Kim Sun-il, a South Korean man kidnapped last week and held by Islamic militants, has been beheaded, as the militants had said they would do. The South Korean foreign ministry confirmed his death, and the Associated Press was reporting it this afternoon. He is the latest to be killed in this way. There was Nicholas Berg. And then, there was Paul Johnson.

Paul Johnson was beheaded in Saudi Arabia Sunday. Before Johnson died, an anonymous letter posted online offered the most religiously empathetic attempt so far to save his life. The letter showed up on websites trafficked by al-Qaeda supporters. The writer of the letter, who signed off as “Saad the Believer,” said he was a Muslim friend of Johnson’s. If Johnson was harmed, he wrote, “I will curse you in all my prayers.”

So far, this letter shows the only public and even remotely effective approach to saving the American hostage’s life. In all the dogmatic public statements about the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, you have to wonder where Americans living abroad can find hope, if they should have the misfortune of being kidnapped and threatened with death. This letter might be it. This letter showed an alternative to the ethnocentric arrogance to which all cultures can fall victim. The letter spoke in the religious language of the militants, appealing to the beliefs that they publicly claim to hold, even if their actions defy so much of what other Muslims believe.

Paul Johnson still died, but the letter written on his behalf offers a glimmer of the cultural understanding that is so clearly now a matter of life and death. The letter was someone’s last-ditch attempt to derail a hopeless course. Its significance is its display of respect, the kind of respect you show by acknowledging that even as your beliefs are diametrically opposed, you accept that others see the world differently. This is the kind of respect that has a chance of saving a man’s life.

Vinnee Tong