The compassion we are speaking of, this rahmah that marks the beginning of every sura of the Quran, was translated as “true charity” or “purest love” by famous Catholic prelates and French theologians of the XVIIth century. They had heard of a great woman saint discovered by the crusaders among the Saracens of Palestine and, believing her to be a Christian, they devoted monumental eulogies to none other than Rabi’a al-‘Adawyya, describing her as the “portrait of true compassion”. This remarkable woman, whose passionate poems are still memorized and chanted from Malaysia to Mauretania, is known in Islam as shahidat al-‘ishq al-ilahi, the true witness of God’s love.
But shahid does not only mean witness in Arabic. Just as in Greek, were the word martys - meaning witness - becomes martyr in the New Testament, the word shahid in the Quran denotes someone who dies out of devotion to God. The first martyr of Islam was a woman, Sumayya. She was the sixth person to embrace the faith, right after the beginning of the Revelation to Prophet Muhammad. She was tortured for days by the polytheists of Mecca under the blazing sun and finally stabbed and impaled with a spear in front of her young son. But she remained steadfast and died as a martyr, the everlasting first witness of Islam.
In my country, Sicily, the patron saints, miraculous healers whose sacred veils protect from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, breast cancer and rape, are all women, young virgins starved to death or blinded or burnt alive or torn apart for their fortitude and determination. Their luminous path is still very much alive in our people. It would therefore seem that through the ages and across religions, in the West as in the East, the virtues of compassion, true love, witnessing Truth and dying for it have been recognized as an essentially feminine vocation.
And yet, when a year and a half ago Darya Dugina, a young philosopher who represented Europe at its best, with her ability to fuse Greek metaphysics and Christian tradition, was brutally murdered in a terrorist attack, no Roman prelate celebrated her as the champion of devotion, no outraged feminist called for international sanctions for the crime, no NGO nominated her for a human rights award.
» In the West as in the East, the virtues of compassion, true love, witnessing
Truth and dying for it have been recognized as an essentially feminine vocation. «
Truth and dying for it have been recognized as an essentially feminine vocation. «
But shahid does not only mean witness in Arabic. Just as in Greek, were the word martys - meaning witness - becomes martyr in the New Testament, the word shahid in the Quran denotes someone who dies out of devotion to God. The first martyr of Islam was a woman, Sumayya. She was the sixth person to embrace the faith, right after the beginning of the Revelation to Prophet Muhammad. She was tortured for days by the polytheists of Mecca under the blazing sun and finally stabbed and impaled with a spear in front of her young son. But she remained steadfast and died as a martyr, the everlasting first witness of Islam.
In my country, Sicily, the patron saints, miraculous healers whose sacred veils protect from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, breast cancer and rape, are all women, young virgins starved to death or blinded or burnt alive or torn apart for their fortitude and determination. Their luminous path is still very much alive in our people. It would therefore seem that through the ages and across religions, in the West as in the East, the virtues of compassion, true love, witnessing Truth and dying for it have been recognized as an essentially feminine vocation.
Speech of Princess Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca,
February 26, 2024.
And yet, when a year and a half ago Darya Dugina, a young philosopher who represented Europe at its best, with her ability to fuse Greek metaphysics and Christian tradition, was brutally murdered in a terrorist attack, no Roman prelate celebrated her as the champion of devotion, no outraged feminist called for international sanctions for the crime, no NGO nominated her for a human rights award.
Why? Is it just because Darya was Russian and proud to be part of a nation which she described as “capable of compassion and empathy”? Is it because according to her, unlike the competing Western “wolf-man”, the Russian soul has a softness, a lack of rigid rationality, which it turns into strength, reconnecting the world and healing its wounds?
No. It is not so. Nobody had taken the pain to listen to this extraordinary polyglot philosopher, who was also an athletic, elegant, artistic, modern woman. Darya's desire for perfection and beauty and her eagerness to contemplate the absolute essence of Truth were simply hidden behind the appearance of a young journalist. Like all her martyred predecessors, she was an ancilla abscondita, a devoted servant of God protected behind a veil of normality.
It was only when, confronting the Empire of Chaos, Darya raised her name Platonova like a flag to affirm that being a woman today means choosing between two opposite archetypes, that finally the enemy noticed her. Because she had revealed the imperative choice that awaits all women today. The deadly and compelling confrontation that should have remained concealed under gender issues and feminist grievances. Either to be allured by the triumphant role model of Dido, the Phoenician queen who invoked the forces of the underworld to curse with a satanic ritual her lover Aeneas, that she failed to distract from his divine mission. Or to follow at tremendous risk the sacred path of Dante’s Beatrice, the Perfect Being who leads her man beyond the highest levels of Paradise up to the contemplation of the Holy Throne.
Daria has shown us the way to follow if we seek to build the multipolar world from above, contemplating the stars and leaving the sewers behind. It is the duty of all us women who are here today and believe that compassion is our mission and tradition our steed, to pick up the torch of charity and devotion. That inner flame of the heart that preserved Daria’s body and kept it intact, miraculously uncorrupted by the murderous fire, will lead us and protect us. It is up to us to pick it up and carry it on, right now, lighting the path of mankind, blacked out by violence, ambition and arrogance.
» She had revealed the imperative choice that awaits all women today. «
No. It is not so. Nobody had taken the pain to listen to this extraordinary polyglot philosopher, who was also an athletic, elegant, artistic, modern woman. Darya's desire for perfection and beauty and her eagerness to contemplate the absolute essence of Truth were simply hidden behind the appearance of a young journalist. Like all her martyred predecessors, she was an ancilla abscondita, a devoted servant of God protected behind a veil of normality.
It was only when, confronting the Empire of Chaos, Darya raised her name Platonova like a flag to affirm that being a woman today means choosing between two opposite archetypes, that finally the enemy noticed her. Because she had revealed the imperative choice that awaits all women today. The deadly and compelling confrontation that should have remained concealed under gender issues and feminist grievances. Either to be allured by the triumphant role model of Dido, the Phoenician queen who invoked the forces of the underworld to curse with a satanic ritual her lover Aeneas, that she failed to distract from his divine mission. Or to follow at tremendous risk the sacred path of Dante’s Beatrice, the Perfect Being who leads her man beyond the highest levels of Paradise up to the contemplation of the Holy Throne.
Daria has shown us the way to follow if we seek to build the multipolar world from above, contemplating the stars and leaving the sewers behind. It is the duty of all us women who are here today and believe that compassion is our mission and tradition our steed, to pick up the torch of charity and devotion. That inner flame of the heart that preserved Daria’s body and kept it intact, miraculously uncorrupted by the murderous fire, will lead us and protect us. It is up to us to pick it up and carry it on, right now, lighting the path of mankind, blacked out by violence, ambition and arrogance.