Complicity and Culpability

If you are a member of a group, you are the first line of defense against unethical members of your group. You cannot say that their actions are separate from you, that you are only trying to live your life and take care of your own interests, and that what they do has nothing to do with you. You cannot say that others – outside of the group – are solely responsible for confronting them and bringing them to justice. You are responsible. And, if you know that they exist, and do not warn others about them, you are complicit. Further, if you know of acts that they are planning, or even just may be planning, you are culpable. You are a silent conspirator in their crimes. You bear the responsibility of opposing them, even at the cost of your own life.

If you are unwilling to do this, then you should leave the group.

Those Muslims, and one has to understand that this may well include the majority of all Muslims worldwide, who accept without opposition the actions of extreme Islam, are complicit in these acts. (The Prophet himself initiated the first Islamic Holy War, against the clans of Mecca that refused to believe his revelations.) Those Muslims who support such acts, if only in their hearts and private conversations, are culpable.

The question is, are they criminally culpable? Under today's standards of justice, they are not, but under tomorrow's remains to be seen. In any case, while they may never be held to account in a court of law, they know, in their hearts, that they have blood on their hands.

Those Jews in Israel, and America, who turn a blind eye to the repression of the Palestinians by Ariel Sharon and his gang, are complicit in his crimes. Those who offer him support, either tacit or direct, are culpable.

Those individuals who are employed by, or in other ways support, the economic and media institutions of the world, and who recognize – if only in their hearts – that such support underlies all manner of dictatorship, starting with by their own institutions, and who beg off any responsibility for the consequences of their support, who argue that they are just trying to live their lives in the system to which they were born, are complicit in all of the crimes of such dictatorship. Those individuals who serve in the senior levels of such institutions, and who ignore the consequences of their institutions' behavior, indeed, who guide it, are culpable. They should be viewed as and judged culpable, criminally culpable, now.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)