Terrorists are not evil, terrorism is
There are many ways of approaching the problem of good and evil philosophically and what they actually are - this very fact can be used as an argument for some of these views. It has been debated back and forth over the years but the vast majority of people still hold a view somewhere in between the most common and less arguable for any length of time views I will now present. Firstly, there is the religious view: there are reasons why debate of this does not last very long. The idea that a divine being superimposes values upon the world that we can choose to follow or not. The other is the simple idea of complete objectivity, rendering moral values just opinions. This makes a lot of sense: people follow their own morals because they wish to remain happy by sticking with what they are used to and what it ingrained into them; it is human nature for the vast majority of people. Morals like this are great when they are rationally defined and developed, but this is often not so. The above mixed view now comes into play, whereby most people seem to think that there are moral aspects that are just there even if they are not religious or do not care about it, giving “well… it’s just wrong“.
Following the objective approach, I have deduced that people cannot normally be applied the description of evil. This is because it is, I believe, *extremely* rare to actually find a truly evil person. By this I mean way beyond what most people would think, when they set aside their moral values about, say, the death penalty for exceptions such as Hitler, which in my opinion is fundamentally wrong. Even a truly evil one I would treat the same, if I actually have the ability to judge. So, here I post the argument of misguidance, that they have made some wrong choices in my view: they are still doing what is right in their mind and thus they are not evil and the idea of punishment remains pointless, so prison should only be for protection and reformation rather than retribution and perhaps deterrence. This argument allows for a great deal of forgiveness and many chances, helping people rather than taking any form of revenge. It flies out of the window when you consider that according to causality we are not going to literally change anything at all because everything will happen in one prescribed way in this universe.
Thus I come onto my main argument for this essay, terrorism and terrorists. I think we can safely assume that most of the time terrorists do honestly believe they are doing the right thing. One should not take everything one reads in the press for granted but based on the research that has been done the fragile human mind can be easily twisted to murderous purposes. This should form part of how we treat the prevention of terrorism and the laws we make around it. Terrorists are not people to be victimised as they have often suffered a great deal too: we must aim for doing away with retribution and making positive changes. Terrorists should be treated as humans in the same way everyone else in the justice system is, as well as this view being encouraged among ordinary people to fight prejudice and the danger of secularisation.
Sorry Sean, but that is just silly. You have to think in reality that if there was no terrorists then there would be no terrorism.
What happens if someone kills someone else in an angry rage after that person has killed their mother? We would say they were wrong to do it, but we probably wouldn’t think they were evil themselves because their mother was just killed.
Sean, that is not terrorism, that is just nonsense.
What you are saying echoes one of the points I tried to make; you are suggesting that terrorism is a different bracket of crime altogether, something we can break the normal rules for? No. We are fighting to defend our democratic values.
“Terrorism” has many meanings. The commonly understood meaning is “the use or threat of violence used with the purpose of gaining a (emotional) response, usually to support a political agenda” (largely lifted from Wiktionary).
So, we use the word “terrorism” to define, with one sweeping word, all actions perpetrated by others which could threaten our establishment(s). For example, we call the attempted car bombings in London “terrorism”, because, ultimately, we believe that those who aimed to cause problems were doing so to further their group’s (Al-Quaeda’s?) agenda. These people aren’t born with morals that say “the west is bad, etc” - no, they are indoctrinated with the use of so called “holy texts”, and promises of some magical salvation, and no doubt with a touch of history (the Crusades) thrown in for good measure, and a sense of reason for actions (”pay-back”).
Terrorism is a very abstract concept. By saying that “terrorists are not evil, terrorism is”, what I see you as saying is “terrorists are not evil - it is their actions which are”. Surely, we are defined by our actions?! That said, I don’t think that we can define anyone (not even Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or any suicide bomber) as evil without putting ourselves in a highly contradictory position - there will be many in ages past who have viewed as evil those we revere today. “Evil” is essentially subjective, even if a massively strong sentiment. A large proportion of the non-Nazi, non-Jew, non-minority population of Hitler’s Germany would have been very happy with his leadership, and indeed he is highly commended as a great leader in this day and age. I don’t think, however, that we can call him evil, as he did, ultimately improve the lives of many (and indeed, to his discredit, he destroyed the lives of others).
The only way to prevent “terrorism” is to fight its core (which comes close to making us terrorists, by the definition given above!). We need to treat the perpetrators of individual acts as we would treat those who commit any other crime, but with more harsh sentences. Not as further retribution for the misguided, but to warn those who are close to indoctrination, and hopefully turn them away from this path. Similarly, the various “hold without charge” laws can be fully justified - by stopping those who may go on to commit a crime while we gather evidence, we essentially allow them to “cool down”, and hopefully turn “off the path”.
Hopefully the above is fairly coherent - hope you’ve had a nice holiday!