Christianity
‘Of Gods and Men’: A film of enormous spiritual power
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A little-noted outgrowth of the current wave of popular upheaval sweeping the Arab world is that Algeria’s nearly 20 year rein of martial law has been lifted. Most of the 1990s were marked by a savage civil war that pitted a variety of Islamist insurgent groups against Algeria’s military regime and against each other. By the time it petered out early in the 2000’s, the massacre of whole villages, urban bombings, shootouts and assassinations had claimed 150,000 to 200,000 lives. Eventually, this conflict engulfed the French Cistercian Trappist monastery situated in a remote village, where its monks were much loved by their Muslim-Arab neighbors. They incorporated them into their everyday lives, even inviting them to family weddings and other life-cycle events.