During Algeria’s “Dirty War” (1992– 2002), a civil war in which violence was widespread, much of the violence was perpetrated by fundamentalist Islamists and directed against foreigners, such as the French Trappist monks at the Our Lady of Atlas Abbey in Algeria. In anticipation that the violence would reach the abbey and that he might become a victim of it, Christian de Chergé, one of the monks, wrote this spiritual testament, urging his readers not to blame Algerians or Muslims generally and extending forgiveness to the one who might take his life.