While Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize speech to legitimize Afghanistan using just war principles, soldiers are currently unable to invoke these principles in refusing to serve. When we punish soldiers who heed their moral compasses, we deny them religious freedom, and our democracy is threatened. It’s time to allow those who oppose the war on ethical grounds the option of ‘Selective Conscientious Objection.’
Browsing Posts tagged ethics
This excellent article by Dr. Muqtedar Khan, the Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, explores the promise of Muhammad to establish friendly relationships with Christians. I’m posting an excerpt and a link to Khan’s original publication at the Washington Post website as food for thought.
Muslims and Christians together constitute over 50 percent of the world. If they lived in peace, we would be half way to world peace. One small step we can take towards fostering Muslim-Christian harmony is to tell and retell positive stories and abstain from mutual demonization.
In this article I propose to remind both Muslims and Christians about a promise that Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) made to Christians. The knowledge of this promise can have enormous impact on Muslim conduct towards Christians. Muslims generally respect the precedent of their Prophet and try to practice it in their lives.
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
Catching my personal site up with my work at the Xenia Institute, this is my most recent post at xeniainstitute.org. Here I take a tangent from the debate on closing Guantánamo Bay to raise questions about our national priorities and ethical choices.
News that the first Guantánamo detainee has arrived in the U.S. will undoubtedly restart a debate that has been simmering on the back burner for a few weeks now. The arrival of Ahmed Ghailani to stand trial in Manhattan for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya marks the first test of public resolve to keep terror suspects out of the United States. That resolve is apparent in polling data concerning national opinions on the proposal to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
My first blog entry at the Xenia Institute, this post explores the questions surrounding the questions of torture. Are we allowing the debate over accountability obscure the fact that at the end of the day we’re still talking about torture?
The question of the use of torture in the U.S. carries both short- and long-term implications for the policies, relationships and even the cultural fabric of our country. As of late, however, the issue seems to have become a hot potato that’s being tossed back and forth between competing political interests. Instead of focusing on questions of relevance, such as “Does torture actually produce actionable intelligence?” or “Under what circumstances (if any) does torture carry ethical cache?”, the news has become littered with the question of who knew what, and when. But is this the discourse we really want?
While questions of accountability are important in maintaining (or re-establishing) the credibility in government, I fear we have become distracted from the greater moral question facing us: What is torture and are we willing to condone it?
