The Politics of Forgivableness

Suppose someone joined a group, and that group was found to be responsible for a lot of harm to innocent people. The person who had joined now sought to leave the group, and asked us for help. Should we automatically say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ regardless of what else might be true in such a case? Or should we ask questions such as:

Why did the person join the group? Was the motive a nasty one, was it naivety that played a big part, or was the individual thoroughly deceived?
Did the person actually take part in any harmful act? Or had the participation merely been a passive one?
Even if the person had taken part in regrettable activities, do we now find genuine remorse, and is there room for forgiveness and rehabilitation?

These questions are pertinent if we are to form the right judgement.

For example, there are young men and women who went to Syria believing they would become part of something better. Some went on to commit atrocities, but others were not involved in combat. Some became more obsessed with fighting, but there were those who became disillusioned and wished they had not been duped. We cannot know what to make of any given individual unless we have more information about that person’s specific case.

But that is nothing unique to those going off to Syria. People have joined gangs or cults, aligned themselves with groups that are connected with terrorist activities, or befriended those who perpetrated violence. Yet when we look back on history, in Northern Ireland, in South Africa, and countless other conflicts around the world, who are we to say which individual on which side deserves to be unreservedly condemned and punished, and who should be given an opportunity for rehabilitation, if we are not willing to consider the actual facts of the case.

In the coming months and years, we will be hearing a lot more about whether people who have blindly backed a cause should be forgiven. We must resist the temptation to condemn them all automatically. Some of them may not be racist; some of them may have been genuinely incapable of seeing the huge damages that would be brought about; and many may have been duped by criminals who broke the law to sway them to do what they did. Rather than declaring that none of them is to be forgiven, we should allow that those who were cruelly deceived and those who now truly repent, ought to be given a second chance. The same, of course, cannot be said about those who revel in pushing our country into interminable political chaos and economic decline for the sake of their own fanaticism. For them, a ‘special place in hell’ would indeed be what they deserve.