ISIS has been active in the Middle East since 2006, but it wasn’t until the Internet release of American journalist James Foley’s execution last August that the group achieved household infamy. Two more execution videos followed the first, and just last month the militants made headlines again with a purported mass beheading in Libya. The group has attracted international attention not only for its sickening brutality, but for its strangely hip and modern use of social media to advance its agenda.
There has been some debate in the media sphere about the use of the word “evil” to describe this organization. The group’s deliberate attempt to make a spectacle of violence and killing is certainly difficult to stomach; it is a grotesque manipulation of our digital resources, and one that clearly demonstrates the will to use human lives as leverage. However, some have cautioned that “evil” degrades and dehumanizes the enemy in a way that is equally reprehensible. Others readily acknowledge the group’s evil attributes, but argue against the pragmatics of lumping the enemy into this exclusive moral category (see James Dawes’ op-ed, “Should we call ISIS evil?” published shortly after Foley’s execution).
The notion of “evil” has been a provocative subject of moral and philosophical debate for thousands of years. It is the product of a historical pattern in which the nature of a human offense becomes so extreme, and so emotionally repugnant, that we find it necessary to create an island of outcasts in the moral and social landscape. This island is “evil” as we know it: a place of ultimate moral corruption, from which none can escape or return. It is a way of distancing ourselves from actions and ideologies we find totally incompatible with our own.
In this way, “evil” is a convenient but illogical solution to a difficult moral problem. In response to the question, “How can we contextualize these actions in the broader spectrum of human behavior?” we reply, “These actions have no justifiable context, and do not represent human behavior.” Rather than answering the question, we reject its basic premise, and replace it with one we find more digestible. We use words like “inhuman” and “evil” to suggest that the actions in question are not products of human behavior, but arise from a separate source entirely. As it turns out, this is a little like solving a crossword puzzle without looking at the clues.
Such an approach suggests some fundamental insecurity in the human psyche. What frightens us most of all is not the action considered “evil,” but the possibility that we might be capable of such a thing ourselves. There is a paradox in self-destructive behavior – the kind of behavior that characterizes suicide bombings, and many other tactics terrorists employ – that horrifies and overwhelms the human conscience. It seems to run contrary to our basic instinct for survival. It flies in the face of thousands of years of human progress, progress that could not be made without the basic human facility to cooperate.
So we are not totally without basis to suggest that ISIS, along with all the violent, radicalized groups that have preceded them, carries out the will of some sinister force. Our failure comes in the attempt to compartmentalize this force as entirely separate and apart from human nature. In other words, the problem is not that evil could exist in human nature but that we attempt to cut it out, like the face of an estranged relative in a family portrait, as if doing so could erase the bloodlines that inexorably tie us to it. This allows us to mitigate our own responsibility, to judge the “other” for what he is capable of, rather than contemplating our own culpability as fellow human beings. The actions of ISIS are horrific and inexcusable, but to suggest they stem from some inscrutable alien force is irresponsible and simplistic.
Until we can come to terms with our shared responsibility as human beings, this cycle of atrocity will likely continue. A problem that stems from an inhuman source has no human solution. “Evil” is malignant and inoperable, and has no productive end.
Metawhimsical 