Over at the First Things blog First Thoughts there is a post in which a (necesssarily) unnamed missionary in the Middle East is quoted as follows:
In August of 2008 a young lady named Fatima al-Mutayri, age 26, was martyred in Saudi Arabia. She is from that country and became a Christian there by means of internet and satellite TV ministries, and was martyred there—she had her tongue cut out and was burned to death by her brother, who was carrying out the command of the Prophet who said, “who changes his religion, kill him” (man badala diinahu faqataluuhu).
This is, of course, horiffic. Words cannot convey the emotions that such an incident calls forth.
The missionary goes on to as some thought provoking questions, and I was asked for an opinion on them, so I'll do my best.
The missionary continues:
She was most certainly a Christian. I suspect that she was baptized but do not know for certain. And here is my two-part question: first, was she in full communion with Rome? I believe that she knew nothing of the debates between Catholics and Protestants. Moreover, I don’t think she ever had access to becoming a Catholic because the Catholic Church does not evangelize in Saudi Arabia and, of course, there no actual church buildings in that country.
The Catholic Church doesn't evangelize openly in Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons, but there are certainly Catholics there who share their faith in an underground way, and these are able to baptize people, so the absence of above-ground evangelization and the lack of church buildings would be a practical impediment to a Catholic baptism but not something that would have made it altogether impossible.
So if she was baptized, it was at least possible that she was secretly baptized in an explicitly Catholic ceremony. If so, she would have by that fact been placed in full communion with the Catholic Church.
But let's suppose, as is likely, that if she was baptized that it was not in a Catholic ceremony. What then?
My understanding is that in former centuries it was common to regard any baptism as a Catholic one unless there was an express intent otherwise. On this view a person who was baptized with no specific knowledge of the Catholic Church would be regarded as a Catholic up until such time as the person might learn of and repudiate the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith.
Apart from very usual circumstances–especially in the Internet age–this kind of situation would be unlikely to arise, and current canon law seems to handle the situation differently.
The Code does not spell it out in the detail I would like, but the Green Commentary on the Code summarizes what I take to be common canonical opinion on the matter, which is that a person receiving baptism from a non-Catholic is held to be a non-Catholic unless there is a conscious intent for the person to be Catholic–for example, you are on a desert island and, before you die, you want to be baptized Catholic and the only person there is a Methodist, but he is willing to baptize you so you can be Catholic. (See the paragraph starting on the botton of the first column and its continuation in the second column, here.)
We don't have any evidence (so far as I know) that Fatima specifically intended to be Catholic if she was baptized, so it would be presumed that she wouldn't have been–that she would have been reckoned as a member of whatever specific church she was baptised into (if any) or just as a "generic Christian" if she was baptized non-denominationally.
At least the way such matters would be handled now, mere ignorance of disputes between Protestants and Catholics would not result in a baptism performed by a non-Catholic putting the baptizand in full communion with the Catholic Church.
I also wouldn't be quick to underestimate Fatima's awareness of the fact that there are different kinds of Christians. She was, it is reported, a Arabic-language blogger, and any amount of poking around on the Internet will reveal that there are different kinds of Christians. The pope being in the news on al-Jazeera and other Arabic news stations will result in awareness of the same thing. Fatima is supposed to have watched al-Haya (a Christian Arabic channel) and seen the programs of Fr. Zakaria Botros, who is Coptic. She also was involved with a significant variety of Christians on the Internet, and I strongly suspect she knew about Christian differences.
Does that mean she intended to join a specific Christian group upon her baptism? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to be a Christian and would figure out the who-to-affiliate-with question later (or never). No one can really say unless someone who knew her were to come forth and shed light on the subject.
On the other hand, maybe she wasn't sacramentally baptized at all. (We've been making a lot of assumptions thus far.)
In that case she could be described as having "baptism of desire"–either implicitly or explicitly–by virtue of her adopting the Christian faith. She also could be described as having "baptism of blood" by virtue of her death for the faith.
These would suffice for salvation (nothing else standing in the way), praise God!
But they would not place her in full communion with the Catholic Church in this life.
The missionary then asks another ques
tion:
And second: given this information, is it possible for her to be canonized? The canonization of an ex-Muslim woman who was born, lived, and died in Saudi Arabia, and who was martyred by her own family, would be perhaps the single most powerful statement that the Church has made on Islam since Vatican II (hardly a clear statement, and one that led many Catholics to believe, incorrectly, that the Church no longer was interested in evangelizing Muslims).
Vatican II's statement regarding Islam could definitely have been better phrased, and canonizing Fatima would indeed be a powerful statement. And if the circumstances were different, it could even be a possibility. It would not, however, be done as a statement on Islam. Instead, it would be a statement about the heroic virtues of this young woman who accepted martyrdom for her love of Jesus.
Pope Benedict certainly has the wherewithal to do such a canonization. He personally–as pope, at Easter Vigil–baptized the notorious Muslim apostate Maghdi Allam. Allam is a firebrand and a controversialist who repeatedly got into disputes with Muslims in Italy long before his conversion to Catholicism, and now there are pictures of the pope baptizing him and everything.
Pope Benedict did this not as a statement about Islam but as an illustration of the Church's willingness to accept everyone, regardless of their background, and of the right of everyone to embrace the gospel.
Given his willingness to do this, I have little doubt that he would be willing to canonize a former Muslim who was martyred for the faith. (Providing it was a genuine martyrdom; early in his papacy Pope Benedict notably clarified what martyrdom is to prevent the concept from being used sloppily.)
I can easily imagine Benedict asking, "Should we deny canonization to someone who died for the faith simply because the person who killed them was Muslim? Why should Muslims be an exception? If we do not deny canonization to one who was martyred by atheists or polytheists or any other group, why should we do so in this situation? Is their heroic witness to Christ worth less because their killers were Muslim?"
So I don't doubt that Benedict would be willing to do this . . . if the circumstances were different.
But they are what they are.
At least at this time, we don't have evidence that Fatima entered full commmunion with the Catholic Church in her life or that he had embraced the Catholic faith specifically at the time of her baptism by blood. Consequently, I don't see grounds for her canonization.
That's not to say that she's not in heaven and is not, in fact, a saint. If the facts are as described, I am very, very hopeful of her salvation and thus her objective sainthood (I can't say I'm certain, because in this life we can never be certain), but the Church tends only to canonize those who were members of it or who were intending to be members of it at the time of their martyrdom.
If evidence were to emerge that overcame this hurdle, there would still be many others, of a practical nature, that would have to be overcome before canonization could occur.
There would have to be someone petitioning for her canonization, and the relevant local bishop would have to oversee the initial phase of the process. That would be tricky since there are no bishops in Saudia Arabia.
Investigating the case would also prove difficult since, so far as we know, there were no witnesses outside the family. Unless one or more of them decided to speak freely on the subject and describe what happened at the end, investigators would not be able to distinguish evidentially between a scenario in which she maintained her faith to the end and a scenario in which she renounced her faith at the last moment but was too injured to survive (or was killed anyway out of rage).
Given the sensitivity of the subject in Saudi society, getting any people with knowlege of the situation–even non-family members who weren't eyewitnesses–to speak freely could be very difficult.
Internet hearsay is not enough, given the difficulties of verifying it.
One of the first things I did in preparing to write this post was to do some checking to see if I could verify that Fatima al-Martayri even existed. I don't want to be overly skeptical, but there is a reason God created Snopes.com.
While I wasn't able to find the kind of evidence I would have liked (perhaps because it's largely in the Arabic-language Internet), I was eventually able to find and verify enough pieces of the story that it looks like it's real.
(I also verified that Mutayri is real clan and thus "al-Mutayri" is not simply an Arabic term for "the Martyr.")
Even then, though, details of the story diverge. Some sources say that it was her father who killed her. Others (who seem to be the majority) say that it was her brother (though it may only have been him who exposed her). Details also differ over whether she was 23 or 26 and whether the murder occurred in Qassim Province or in the Eastern Province. (One source, which claims to be a Muslim friend of Fatima but who nevertheless disapproved of the killing, tries to set the record straight; I'll link the source below
).
These facts aren't to say that the matter couldn't be sorted out, but they illustrate the problems of fact-finding in such a situation.
I thus don't see a plausible path to canonization for Fatima.
But we may still pray for her and all in similar situations–and there are many of those. (I know; I've dealt with delicate situations like this, with people behind the Muslim curtain who wish to be Christian. Fortunately, none of the ones I've dealt with have suffered Fatima's fate–yet.)
(And if anyone wonders why one might pray for a martyr–it may be a common and pious belief that martyrs go straight to heaven, but this isn't a doctrine of the Church; I'd rather pray on the safe side, trusting God at least to apply the prayers to the person cross-temporally in their final moments of life.)
READ MORE ABOUT FATIMA–INCLUDING HER WRITINGS AND INTERNET MESSAGES–HERE. (.pdf)
A further note about Fatima: If she is in heaven, as an uncanonized saint, then her feast day is November 1st–All Saints Day.
At the First Thoughts blog, Joseph Bottum–who authored the post–has some additional insightful things to say, but he doesn't go into it at this length. (I'm long winded–at least if you don't give me a word count. Sorry.)
Oh, and as Lt. Columbo would say, there's one more thing . . .
If Fatima's case doesn't present a good instance for the canonization of a former Muslim who was martyred for faith in Christ, it should be pointed out that the Church actually does have saints who were former Muslims, such as St. Josephine Bakhita and St. Casilda of Toledo.
Furthermore, the Church also has saints who were former Muslims who were martyred by Muslims for their Christian faith. These include St. Abo the Perfumer, St.s Nunilo and Alodia of Huesca, and St.s Aurelius, Natalia, and Felix of Cordoba.
They may not be modern, contemporary individuals like Fatima, but they trod the same path, suffered the same fate, and may serve as inspiring examples for the many, many people today who yearn for Christ while being forced to live in the Islamic world.
May those in such situations look to them, and may their intercession guide us all.
