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Saturday, 30 Sep 2006
Paradoxically, a perfectly acceptable and more or less peaceful mechanism of civil disobedience is being used to protest against the execution (which, arguably, isn't exactly civil, but at least legal) of a man who has been charged of being affiliated with an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which left nine people dead, an act which was uncivil, undemocratic and inhumane.
On the one hand, it is the beauty of democracy and participation, so that even when in areas in which they are not necessarily the rules, they have proliferated and inflitrated cultures so that their tools and arguments are being used to defend and attack a multitude of ideas and practices. The people engaging in the strike protesting the hanging of Mohammed Afzal, are not necessarily doing so because they believe he is innocent, or because the death penalty as a concept is unacceptable. In fact, they might endorse the 2001 attack, yet are using arguably liberal and acceptable means to protest it.(let's not get into an argument about how democracy and liberalism are a modern invention and premodern civilisations have been using similar techniques forever. please)
On the other hand, such practices, it can be said, are being twisted and exploited, emptied of their meaning, and used for the wrong reasons, by those who haven't internalised their spirit. Something like Islamic radicals accusing the US of being undemocratic, but then declaring that democracy is an evil imperialist creation anyway.
While this guy is probably guilty, I would argue that executing him now is not a good idea, not because of high handed moral reasons about capital punishment, but because, as has been said, this would seriously inflame the volatile situation in Kashmir. And maybe sometimes the rule of law should be prudently and subtly submitted to the political good. Or something.
I prefer to look at the full half of the glass on this particular occassion.
Dandash
September 30th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
i frequently marvel at the way people use the tools that they choose to, and then rescind anyone elses right to use them in opposiotion. The terrorist groups and extremist organisations often make use of arguments like democracy and legal process and war crimes when being applied to others, but have no intention of ever applying those rules to themselves, nor are they answerable to anyone who holds them to such rules. That’s the real imbalance of the war between cultures, those who work in the shadows underground have all the so called civilized societies weapons AND all the ones that we are not allowed access to anymore such as indiscriminate murder and mass killing.
September 30th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
he’s a murderous bastard and should hang. if his friends intend to kill more people in response, they’ll be next.
September 30th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Dandash, it is difficult to know what to do in this case. Sometimes, it is better –it seems–to have the execution and get it over with. Terrorists can react just as badly to their imprisionment, demanding their release, threatening and carrrying out violence, etc. It is a hard call. Maybe better to get it over with and move on.
September 30th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
“While this guy is probably guilty, I would argue that executing him now is not a good idea, not because of high handed moral reasons about capital punishment, but because, as has been said, this would seriously inflame the volatile situation in Kashmir. And maybe sometimes the rule of law should be prudently and subtly submitted to the political good. Or something.”
The law ought not to be enforced because they guys’ ideological friends might make trouble?
Well, hell, I guess we’ll just stop fighting, arresting, or otherwise opposing any terrorists. After all, it’ll only bring more revenge attacks. It’s better to roll over and hope they won’t hurt us anymore.
Oh yeah. La ilah ila allah…
October 1st, 2006 at 2:14 am
The problem with leaving terrorists alive is that become an excuse for further terrorism. One of Nasrallah’s demands when he kidnapped the soldiers was the release of a brutal Lebanese terrorist from an Israeli jail. This has happened before.
I deplore the death penalty, but if this guy stays alive he may become the cause of a hostage taking in the future.
October 1st, 2006 at 9:03 am
Dawnfire
How did :”And maybe sometimes the rule of law should be prudently and subtly submitted to the political good. Or something.†turn into “I guess we’ll just stop fighting, arresting, or otherwise opposing any terrorists. After all, it’ll only bring more revenge attacks. It’s better to roll over and hope they won’t hurt us anymore.”?
Explain that to me.
October 1st, 2006 at 11:50 am
Hey, and in the meanwhile, India has concluded with absolute certainty that Pakistani version of CIA is behind the recent Bombay bombings.
A new India/Pakistan war appears to be pretty much inevitable. Should be interesting, wtih a nuclear Pakistan.
It seems to me that the question now is not whether there will or will not be a nuclear holocaust - it’s only who and where will use the first nuke.
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:47 am
Raccoon, you can rest easy. There isn’t going to be any war between India/Pakistan because of this. When the Indian parliament was attacked in Dec. 2001 with the express purpose of killing and kidnapping as many Indian politicians as possible the Indian politicians were livid. Suddenly, terrorism hit really close at home. Till then it was always the common man who suffered while these assholes got police security even when they went for their morning stroll. India did mass troops at the border with Pakistan but backed down under international pressure. When the poor folks of India suffer like they did in Mumbai train blasts, all these politicos do is issue platitudes about fighting terror and not giving in and some such bullshit. Since in this case “ordinary” Indians died, their representatives in Parilament don’t give a shit. So no war, no skirmish, no battle. Just a war of words every now and then.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:57 am
Umraojaan is right! Countries the world over are soft when it comes to fighting terrorism on account of “sending the wrong message”(Huh! Come Again!) So this time around they want him not to be hanged but his sentence to be commuted, I’ll tell you what happened to one such person who was detained and thanks to the marvelously lousy pace of the great Indian Judicial System was still an undertrial when on 31st Decemeber 1999, this happened http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Airlines_Flight_814
and this and this is the latest report I saw on what followed
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12921.html
Death Penalty has its own moral implications which is too detailed to be argued over in a comment , but if there is ever a fit case for death penalty this is it. And btw, the murderer is now pleading for clemency to the President of the Country against which he is convicted of having waged a war against.
October 21st, 2006 at 2:08 pm
[...] The third category is by far the largest one, for it includes both genuine pragmatists and all the political opportunists that the Indian government has foolishly engaged in its attempts to resolve the troubles in Jammu & Kashmir. Kashmiri politicians have found it to their advantage to incite and project the Kashmiri people as being supportive of terrorists. Ordinary Indians are generally outraged by this, and may even have hardened their stands because of it. But the Indian government should hardly be surprised by this. Remember what the Hurriyat was saying after last year’s earthquake. [...]
November 27th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Even though I know its a knee jerk reaction, sometimes I despair about whether and if, Indian Muslims will ever be integrated into post-independence Indian society. It still bewilders me that the perpetrators of the Mumbai train blasts and the 1992 Mumbai bomb balsts were people who had been born and raised in Mumbai. The men who planted the bombs on those trains would themselves have used those routes at some point or the other, considering that they were raised in Mumbai and ever worked there. How then could they have cold-bloodedly set about destroying the city that they called home? Eventually, I begin to wonder, is it really possible to be a Muslim in India and not feel conflicted by the multiple identities one carries; as an Indian, as a Muslim and as the member of a community that is both a symbol of Indian secularism and also of all that is wrong with secularism
August 29th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Ethical dillemas–so many varying views and all so passionate on each side. For a little balance and wisdom check out Norman Geisler’s new book
‘Love Your Neighbor: Thinking Wisely About Right and Wrong’ Balanced, biblical, non-partisan.
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Neighbor-Thinking-Wisely/dp/1581349459/ref=sr_1_1/102-2085712-9684969?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188402266&sr=8-1
March 29th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
International political sources predict the begging of the End of the Egyptian regime on April 6th 2008, when the masses begin the Civil Disobedience across Egypt intended for total change.