People who go to see the movie A Mighty Heart, which is based on the kidnap and murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl, might do well to read this painfully restrained and measured comment by his father, Prof Judea Pearl, on today’s Guardian Comment is Free blog:
At the same time, I am worried that the film falls into a trap Russell would have recognised: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film’s comparison of Danny’s abduction with Guantánamo (it opens with pictures from the prison) and of al-Qaida militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie’s director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote in the Washington Post that A Mighty Heart and his previous film, The Road to Guantanamo, were very similar: ‘There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this.’
Drawing a comparison between Danny’s murder and the detention of suspects in Guantánamo is precisely what the killers wanted, as expressed in both their emails and the murder video. Indeed, following an advance screening of A Mighty Heart in Los Angeles, a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said: ‘We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film.’ Yet the message that angry youngsters are hearing from such blanket generalisation is predictable: all forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddique Khan, one of the London suicide bombers, in his video. ‘Your democratically elected government,’ he told his fellow Britons, ‘continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people … [We] will not stop.’
Danny’s tragedy demands an end to this logic. There can be no comparison between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, on January 31 2002.
The doctrine of moral equivalence, the default position of the secular west, is the core reason why the west is losing the battle to defend itself against the terrorist and cultural jihad. Equivalence is actually a misleading word in this context, since the notion that violence begets violence and both are equally culpable is not just noxious in itself by failing to acknowledge the moral difference between an act of aggression and an act of self-defence against that aggression; it immediately morphs into a justification of that original act of aggression. It is therefore not only amoral but suicidal. And yet it is the knee-jerk posture of so many western intellectuals and media darlings.
To Daniel Pearl belonged the mighty heart; but those who abuse his memory in this way are inflicting a monstrous hurt.
