NigeriansTalk

The idea that under­lines the banal­ity of evil relies on the notion that peo­ple are put in sit­u­a­tions – by their respec­tive gov­ern­ments or larger author­i­ties, even mere fam­i­lies – where the per­pet­u­a­tion of evil acts stop being evil and become merely a way to ensure their sur­vival. By sur­vival, I mean every­thing from “If I don’t keep my mouth shut, he’ll kill me, so I’m just going to look the other way”, or “If I don’t join in, I’ll die myself.” In all these cases, peo­ple stop being peo­ple and becom­ing merely means to some­one else’s end.

As impor­tant as it is for us to get the murderers/thieves/insert-fringe-group-here, it is just as impor­tant to under­stand the under­ly­ing sit­u­a­tion that cre­ates a logic – how­ever twisted – for these crimes or, at worst, cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where the per­pet­u­a­tion of evil becomes more ordi­nary. When one of the 10 mil­lion child beg­gars (from Niger­ian Curiosity’s blog) decide to rob a fruit-seller of some oranges, when a group of peo­ple from the poorer side of town take to rob­bing richer fam­i­lies, when yet another man from yet another uni­ver­sity cam­pus decides to join a group that strikes fear into the hearts of many, let us under­stand the sadly unre­mark­able cir­cum­stances – be it pres­sure to fit in, or poverty, or a search for an answer to “What am I going to eat today?.” Hav­ing said all this, I can­not but think that we tend to look for jus­ti­fi­ca­tions when the less for­tu­nate among us com­mit these kind of crimes, and splut­ter with dis­be­lief when those among us with more money and more for­tu­nate do the same things. We must first accept the human­ity of us all, and the sus­cep­ti­bil­ity of us all – regard­less of exoge­nous fac­tors like wealth and back­ground – to the very worst and best of what humans are capa­ble of.

Let’s not be fooled: Ideas that strip actors of their human­ity are every bit as dan­ger­ous as the more run-of-the-mill sit­u­a­tions that lead to crimes of sur­vival. And therein lies the para­dox — When an idea strips the actors who carry out its goals and those who suf­fer its effects of their human­ity, it leads to the same actions as those who com­mit crimes for sur­vival, and there­fore the same conclusion.

Peo­ple are party to ideology/religion in order to be part of some­thing larger than their own bod­ies. A lot has been said about Abdul­mu­tal­lab, and I won’t pre­tend to know exactly what his par­tic­u­lar aims were. But I do not share the media’s incli­na­tion to morph ter­ror­ists into mon­sters that carry Qur’ans. They’re human. That is all. And the way to defeat them, in Nige­ria or abroad, is to do what they do not – ren­der them human, and defeat them as human.