Should we lend terrorists a sympathetic ear?

It is a pretty standard course that when a person disagrees with us on a matter of deep conviction, particularly where we believe a significant moral issue is at stake, there is a great reluctance to attempt to understand the person's views. Indeed, a sympathetic ear is often seen to be a siding with the wicked person. And we would sooner dismiss or demonize than seek to understand.

Consider for instance the 2005 film "Paradise Now". The film depicts two childhood friends, both Palestinians, being drawn into a plot to participate in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. One ultimately participates and the other does not.

The film received high praise from some quarters, but the response from others was vociferous: the film, so it was charged, serves to justify the acts of a suicide bomber.

But did it? Or did it merely aid the viewer in moving beyond the caricatures common in the thirty second spot of the evening news? I suspect the average North American who only follows the Palestine issue on the major news networks will have seen plenty of images of Palestinians burning Israeli flags and dancing jubilantly in the streets after a horrific bombing. Of course such images are deeply disturbing. But they will not have seen the day to day conditions, the hopelessness, the desperation that some come to believe justifies unspeakable acts. Put it this way: do we really believe the entire community is composed of sociopaths with no moral conscience?

I think "Paradise Now" recognizes that if one side reduces the other to the level of a sociopath that cannot be reasoned with, then the conflict will go on in perpetuity. After all, the only options in dealing with sociopaths is to lock them up forever or destroy them.

If we don't agree with that blunt analysis then what we need to do, uncomfortable though it may be, is to push beneath the surface in order to understand why a person acts in a particular way.

To discover a context in which a person does something does not mean, as we often think, that we are then obliged to find the act justified. Consider this example: a wife kills her husband in cold blood while he is sleeping. We could refuse to look at her case and write her off as a sociopath like Aileen Wuornos. Or we could listen to her story of spousal abuse and realize that her act, though still not justified, did have an explanatory context. There were reasons why she acted the way she did. With this knowledge we can perhaps then have a better sense of how to prevent in the future the spousal abuse to begin with.

It is very difficult to sit and listen to others, particularly when we consider their views and actions to be reprehensible. Our knee-jerk attitude is better summed up by the title of Glenn Beck's new book Arguing with Idiots. But here's the rub. If you think they are an idiot to begin with, do you suppose that it is likely you'll ever win them over to your position? Don't bet on it.

And so my ironic conclusion: if we really want some day to rid the world of terrorism, then I suppose we should lend the terrorist a sympathetic ear. And if you can listen with charity to a terrorist, then I suppose you can listen to anybody. 

(By the way, I'm flying to Montreal tomorrow and will be gone until Wednesday, but I look to you all to keep the conversations going.)