1993 – Houghton STAR

With the close of another Thanksgiving season, I am excited to begin celebrating all things Christmas. I want to sing cheesy Christmas songs, eat lots of Christmas cookies, and wear wonderfully ugly Christmas sweaters, every-single-day. While this may actually be rather child-like, I have also come to appreciate the Christmas season’s emphasis upon giving unto others with the intent of selfless appreciation. Unfortunately, living in a consumer-oriented context, the bargain-hunting aggression of ‘Black Friday’ has come to more readily define ‘Christmas-like’ giving. The influx of consumerism during this season has simultaneously translated into innumerable opportunities for material charity amongst citizens of the Global North. It is initially daunting to challenge consumer-based charity, specifically with its popularity among respectable citizens. However, there persists a need to re-conceptualize consumer-based charities popular during this

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holiday season. A needed shift in perspective specifically highlights the lack of depth, cultural relevance, and disregard for recipient perspectives. At the core of its shortcomings, however, consumer-based charity needs greater understanding for the complexity of human-related issues.

At the forefront of consumer-focused charity during the Christmas season is an initiative facilitated by the Samaritan’s Purse named Operation Christmas Child (OCC). Since 1993, OCC has collected shoeboxes from its participants in North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Each participant is to fill a shoebox with hygienic items and toys that Western children typically see as essential or enjoyable to play with (i.e. toothpaste, socks, crayons, coloring books, kazoos, etc.). Through OCC, participants are encouraged to label their toy-stuffed shoebox with a sticker indicating a preferred age and sex of the child who will receive the box. According to the Samaritans Purse website, these boxes are intended for children of the Global South who are ‘living in difficult situations’. Through participant’s shoebox donation, OCC mobilizes ‘privileged’ families of the Global North to ‘share the good news of Jesus Christ’ with ‘underprivileged’ children of the Global South. Unfortunately, introducing Jesus Christ through toys and knick-knacks promotes a simplistic view of Christianity in association with Western consumer culture. As a result, the nature of Jesus Christ adopts attributes of our capitalist society rather than the magnitude of his humanity, divinity, and relevance.

In addition to its non-contextualized approach to evangelism, OCC promotes a one-way relationship between the ‘giver’ and the ‘receiver’, lacking parameters for reciprocity or consistency from year-to-year. In narrowing its concept of charity to a linear flow of western materials, OCC has missed potential for deeper impact through long-term relationship building. Further opportunities involve the development of healthy relationships among consistently participating communities, while better engaging the voice of OCC recipients to define such relationships. Never accessing the capabilities of mutual relationships undermines the diverse expression of opinion amongst both donors and recipients, further hindering the determination of relevant outcomes. Just as one would wish to give a gift relevant to a family member’s indicated ‘wish list’, the voiced desires of OCC recipients need be better involved in determining the outcomes of donor strategies.

Operation Christmas Child currently represents a Westernized view of Christmas, evangelism, and the Global South. As members of the Houghton student body, it is critical that we better critique the premise of OCC and its campus-wide participation. From this perspective, we each are challenged to re-conceptualize the intents, means, and effects of how we choose to give. Moving forward into this holiday season, let us contemplate the wonderful attributes of Christmas, while also reflecting upon its increasing focus on consumerism. In doing so, may we continually contemplate our well-meaning intentions with the valuable humanity of our neighbor, both local and abroad.

In an effort to capture two prominent al-Qaeda members, U.S. forces conducted two raids in Libya and Somalia on October 5. Both members, Anas al-Liby and Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir, also known as Ikrima, were wanted for their connections to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and injured another 5,000. While commandos were able to capture al-Liby, they failed in capturing Ikrima.

The capture of al-Liby is a big success in Washington’s fight against al-Qaeda. According to Al-Jazeera, al-Liby was indicted by the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York in 2000 for his alleged role in planning the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya on August 7, 1998. Currently, al-Liby is being interrogated aboard the USS San Antonio off the coast of Libya. He will be interrogated for sixty days before being transferred to the Federal Court in New York to stand trial. This comes as three U.S. Senators, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and Saxby Chambliss, wish to send al-Liby to Guantanamo Bay’s detention center for further interrogation. U.S. President Barack Obama, however, is reluctant to send more alleged terrorists to Guantanamo due to a desire to close the detention center which has housed numerous untried accused terrorists for years and received criticism from various human-rights groups.

Meanwhile, the raid in Somalia was unsuccessful. U.S. forces planned to capture Ikrima, a senior commander in al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist terror group that controls large swathes of territory in mostly lawless Somalia. A spokesman for the Pentagon, George Little, told the BBC that Ikrima was closely associated with two now-dead al-Qaeda members Harun Fazul and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who helped with the 1998 embassy bombings and later attacks on a hotel and airline in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002. The raid, however, was aborted after a guard for Ikrima’s compound in the coastal Somali town of Barawe sounded an alarm. Out of concern for heavy civilian and possible American casualties, the commandos withdrew from Barawe and returned to a waiting U.S. ship in the Indian Ocean. Though the commandos managed to kill one al-Shabab fighter, Ikrima was not captured or killed in the process.

The raids against Islamist militants in Libya and Somalia highlight the United States’ increased attention to terror networks operating in many African countries with unstable régimes. According to Reuters, during a press conference on October 8, President Obama made clear that in cases where local governments lack the capacity to fight terror groups, the United States was “going to have to continue to go after them.” Contested political authority has contributed to increased instability across North Africa. With the fall of longtime rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya since the Arab Spring, many al-Qaeda affiliates have taken advantage of the political turmoil and set up operations in these countries. Somalia has become a haven for terror networks, as it has been in near anarchy for over twenty years since the overthrow of dictator Siad Barre in 1991. Many analysts predict that until authority is reestablished in these unstable countries, the United States will not hesitate to conduct similar operations like in Libya and Somalia in the future.