s children. We learn from Khadra’s work that the unethical nature of war is like a disease we can not contain and that as long as we allow it to continue it will destroy the lives of the most innocent while allowing evil to thrive.
Works Cited
Aquinas, St. Thomas. The Summa Theologica (1947). Benziger Bros: London.
Benson, Richard, C.M. “The Just War Theory: A traditional Catholic moral view” (2006). The Tidings Magazine. Tidings Corporation. Pages 1-7.
Cook, David. “Understanding Jihad” (2005). University of California Press: Los Angeles. Pages 165-166.
Ghamidi, Javed Ahmad. “The Islamic Law of Jihad” (2003) Mizan. Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Studies: Urdu. Pages 3-10
Khadra, Yasmina. The Sirens of Baghdad: A Novel (2007). Nan A. Talese: New York. 320 pages.