In 2003, the American press, then the world press, then Islamists everywhere, crucified Army Gen. Jerry Boykin for saying (in churches, to Christian audiences) that the war on terror is a battle over spiritual worldviews. Gayle Williams would likely tell you that is true — if she were alive.

 

Because Taliban militants had rendered the city too dangerous, Williams, a Christian aid worker who helped Afghanistan’s disabled, relocated from Kandahar to Kabul. But Kabul proved more dangerous: On the morning of Oct. 20, two gunmen on a motorcycle gunned Williams down as she walked to work, the London Telegraph reports.

 

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Williams’s death, saying she was killed for “preaching Christianity.”

 

It is not the first time Islamists in the country have targeted Christian aid workers. In January, Cydney Mizell, an American working with the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, was kidnapped along with driver Muhammad Hadi. A month later, both were confirmed dead. In 2007, 23 Korean aid workers from a church group were held hostage in Southern Afghanistan. Two were killed before kidnappers released the rest.

 

Williams, worked for the British charity Serve Afghanistan, which has suspended operations while it reviews security procedures. “Gayle was serving a people that she loved, and [she] felt God called her to be there for such a time as this…,” her mother told the London Telegraph on Tuesday. “She died doing what she felt the Lord had called her to do.”