“What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate” Rolf Auer, 9 October 2014
My girlfriend and I were sipping lattes at the Living Well café. “Living well is the best revenge,” goes the popular saying. Certainly those of us living in the West would find this difficult to refute.
The violent actions of ISIL / ISIS was all the rage as far as topics of conversation went. As was our wont, we took opposing viewpoints—me for, her against.
I began. “I don’t see what the big deal is with beheading people,” I tried. “After all, we had (and still have, in some places) capital punishment. The end result is the same: death.”
She responded with a passion that surprised me, “How would you feel if you were supposed to pay for some transgression by being violently put to death? How would you feel if they did it by cutting your head off while you were still breathing and feeling? You have to admit, it’s barbaric! Now suppose you’re innocent on top of that! How would the injustice of it feel to you whose head is being cut off? Who’s speaking up for you? Who’s trying to stop what’s happening to you, trying to stop the unfairness of it? Let’s face it, this beheading business is merely an excuse for some sick people to inflict unimaginable pain on helpless victims with impunity in order to satisfy some twisted need for cheap thrills.”
“Wouldn’t you say it’s part of their culture? That this type of punishment is commonplace there?”
“Possibly. However, there are a number of points which should first be considered. Firstly: the people from the other cultures, who are sometimes journalists, sometimes aid workers, and so on, are innocents caught up in the conflict unawares. They do not deserve their fate. Where is the Red Cross in all of this? Where is the Geneva Convention? Secondly: somehow, that ISIL / ISIS is using these beheadings to recruit new members and to fundraise and to raise their profile in the world cheapens their cultural utilization of this, their version of capital punishment. This discredits that idea, it now comes across as thinly disguised, conscious terrorism whose real intent is to violently and very visibly object to the supposedly comparatively morally abject West, something a lot of people in their area agree with, be it only because of xenophobia. Thirdly: don’t we have a duty to see that the fairness we enjoy in our relatively peaceful part of the world is made available to others in other countries? If we see something happening in the world which we perceive as being grossly unfair, are we not obligated to see that opportunities to enjoy the peace we have are made available to those who are doing without? Fourthly and lastly: won’t we look back eventually when we do have worldwide peace, and wonder why we allowed violence and war to persist for so long without doing anything?”
I conceded the argument to her, and smiled. “I believe you are correct, after all. More coffee?” She clinked her cup against mine, and smiled back.
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