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Before we invaded Iraq the second time, Hosni Mubarak - President of Egypt - warned against it, saying something along the lines of however bad Saddam Hussein seemed to the West, by local standards he really wasn't anything extraordinary. The point is that we forget or refuse to understand what the expression "cultural differences" can really mean.
An Arab martyr believes he will go straight to heaven and sit next to Muhammed. He really believes that with all his heart, just as he believes it is his sacred duty to chase non-believers from his land. That is how he can contemplate what to most of us is unthinkable and turn himself into a human bomb. A spy or collaborator is less than human, so we see a person being burned but the person who did that terrible thing was not burning a person.
These are not excuses for what we all likely perceive as inexcusable behaviour. Look at the disgust most of us feel for paedophiles and then spend an evening reading about ancient Greece: a culture on which much of our civilisation is based. Think about today's rules concerning under-age sex and then find out the age at which people were married as recently as a couple of hundred years ago. During the time of the Medicis, Michael Angelo and Galileo, a girl's elder brother would have sex with her on the eve of her wedding, so that her bridegroom would not have the discomfort of taking away her virginity and she would know how to satisfy him. Culture goes through 180 degree turns in time as well as in space and what we regard as wrong and right changes within single societies, as well as between one society and another.
Nor should we generalize. There is as much variety in Arab society as in our own and we don't brand ourselves child killers, just because some in our society believe that medical intervention is wrong, even when a child's life is at stake.
And why is it that we can be horrified at the picture of one man pouring oil on another, but accept our own use of weapons which kill just as surely and as horribly. Is the act, the intent or the consequence of the act really different because killer(s) and victim(s) are yards or miles apart, instead of face-to-face? The only difference is what we choose to perceive as different.
Anyway this is only in part about the constantly shifting goal posts of right and wrong. The real issue for us should be that when you are faced with an implacable enemy, ultimately you have two choices: either wipe him out or make peace with him. If you can not or will not destroy him so that he can never come back and hurt you again, the first step towards making peace is to understand him.
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