"It's easy to be a saint in Paradise." -- Captain Benjamin Sisko
Every time there is a religiously-motivated attack, like the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, there are immediately anti-religious people who condemn the violence, but many times they end up approaching it from a view of either cultural or quasi-racial superiority. This view is wrong, but it is hard to articulate why it is wrong in something like a twitter post. Many of the people who recognize it as wrong struggle to elucidate the reasons why it is wrong. From my rather unique perspective as a Western born and raised convert to Islam, I would like to explain why it is wrong and offer an alternative way of approaching giving criticism.
Like most moral issues, the answer can be found in Star Trek. The criticism that "Western culture" provides superior morality is simply untrue. "Western culture" is not a single, homogeneous unit that exists in a particular area. Instead, what is meant by this is either Christian culture or Enlightenment culture. Christianity is demonstrably not any less violent than any other religion, including Islam. Growing up in the West is no guarantee that an individual will be enlightened, and growing up in the East is no guarantee that an individual will not hold enlightened views. Western individuals can be radicalized and made to commit egregious crimes without turning to Islam, as in the Charles Manson Family. The Nazis were undeniably from the West, but that does not make their values any more similar to what most people would want to say are "Western values."
Instead, the difference between violent and non-violent people is a matter of psycho-social well-being and exposure to violence and psychopathy. More accurately, it is a mixture of psychological, social, and economic factors. Most people living in the West have grown up without significant trauma being inflicted on them throughout their lives. They have grown up in relative prosperity, relative safety, and a relative underexposure to violence. As Benjamin Sisko explains, this creates an artificial view of the universe in which people are sheltered and do not understand why others turn to violence. If you take away these advantages, any individual from anywhere in the world becomes equally likely to turn to violence.
Individuals who have grown up in affluent or middle class American, British, Canadian, etc. homes have likely not been exposed to much violence or gore. They are not likely to have seen their parents or friends violently killed or maimed. They are not likely to have been in the situation of needing to fight for their basic needs or safety. They are not likely to have witnessed a bomb go off a few feet from them.
The people living in the West who have witnessed this kind of violence, for example those in Central America and the American inner city, are just as likely to become violent as people in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries. The barbarity that occurs in some parts of Mexico could easily rival anything happening in Syria. In some American urban jungles, the life expectancy for black men is lower than any group's life expectancy anywhere else in the world. People in these areas turn to lives of violence and crime at a rate at least equal to those in the Middle East. So the problem is not with race; it is with environment.
If you do not believe this, I challenge you to have a child and give them to a family living in one of these violent environments. Do you really believe that your child is genetically superior and will not commit violence, no matter how much violence they are exposed to? (Don't actually do this, obviously. If you are not the sort of person who can predict the outcome, you are probably not nearly as moral as you believe you are.) Another quote from Star Trek DS9. O'Brien: "When we were growing up, they used to tell us humanity had evolved, that mankind had outgrown hate and rage. But when it came down to it, when I had the chance to show that no matter what anyone did to me, I was still an evolved human being, I failed. I repaid kindness with blood. I was no better than an animal."
You are not a morally or biologically superior individual. If you were placed in a situation of sufficient violence and barbarity, with the right combination of psychological factors, social factors, or economic factors, you would turn to violence as well. By remembering this and approaching others with a sense of commonality instead of superiority, we can move everyone on past violence. Eradicating crime and violence will not be easy, but understanding and compassion provide better results than condemnation. Providing large-scale psychological support may not be feasible, and providing only military solutions is ineffective, but it is possible on a small scale to change the way people think and offer them alternatives to violence.
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