During periods of war many people take big risks. There is one story in Scripture where a woman, who was a prostitute, helped Joshua and his men take Jericho. She took a very big risk, one that could have seen her killed by the people of Jericho, yet she remained protected. Travelling through time we come to the first and second world wars and here again we continue to learn about the brave deeds of the resistance – in Germany, France, Poland, and other European countries. They worked together, and sometimes they were betrayed. Yet they were the resistance.
This year Libya was at war, but unlike the world wars, this was a civil war which ended the reign of the dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The story of the resistance within Tripoli is just beginning to filter through, and the BBC has up a story about three brave individuals and the risks that they took to help bring down the regime.
In each of these stories the people took enormous risks. The woman met with strangers to receive “packages” and then to pass those “packages” onto others. She walked to her destination, carrying her handbag. She was bright enough to know that there was less chance of being searched if she went by foot than by car. The dentist was a diver, and he took the biggest risk, and the same is true of the three naval officers he helped. This man was captured and did undergo some torture. The fall of Tripoli came just in time, because his name was on a list marked for execution on September 1 (if Tripoli had not fallen). The third man took even bigger risks because he was amongst those who was providing information on the whereabouts of the weapons depots that were outside of civilian areas. He was not alone in that work, because there was another man, a dentist who had been residing in Scotland who was doing the same kind of work.
The driving force for these people was the fact that the original protesters were unarmed and that they were being shot and killed in the streets. This was sufficient reason for the resistance in Tripoli to gain momentum.
In this respect these people have a lot in common with the German resistance of the 2nd world war, as well as the French resistance, and the Polish resistance. These were the people that knew what was happening within their country was wrong, and so they acted within the shadows to bring about “regime change”.
These were people who were not motivated by Islam to play a part in the resistance, but in the case of the woman, I need to smile over her comment about reading the Koran and feeling safe. In her way, it was her belief in God that helped her and protected her when doing this dangerous task.
History of the world - sans revisionism 