.بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Humanly-constructed legalities are not the same as Objective Morality.
[Moreover: the law can be morally wrong, can be based on incorrect understandings of things. The media can lie; can create false narratives that audiences can just… so trustingly consume, regurgitate, consume, become deeply affected by.]
Because the kind of slavery that had been practised in America for years had been… ‘legal’, by their own standards. And Nelson Mandela had officially been recognised as… ‘a terrorist’. Until: he ‘wasn’t‘, apparently, and then he was ‘renamed’, rebranded, a hero. [What actually changed, except for the fundamentally changeable attitudes of a group of human beings?]
Ukrainians bearing arms, including little kids with guns: freedom fighters.
Palestinian men throwing rocks back at heavily-booted IDF soldiers (and the Israeli government is known, even by the UN, for being war criminals).
But, Palestinians… ‘Oriental-looking’. Beards, perhaps. And Muslim. So… t*rror*sts?
Any book of ‘law’ constructed by a fallible human being — or, indeed, a group of them — and with consideration of the fact that human beings can behave corruptly, immorally. Can have underlying interests, but present their motivations to be something else. Can be quite hypocritical, and lie.
Can be ‘lawmakers’, policy-makers, in Houses of Parliament, almost proudly making their own rules sometimes, and then breaking their own rules. If not the expected moral responsibility to at least lead, and to practise whatever it is that they preach…
What is it that gives them legitimacy, and such seeming… protection, from the moral travesties that they may themselves unapologetically commit? Is it… their titles? Being steeped in ‘history’ and ‘tradition’; the legitimacy that they’ve ‘inherited’ from their fathers? Their suits, and their boots? The colonial ‘official-ness’ of it all? What stops people from speaking out against those weighty hypocrisies?
Sometimes, legality and morality do overlap. But… not always, actually. Read, for just one example: the case of Shaker Aamer. Held in Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, without trial. Tortured without reason. Never charged for anything; never found to have been guilty of anything.
Whatever was done to him, though deeply immoral: it was… ‘legal’. That’s what happens when people with power that is morally quite unchecked… ‘make the law’.
And the pompous ‘officialness’ of things can often mask… things much more sinister. ‘Powerful’ individuals doing what they will, actually, and then not being seen as being guilty of anything particularly ‘wrong’, because that’s how they have constructed things to be.
Had the ‘Iraq War’ been… ‘moral’? In any way, at all?
Had it been ‘legal‘, though? [According to the US and UK political leaders at the time, apparently: yes.]
And if the definition of ‘terrorism’ is ‘using violence and aggression toward political ends’, then… Why ever does it seem to bend and change, sometimes? Why are some seemingly ‘immune’ to its claims: what makes them ‘special’?
And: can individuals be implicated for things, without actually having done anything wrong? Read: such things as ‘Prevent’.
Human-made legality is not the same as morality. And: for people who may find themselves wrongfully accused, suspected, eyed on the streets, seen and thus treated in a very particular (decidedly negative) way…
‘Reputation’ is not the same as character. ‘Reputation’: what might be said about you, the stories spun, and what the media might project, and then what the people might consume, come to their own conclusions; come to ‘hold‘ as being ‘true’…
‘Reputation’: popular ‘understandings’ of things, which may well often be… exaggerated. Tainted with lies. Misleading. Mis-understandings of things.
‘Truth’ might be, at least, in attempt: filtered, and contaminated, through various sieves, and nets, and lenses, and perhaps deliberately. Still:
Your character, the heart of things: is what is true.
Who’s writing the laws? [What are their backgrounds?] Who’s writing the history books? Who has significant influence over the media, and thus over what we come to consume? Who gets to decide? Who’s hiding things? What remains to be unearthed?
Which truths are being overlooked?
Who on Earth holds power, and: what on Earth have they been doing with it?
Journey to the Heart of Islam. 