A Leg to Stand On: Ahmed Haile, Glen Stassen and an Elicitive Theology of Peacemaking in Somalia

A Leg to Stand On: Ahmed Haile, Glen Stassen and an Elicitive Theology of Peacemaking in Somalia
By Peter M. Sensenig

Ahmed Ali Haile’s life crossed bor­ders of many kinds – cultural, religious, and geographical. He was a Somali, a member of the Hawiye clan. He was a Mennonite Christian, shaped by the North Americans who introduced him to Jesus. As a peacemaker committed to Christ, he actively explored the possibilities and limitations of clan identity, Somali culture and traditions, and the reli­gious resources for peace. His willing­ness to risk his own life for the sake of peace exemplifies the costliness, but also the fruit, of approaching peace­making from the ground up.

In working for peace in his splin­tered home country, Ahmed Haile demonstrated what it might look like to balance the twin axioms of a peacemaking ethic: costly commit­ment to Christian nonviolence and an elicitive approach that draws from the peacemaking resources of Somali culture. Haile insisted that both aspects of peacemaking, the yes and the no, must have a strong theological and biblical foundation in order to be faithful to the gospel.

The way of the cross as central to Christian identity and practice has been well developed by theologians in the Free Church tradition, most notably Haile’s teacher John Howard Yoder. As a Somali Christian, Haile was constantly aware of the cost of following Jesus, including social alien­ation and scorn from fellow Somalis. The costs were not only social: Haile lost a leg in a violent attack during a peace negotiation in which he was participating. The cost of nonviolent peacemaking in obedience to Jesus, which exposes and challenges the deep-seated violence of all cultures, was always central to Haile’s under­standing of peace.

At the same time, Haile drew upon the profound peacemaking impulses grounded and Somali traditions. This foundational principle, known as elic-itive peacemaking, is articulated espe­cially by John Paul Lederach. Elicitive peacemaking seeks to explore, engage, and prioritize traditional cultural forms of reconciliation.

The theological rationale for an elicitive approach, however, is mostly limited to its compatibility with a noninvasive ethos than it is built upon an explicitly stated scriptural or theo­logical basis. I contend that Haile’s peacemaking example challenges Christians to a deeper development of the theological and biblical foun­dations for the elicitive peacemak­ing approach. I want to suggest that one way forward in this task is Glen Stassen’s incisive interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on light in the Sermon on the Mount, read in view of Jesus’ identity within the prophetic tradition of Isaiah.

Ahmed Haile: A Life in the Borderlands

Born and raised in a Muslim con­text in Bulo Burte, Somalia, Haile became a Christian at age 17. For Haile, identifying with Jesus and the church meant no longer identify­ing with the mosque. Yet he resolved never to speak ill of Islam, because Islam had prepared him to meet Jesus and planted in him the desire for God that was fulfilled in Jesus and for community that was fulfilled in the church, which Haile compared to a spiritual house like an udub, a tradi­tional Somali hut.¹

Shunned by members of his own clan and threatened by the Somali authorities, Haile struggled with his identity as a Somali Anabaptist fol­lower of Jesus. He continued to seek inclusion among his fellow Somalis, sustained by his conviction that Jesus’ disciples are called to reflect the incar-national presence of Christ. As the political situation unraveled, Haile’s calling to be an ambassador of the gospel of peace brought him back to Somalia again and again. J. Dudley Woodberry notes that the first record­ed Muslim convert to Christianity was a migrant in East Africa; “Yet, unlike the first Muslim convert to Christ, who is generally understood to have gone to East Africa to avoid conflict in seventh-century Mecca, the con­temporary convert Ahmed returned to the region repeatedly to mediate conflict.”²

Ahmed Haile and his wife Martha Wilson Haile lived in Mogadishu for three years in the mid-1980s. During this time Haile provided some lead­ership to the small group of Somali believers. The anti-Christian senti­ment in the city had not heightened as it later would, but there was a general atmosphere of suspicion as the Siad Barre regime crumbled. One night a small group of believers was meeting at the home of Elizabeth and Ken Nissley when the police knocked on the door. They took Haile outside, and he did not return. The others did not know what had happened to him. So Ken Nissley found Haile’s brother and they drove around Mogadishu all evening, searching the police stations until they found where Haile was being held. They brought his some food and a blanket, and the next day Haile’s brother managed to convince an official not to press any charges and to release him.³

After moving to Elkhart, Indiana, in October 1991 Haile was called by Somali colleagues, under the auspices of the newly formed inter-clan peace group Ergada (which was sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee, an Anabaptist relief and development agency), to return to Somalia for two weeks of peacemaking work, espe­cially between the divided factions of  the United Somali Congress (USC). Ergada requested his presence at this volatile time for a number of reasons. Haile shared a vision with Ergada of a just, peaceful Somali state built on good clan relations, which he saw as the only possibility for a function­ing government. ⁴ He was recognized both for his boldness in engaging the clan system and for his abilities in mediation, and he had master’s degrees in peace studies and public administration. Additionally, Haile was from the Karanle sub-clan of the Hawiye clan. Both the interim presi­dent Ali Mahdi and General Farah Aidid were also from the Hawiye clan. The Karanles are considered the “elder brothers”⁵ of the Hawiye clan according to Somali tradition, and they play a key role in settling disputes. These qualities, both of pedigree and personality, put Haile in a unique peacemaking position. He served as the only Christian on a team of Muslims. Of his Muslim compan­ions, Haile states, “We were joined by a love for our people, believing that something stronger than guns could bring peace.”⁶

As Haile was attending a nego­tiation near the fighting zones in Mogadishu in January 1992, the house where the meeting took place was attacked by Aidid’s forces. Haile’s leg was severely wounded in the attack and was later amputated. Yet he con­tinued to be involved in peacemaking among his Somali people, in Somalia, Kenya, and North America. Haile taught for years at Daystar University in Nairobi, where he founded a peace studies program. He also helped to lead the growing Somali Christian community in Eastleigh (a majority-Somali neighborhood of Nairobi), driven by a vision for a thriving Somali fellowship. By the time he returned to Eastleigh, the situation had changed to the extent that he could not work openly at the Mennonite-run Eastleigh Fellowship Center. But he continued to fellow­ship with Somalis in his home and in other ways in Eastleigh.⁷ Haile also gathered Muslim and Christian scholars together to read and discuss their scriptures in what can be considered an early version of scriptural reason-ing.⁸

Although his background was known to many, in his memoir Haile chose not to identify his clan, seek­ing to emulate his father’s example of treating all people equally regardless of heritage.⁹ He recounted his expec­tations of positive treatment from his own clan members due to their special bond. He was discouraged to discover that rather than embracing him they rebuked and rejected him because of his commitment to Christ. The expe­rience served as a catalyst for Haile to transform his view of clans based on Philippians 2:1-11, even as the coun­try was disintegrating into inter-clan warfare. “What would happen if clans honored rival clans more than they honored themselves? What if people were ready to die for the enemy rather than seek to dominate the enemy?” Haile asked. Like the Apostle Paul, Haile recognized that he had an envi­able heritage but that his genealogy could not offer salvation or peace. It was not long after his conversion that his new commitments were tested by the appearance of a visitor from a rival clan, which was considered by some to be inferior to his own. The visitor was amazed that Haile offered him his bed while he slept on the floor.¹⁰ Haile’s life offers a vision and example of a sense of kinship that transcends clan ties even as it acknowledges them.

Haile engaged all of the peacemak­ing tools he could find: pre-Islamic systems of justice, colonial courts and laws, the qadi (Islamic judge) and sharia courts, and social sciences. More than only peacemaking theories, they were the fundamental tools for acting in the midst of tremendous challenges and resistance, such as the imam who called for his execution for apostasy and later became his protector. Haile discovered, however, that “ultimately it was the gospel that could end the cycle of retaliation as it was absorbed by Christ and his cross and the Holy Spirit who through the  church reconciled people to God and each other.” 11

The North American Mennonites learned from Ahmed and Martha Haile what it might mean to employ an elicitive approach in Somalia, par­ticularly the importance of hospitality and conversation. Elizabeth Nissley says, “Watching Ahmed work with traditional Somali peacemaking was significant for us. Even when he had some hostile family members come, he invited them to eat together and served tea.” 12

Haile was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, and died in 2011. After he learned that his cancer was terminal, he told EMM leaders, “When Orie O. Miller [early Mennonite mission leader] was dying he said, ‘Don’t forget the Somalis.’ I want to say the same thing. Do not forget the Somalis.”¹³

The fruit of Ahmed Haile’s life continues in both Africa and North America. His memoir, Teatime in Mogadishu, was released just days after his death. It is now available in several languages, including Somali.

In July 2011 a group of Somalis, including poets and politicians, gathered in Toronto with North American mission workers and oth­ers to celebrate Haile’s life and the release of his memoir, and to consider the ongoing work of peacemaking in Somalia.¹⁴ Haile’s remarkable life is a catalyst for the sharing of stories across some surprising boundaries. Somalia is a nation of poets, and the weaving of words is prized above any other art form. Upon Haile’s passing, an unidentified Somali friend penned these words, rendered here in English:

The departed Ahmed Haile

The sagacious one
Whom the Lord took away…
He was a peacemaker
Whom we honored well
He was widely respected…

He said these abhorrent actions
The endless civil wars
Will one day cease…
He said to hold fast to
the rope of God Without any distractions…

He strolled away with dignity
And returned to paradise
The cherished expert.¹⁵

The Elicitive Model of Peacemaking

In drawing from the peacemak­ing resources of traditional Somali culture and Somali Islam, Ahmed Haile was a dedicated practitioner of elicitive peacemaking. This approach builds on local culture and traditions rather than import models based on foreign assumptions and practices. The leading pioneer of the theory and practices of this approach is John Paul Lederach, who teaches in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and in the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University. Lederach was involved in peacebuilding work in Somalia in the 1990s.

Lederach challenges the assump­tions that the model we use in one setting can be used in all others with some adjustments, and that culture is an aspect of conflict resolution that can be reduced to technique. On the contrary, conflict resolution itself is a socially constructed, educational phe­nomenon. Social conflict is a natural experience present in all cultures and relationships, and does not simply happen but is created by people. Conflict centers around the search for shared meaning, which occurs as people locate themselves within the accumulated knowledge of the cul­ture. Lederach sees peacebuilding as a “profound adventure of digging” into this shared cultural knowledge that is at the root of meaning and therefore of social conflict. Rather than the static, foundationalist view that seeks to define conflict for all times and places, he prefers the dynamic, con­structionist view that people act on the basis of the meaning that things have for them. Lederach concludes, “Understanding conflict and develop­ing appropriate models of handling it will necessarily be rooted in, and must

 respect and draw from, the cultural knowledge of a people.”¹⁶ Culture is therefore not an obstacle or a chal­lenge to be overcome but a conduit for peacemaking, based on the shared social knowledge. In Somalia, this social knowledge includes proverbs and storytelling.¹⁷

Salt, Light, and Deeds: An Elicitive Theology of Peacemaking

Lederach’s elicitive approach is strongly rooted in sociology, conflict studies, and political science. The theological rationale for an elicitive approach, however, is mostly limited to its compatibility with nonviolent commitments. It is dependent more on an ethos of noninvasiveness and the pragmatic goal of peacemaking than it is built upon an explicitly stated scriptural or theological basis. Here I contend that Jesus’ teaching on light in the Sermon on the Mount provides the theological basis for the elicitive approach.

Glen Stassen and David Gushee have developed the understanding of the triadic commandment of Jesus in Matthew 5:13-16, in which Jesus describes the mission of the com­munity of his disciples as salt, light, and deeds. After briefly suggesting the meaning of salt and deeds in an international peacemaking context, I will argue that light refers to pointing the nations toward God’s saving work, eliciting the cultural treasures that can glorify God.

Salt as Nonviolent Communal Witness: In order to understand what Jesus meant by saltiness in Matthew 5:13, it is best to consider the par­able with the Qumran community in mind. This community withdrew from the corruption of the world in order to live a monastic life of cov­enant fidelity beside the Dead Sea. In this sense, Jesus was commending their effort to be faithful to God’s will by separating themselves from evil practices, thus maintaining their saltiness. Jesus’ polemic in this verse opposes the loss of identity as God’s people through the blurring of the distinction from the world, just as salt loses its taste by mixing with the

 tasteless sand on which people walk. The Greek word for becoming taste­less can also mean becoming foolish, and salt is associated with wisdom in some rabbinic texts. This passage therefore serves as a parallel to the end of Sermon (Matthew 7:24-26), which states that the way one avoids becom­ing foolish is by obeying the words of Jesus.¹⁸

Deeds as Service for God’s Glory: Stassen and Gushee argue that the traditional emphasis on salt and light in this passage ignores a critical third aspect of Jesus’ ethical mission for the church: good deeds. Deeds are the climax of the teaching, clarifying the content of salt and light as actions that show God’s light to the world.¹⁹

Disciples of Jesus cannot be con­tent to remain a light to the world in only a theoretical sense. Their good deeds must reflect who they are as salt and light. Jesus’ teaching later in the Sermon, however, issues a stern warn­ing. Doing good works to be seen by others in order to receive glory for oneself (Matt 6:1) is as worthless as flavorless salt.²⁰ Jesus tells his disciples to do their good deeds publicly for God’s honor, never their own.

Light as Eliciting Peacemaking Resources: The imagery of light to which Jesus refers in Matthew 5:14, drawn directly from Isaiah, serves as a theological basis for the elici-tive approach to peacemaking that seeks to explore, engage, and pri­oritize traditional cultural forms of reconciliation. Lederach’s framework relies on a web of local actors, whose approaches to peacemaking draw pri­marily from other sources besides the work of international theoreticians. Knowledge of and respect for tradi­tion is more effective in creating trust­ing relationships because it engages local actors at a deeply personal level.

To understand what Jesus meant by light, it is again helpful to remember the context of the Qumran communi­ty. Jesus’ words of commendation for the Qumran community are immedi­ately followed by a strong criticism of their separatism. In order to be faith­ful disciples of Jesus, the church must

be a visible community. According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for Jesus’ follow­ers, “to flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no lon­ger a community that follows him.”²¹ By light, therefore, Jesus indicates an ongoing witness and invitation that is extended beyond the community of his followers.

Stassen and Gushee have dem­onstrated convincingly that Jesus’ perceptions of his own mission are best understood in light of the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, with which he identified.²² While preach­ing in Galilee about the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus quoted from Isaiah 9:1-2 to declare that a light has come to the Gentiles (Matthew 4:15-16). In Matthew 5:14, Jesus is drawing on the Old Testament tradition of light in reference to the presence of God, especially Isaiah’s call to walk in the “light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5) and for Israel to be the light of the nations (Isaiah 49:6). Thus Jesus disavows the separatism of the Qumran com­munity; “Disciples are a ‘city on a hill’ in the Isaiah 2 sense only if we invite and draw people of all nations ‘up the hill’ and through the gates into an experience of shared eschatological community.”²³

The insight of the centrality of Isaiah for Jesus yields a fuller under­standing of what He means by light shining from a city on a hill. Isaiah’s call to ascend the mountain of the Lord and to walk in the light of the Lord (Isaiah 2:5) is explained in terms of peacemaking and disarmament. It is a call for a “new world order, shared with the prophet Micah (4:1-5),” in which Zion is a gathering place for the nations, including Israel.²⁴ The nations come at their own initiative, with the anticipation that they will be taught by the Lord the essential practices of peacemaking. The goal is justice and peace between the nations, and the evidence that the nations are serious about walking in God’s light is their willingness to disarm.

The importance of the connec­tion that Jesus is making between the  prophetic tradition of Isaiah and his own ministry is that he is depicting his disciples’ mission in terms tradi­tionally used for the mission of Israel. Isaiah speaks of God’s people as a light to the nations (42:6; 49:6). Indeed, Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 are likely Jesus’ primary source for his teaching in Matthew 5:14-16. He himself would fulfill the mission of Isaiah’s Servant, but he expected his disciples to assume the same responsibility (Matt 20:26-28).²⁵

Chapters 2, 42, and 49 are not the only passages informing Jesus’ read­ing of light from Isaiah. Isaiah 60 begins, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you…Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn” (60:1, 3). The prophet envisions an open city into which the nations bring their wealth and kings are led in procession, an image echoed explicitly in Revelation 21:24-26. The kings are not compelled, nor is Zion portrayed as the locus of a new nationalism, but rather as the nucleus of the Lord’s light.²⁶

Free Church traditions can learn a deeper reading of this passage from Reformed theology, which recognizes the eschatological dimensions of the cultural mandate to “fill the earth” in Genesis 1:28. Reformed thought takes this to mean not simply having children, but filling the earth with the “general products and patterns of human culture: language, labeling systems, tools, schedules, works of art, family activities.”²⁷ Richard Mouw asserts that our enjoyment of culture reflects God’s own pleasure. Indeed, the future God intends for humanity includes culture – art, music, cloth­ing, and all the treasures of civiliza­tions – in the New Jerusalem, as a fulfillment of God’s creative inten-tions.²⁸

Two points from these passages in Isaiah 60:11 and Revelation 21:24 are noteworthy in relation to culture and peacemaking. The first is that the nations are not required to sur­render the particularities of their nationality. The same God who created humans with the mandate to fill the earth with culture is now calling them to the peace of Zion as cultured people. Secondly, the nations bring their wealth and splendor to the New Jerusalem (Is 60:11; Rev 21:24). In light of the rich variety of ways in which Scripture portrays true wealth, surely this means more than silver and gold. It refers to the treasures that each culture has to offer in the new age of peace, the practices, customs, and values that are precious to its people.

Elicitive peacemaking, therefore, draws upon the treasures of particular human cultures, the gifts that God has given to people groups. God is faithful to the creatures God has called to fill the earth, working along­side them to establish a peaceful and just global community.

Not all of human culture is a gift, however. Viewing culture as a con­duit for peacemaking does not mean affirming every aspect of culture, espe­cially elements that are oppressive or unjust. As John Howard Yoder argues in Body Politics, the church cannot choose between being in the world and against the world; to be present in the world is always to be both.²⁹ In Authentic Transformation (co-written with Glen Stassen and Diane Yeager), Yoder provides examples of what it means to be simultaneously for and against the world:

Some elements of culture the church categorically rejects (por­nography, tyranny, cultic idolatry). Other dimensions of culture it accepts within clear limits (eco­nomic production, commerce, the graphic arts, paying taxes for peacetime civil government). To still other dimensions of culture Christian faith gives a new motiva­tion and coherence (agriculture, family life, literacy, conflict resolu­tion, empowerment). Still others it strips of their claims to possess autonomous truth and value, and uses them as vehicles of commu­nication (philosophy, language, Old Testament ritual, music). Still other forms of culture are created by the Christian churches (hospi­tals, service of the poor, general­ized education).³⁰

The Christian response to culture is always both yes and no. Like the biblical “powers and authorities” (Colossians 2:15; Ephesians 6:12), culture can be distorted in harm­ful and sinful ways. But culture, the shared social knowledge of a people, is neither the problem nor the salva­tion. It is rather a locus of God’s gra­cious action in the world, because it provides a venue for neighbor love. If social conflict is an opportunity for God’s grace because it is a search for shared meaning, as Lederach argues, then culture makes available the resources for that grace to break through in the mundane reality of human relationships.

The yes and no with which Christians respond to culture is exactly the point Jesus is making in Matthew 5:13-16. The call to be salt represents the no to elements of the culture that render one a useless dis­ciple, no different from the surround­ing corruption. But the call to be light is the emphatic yes to the nations that are being drawn to bring their wealth to the peace of Zion. Furthermore, the way in which the light is being flooded into the world is through the community of Jesus’ disciples, the city on a hill.

The tension inherent in Jesus’ teach­ing of salt and light, to be simultane­ously different from and involved in the broader society, to be in but not of the world, is also present in Isaiah. The fact that the cultural wealth of the nations is valued in the New Jerusalem is the foundation for the elicitive approach to peacemaking. Yet Isaiah states firmly that the nations do not come to the mountain of the Lord to teach, but rather to learn the ways of the Lord. The practices and richness of human cultures are not enough; the nations must be taught by God how to use those gifts to turn swords into ploughshares and

 spears into pruning hooks, and never to study war again (Isaiah 2:4). The gleanings of the elicitive approach to peacemaking are not an end in them­selves, but rather the prerequisite for learning how to make peace. For this task there is one truly authoritative teacher, the Prince of Peace himself.

A Discerning Elicitive Approach

By what criteria can a peacemaker determine when to say yes or no to a particular cultural practice? This is where the life of Ahmed Haile can provide some clues. In engaging Somali traditions Haile was eminently practical. His methodology was to explore in each situation what prac­tices, whether Islamic, Christian, or from other traditions, effectively move people away from enmity and toward friendship.

For example, Haile expressed deep respect for the Islamic faith of his people. In his analysis of the violence in Somalia, he noted that the Islamic ideal of a global umma and justice system that transcend clan held some attraction in a Somali context, where clan loyalties could exacerbate con­flict. But Haile observed that in spite of this ideal, the Islamic justice system has been ineffective in peacemaking in Somalia, in part because the way that groups practiced it has been retribu­tive rather than restorative.³¹

A much more fruitful approach, Haile surmised, was to affirm some of the practices of pre-Islamic Somali peacemaking. The Somali system of restorative justice known as xeer has remarkable similarities to peace prac­tices in the Old and New Testaments. The Somali greeting, nabad, refers to a general wellbeing from God that is equivalent to the concept of shalom. When a wrong is committed, a judge determines what restitution is appro­priate, not only to the individual but to the family. Furthermore, reading Somali culture through the lens of René Girard, Haile saw a powerful connection between the restorative sacrifice of a lamb in the process of xeer and the Christian concept of sac­rificial atonement. ³² Along with the Ergada group, Haile actively encour­aged the use of these peacemaking mechanisms by the Somali elders, which served as a major part of the success story in Somaliland. The government in the north creatively integrates traditional leadership with Western-style government.

This example demonstrates a key characteristic of the peacemaking work of Ahmed Haile. It is necessarily ad hoc, because peacemaking is about the cultivation of good relationships. An essential trait of a peacemaker, therefore, is the ability to draw con­structively from all kinds of practices and traditions.

The Christian community always stands simultaneously in criticism and affirmation of particular cultures. To use the imagery of Jesus, a salty com­munity will practice peacemaking in a way that is distinct from the wisdom of the world. And a community of light points the nations toward God’s saving work, eliciting the cultural treasures that can glorify God.

Ahmed Haile carried in his body the marks of a faithful Christian peacemaking ethic. With one leg, he returned to the country where the other leg was taken from him, herald­ing an unexpected kind of love and forgiveness. Haile’s commitment to Christian nonviolence – the salt of Christ’s community – was an odd­ity in a situation where retribution ruled. Yet he also demonstrated more ably than most that Christ’s follow­ers are meant to invite others to the light of God’s presence by affirming the good gifts that they already bring. Free Church Christians have gener­ally been more adept at the former – maintaining distinctiveness from the broader culture for the sake of the gospel. Haile’s life helps us to read the Sermon and Isaiah, along with Stassen, in such a way that an elicitive approach to peacemaking has a leg to stand on.  

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