Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

42 y brothers and sisters present today, may peace be upon you, and grace upon grace, and may the Lord God give you His mercy that endures forever and ever, Amen. With utmost respect, I would like to thank all of you who invited me to attend this conference and meet with HH Pope Francis. I would also like to thank the Adyan Foundation that trusted us and were responsible for our invitation to this meeting. Today is a special day for me because the Lord has granted me a second chance to live and to share with you a small part of what happened to me and my small family – my wife, three children, and my father who is 90 years old. On 23 February 2015, my tragedy began after I received a phone call from my children informing me that the terrorist organization ISIS had entered our vil- lage. This was the last sentence that I heard from them. All I wanted to do was head off to where my children were so that I could be close to them, even though I didn’t know if they were dead or alive. ISIS had entered my village that then became a ghost town; no one wan- dered its streets which before had witnessed a history of coexistence shared between its peoples of diverse reli- gious and ideological affiliations. When I surrendered myself to ISIS I realised that I had put myself before an ideology that suppresses the Other, that I am the one who believes that the Other is my other half who shares and enriches my life, that the values of humanity are the common denominator between us, and that our God is one but we worship Him in different ways. The first thing I proceeded to do was ask the member of ISIS about my children. His answer was cruel and shocking: “We have killed them all on the banks of the Khabur and you will soon die with them.” All I could say was: “May God’s will be done.” After that, they moved me to the detention camp where I saw my children and the people of my village alive. I then realised that I had been assigned a task that I must fulfil. When the proselytizer began to visit us to guide us and invite us to embrace Islam, I deemed this to be the only chance to open the door of dialogue between us, because I am convinced that dialogue is able to work miracles in the most difficult situations and achieve pos- itive results. And this is what actually happened. After a discussion session about divine mercy, I spontaneously asked the member of ISIS to put this value into practice by informing us of the status of our women, daughters, and sons, for they hadn’t received any news about us for four months. The next day we were surprised when someone came in carrying letters from our women and girls saying: “Glory be to Allah who has counted what you have done for good and rewarded you.” I began to say with confidence that our God is a god of mercy. This member of ISIS, who considers the Gospel to WITNESSING MERCY FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIAT ION Martin Temres M Martin Temres at one of the second day case study sessions