The Joys of Citizenship

Oh, the irony.

In a new bid to 'tackle extremism', the government has been sending teaching packs to mosques and schools urging children as young as 11 to empathise with the motives of those who carried out the 7th July 2005 suicide bombings in London. In 'citizenship' classes, no less.

I think this highlights a couple of standard liberal beliefs about education and actions; the first being that all beliefs are somehow equal and worthy of similar respect, and the second is that every action is a reaction. We're all victims, just in different ways.

When I was at school we did similar things about 'imperialism'. I recall one textbook which asked something like:

"Put yourself in the position of Tecumseh of the Shawnee. How would you feel about white immigration to the Americas?"

My answer would be I simply do not know. That I'm an evil racist who is against cultural enrichment and diversity? A bit like I feel now when I see the Urdu and Arabic signs and schools in east London, or walk past a drug den in Brixton?

In any case, I'm not really sure why anyone is surprised the government is approving this. Tahir Alam, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain said that this is simply a standard educational tool, and in New Britain, it is.

Obviously, there are limits; no one will ever be asked to put themselves in the position of Hitler. Or the Confederacy, the Crusaders, or any of history's more unfashionable causes. The problem is that in a relative sense, everyone does things for their own reasons. Or, to make the example slightly more real, why not try to empathise with Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph? Somehow, I can't quite see the wonderfully named NUT pushing for the latter two, either.

If you can empathise with a suicide bomber, why can't you empathise with Hitler? Was Hitler a robot, programmed to cause Right-wing death and destruction? What about Rudolph? Was he just pure evil, did he not believe he was acting for the greater good?

In both examples, it is fairly obvious that their beliefs, however well intentioned, do not make their actions rational, justified or right.

The problem with Britain today is we have a long list of 'official victims'. These people tend to mainly come from ethnic or religious minorities, and the official line is they generally only act in good faith. For example, if four men wish to launch suicide attacks on London's transport network, we should try to understand.

After all, there are a number of potential causes; racism, discrimination, oppression, imperialism, US support for Israel, British support for the US, etc etc ad infinitum.

Unlike the Hitler example, however, it never seems to occur to anyone that maybe these people were just plain evil. A cultural misunderstanding is when I ask for tea but I'm brought coffee; it does not extend to blowing up scores of innocent people.

Did it ever occur to the people who wrote this 'teaching pack' that maybe these men were striking for a form of imperialism themselves? That maybe their religion demands it of them?

It doesn't surprise me for a moment that the Muslim Council of Great Britain thinks this is no big deal. It wants empathy. I'm sure many of its members are absolutely delighted by the idea that many people will now understand what happens when you don't give into Muslim demands, and that this is just and right, to be understood rather than condemned.

It's not right though, and it never will be; evil is evil, no matter in whose name it is practiced.

Some things are not worthy of 'understanding'. However, 'understanding' is increasingly our official policy on most normal crimes and murders, so perhaps this is simply a natural progression of liberal thought. Perhaps one day we will talk about Hitler's strict upbringing or Stalin's poverty and wring our hands that the poor lambs were driven to such acts, and never mind denying rational, personal choice, one of the fundamental aspects of being human.

Thinking like terrorists simply breeds terrorists; but it seems that in New Britain, at least for now, some terrorists are more equal than others.