In class this week we discussed the Paris
attackers during our symposium. One of the questions that was asked was that
of,” Are the terrorists acting in bad faith?” This concept is the idea that
people have of lying to themselves into thinking they do not have a choice. One
of the many examples Sartre gives of this habit is the waiter in the café. The
waiter’s exaggerated behavior is clear evidence that he is play-acting that he
is a waiter. He does his best to conform to everything a waiter should be doing.
However, in order to pretend to be a waiter the person must know that he not a
waiter, but a human being who is lying to himself to make him seem like a
waiter. Another example he gives is of a woman on a first date. The young
woman’s date compliments her on her appearance but she ignores the sexually
implied compliment. He then takes her hand and she lets her hand rest
indifferently in his so that she can buy time and delay having to make a choice
about his advances towards her. She is choosing to take his compliment as if it
is nothing sexual about her body and chooses to treat her hand as an object like
it is not apart of her body, which is acknowledging the fact that she can make
choices. Back to the Paris attacks, I’m really not sure if they were acting on
bad faith. I think that they thought what they are doing is right but most
everyone knows this not true. Their main goal if I understood this correctly is
to make the world hate Muslims so that Muslims will all return to their Islamic
state and the world will split and World War 3 will happen. Also, the reason
they attacked Paris was because they believe it’s the capital of prostitution
and vice which is interesting. However, this extreme idea endangers the lives
of so many people around the world. I don’t see how this is right in someone’s
mind if in the process you kill thousands of innocent people?
I think somehow they have lost all reason and thus believes they are acting in good faith. If they truly were acting as rational agents, they would know what they are doing is inhumane, but somehow they have misconstrued their beliefs and think they are doing this for the goodness of their religion, when in fact they are doing exactly what their religion opposes. Islam is a peaceful religion, they are doing this irrationally, so irrationally they are doing this in good faith.
ReplyDeleteThe Islamic extremists that attacked Paris knew exactly what they were doing and they were acting in accordance to a certain aspect of their faith. That faith, Wahhabism, is direct branch of Islam, most Muslims do not conform to it however many willingly do and others are brainwashed under it at a very young age. This offshoot of Islam was molded in the 1700s and is an extremely violent and ultra-conservative movement that has spread to many Islamic countries. These terrorists were simply furthering their beliefs in this sect of Islam. Their goal is not to make people hate them; their main goal is to make the world fall under one all-powerful caliphate. They desire to spread their religion to all corners of the world forcefully and those who oppose them or who have differing beliefs will either be converted or outright killed.
ReplyDeleteThe extremists are hard people to understand. There is no definite reason for why they are attacking and killing other than the fact that they hate western society. They don't seem to like anybody that believes in what they believe, even though we're not quite sure what they believe. However, we know they are not acting out of the actual Islamic belief system. These extremists have detached themselves from their society to create one of their own. Just like the woman on the date. When she's placing her hand in the man's, she's basically detaching herself from it. Playing as if it has nothing to do with her and is merely an object.
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