Obama Gives Highest Award to Christian Worker Murdered in Afghanistan
President honors the faith of an optometrist who “set out to heal the poorest of the poor.”
ICC Note:
Dr. Tom Little, a Christian aid worker for International Assistance Mission (IAM) who was murdered in Afghanistan last August, was honored with the United States’ highest civilian award on Tuesday, Christianity Today reports.
By Trevor Persaud
2/15/2011 Afghanistan (Christianity Today) – President Obama today awarded the United States’ highest civilian honor to Dr. Tom Little, a Christian worker for the International Assistance Mission (IAM) who was murdered in Afghanistan last August.
“Tom Little could have pursued a lucrative career,” President Obama said during the ceremony for Little and 14 other recipients. “Instead, he was guided by his faith, and he set out to heal the poorest of the poor in Afghanistan. For 30 years, amid invasion and civil war, the terror of the Taliban, the spread of insurgency, he and his wife Libby helped bring Afghans—literally—the miracle of sight.”
Little, an optometrist, was leading an eye care team in the remote northeastern region of Badakhshan when he and nine others were found dead last summer. According to Compass Direct news service, the attack’s motive is still unclear. Though the Taliban, who claimed responsibility, alleged that the group had been proselytizing and carrying Bibles in the Dari language, the IAM insisted that neither was true.
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In his remarks, President Obama characterized Little as “a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word: a man who not only dedicated his life to others, but who lived that lesson of Scripture: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ “
Little’s was the only posthumous Medal of Freedom awarded this year.
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