Tag Archives: terrorism

Terrorism Justified: A Response to Vicente Medina

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[This is a draft of the paper I’ll be presenting this Saturday at the Author Meets Critics session I’m organizing on Vicente Medina’s Terrorism Unjustified: The Use and Misuse of Political Violence, featuring presentations by Theresa Fanelli (Felician), Graham Parsons (West Point), and myself, with a response by Vicente Medina (Seton Hall). Comments welcome. For a link to an earlier discussion of Medina’s book at PoT, go here.]

Terrorism Justified: Comment on Vicente Medina’s Terrorism Unjustified
Author Meets Critics Session
Felician University, Rutherford, New Jersey
April 21, 2018
Irfan Khawaja
Felician University

  1. Introduction

Vicente Medina’s Terrorism Unjustified offers a comprehensive, clear, and thorough critique of terrorism. There’s a sense in which I agree with and greatly admire Medina’s argument, and a sense in which I fundamentally disagree with and reject it. In this paper, I’ll focus on the disagreement, in the hopes that in doing so, the implicit agreement will come out as well.

I begin in Section 2 by making some critical observations on Medina’s definition of “terrorism.” The definition, I suggest, pushes the reader in two different directions—a categorical rejection of terrorism, and a subtly conditional one. On the latter interpretation, terrorism can be justified, but only in situations that Medina regards as extremely implausible and unlikely. In Section 3, I offer an extended thought-experiment, verging on a fable, intended to give plausibility one such situation. In other words, the case I describe is one in which it seems (to me) justifiable to target people that Medina would regard as “innocent noncombatants,” or else to inflict foreseeable harm on them without having to meet a “reasonable doubt” criterion as to their moral status. In Sections 4 and 5, I make explicit what the fable leaves implicit. Continue reading →

Author-Meets-Critics Session: Vicente Medina’s “Terrorism Unjustified”

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The Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs will be holding an Author-Meets-Critics session on Vicente Medina’s Terrorism Unjustified: The Use and Misuse of Political Violence (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). The event takes place on Saturday, April 21, 2018, 1-4:30 pm, in the Main Auditorium (“Ray’s Place”) of the Education Commons Building on Felician University’s Rutherford campus (231 Montross Ave., Rutherford, New Jersey 07070). Light refreshments will be served.

Presenters include Theresa Fanelli (Criminal Justice, Felician; previously, FBI Counterterrorism Division), Graham Parsons (Philosophy, West Point), and Irfan Khawaja (Philosophy, Felician), with a response by Vicente Medina (Philosophy, Seton Hall University).

The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available onsite, and the Rutherford campus is easily accessible by mass transit from New York City (New Jersey Transit Bus #190 from Port Authority, at 42nd St). Continue reading →

Reason Papers 39:2 Out (Winter 2017 Issue)

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The latest issue of Reason Papers is now out–Volume 39, Number 2 (Winter 2017). The issue includes a symposium on Tara Smith’s Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System, as well as Part II of a symposium on Den Uyl and Rasmussen’s newest book, The Perfectionist Turn. There’s also a revised version of a piece I posted here at PoT on teaching Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the Americans” (scroll all the way down to “Afterwords”). And other stuff as well–psychological egoism, Nozick on patterned theories of justice, interviews with Nazi filmmakers, commentary on a theatrical production of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. Enjoy.  Continue reading →

Covering Jerusalem: A response to Jacques Delacroix

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I’d been thinking of writing some free-standing posts on the aftermath of the shooting two weeks ago at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (July 14), but haven’t gotten the chance. Meanwhile, here’s a long response I wrote at Notes on Liberty to Jacques Delacroix’s post, “A short note on the riots in Jerusalem.” Scroll down for my comments.

As some of you may know, I spent most of the month of July in Jerusalem and vicinity, and spent a fair bit of time observing the events in question. It’s notable that for Americans, “what happened” can be reduced to a shooting on July 14, an Israeli decision to put metal detectors at the entrance to Al Aqsa Mosque, and rioting by Palestinians. Suffice it to say that in this as in so many matters, there is a large gap between what Americans end up hearing about Israel and Palestine and what actually happens there. But that’s a longer story than I can tell at the moment.

Postscript, August 8, 2017: The discussion continues here.

503+ Boots on the Ground and Counting

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No comment on this item except to say “I told you so”:

More flexibility for American commanders appears to be coming. Representative Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters Wednesday that he expected the White House to remove “artificial troop caps” in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The current “force manning level” for Syria sets a limit on the number of American military personnel in Syria at 503. But the limit does not count temporary reinforcements, like the roughly 400 personnel who were deployed in Syria when the Marine artillery battery and Army Rangers were sent to the country.

There was another telling indication on Wednesday that American Special Operations would continue to play an important role. Col. Jonathan P. Braga, the chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Command and the former deputy commander of Delta Force, has been named as the next senior operations officer for the American-led command that is leading the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Surely you remember President Obama’s “no boots on the ground” promise (“promise”)? It took less than three years for the promise to evaporate and be forgotten. Continue reading →

Reviewing Terrorism

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Since Irfan and I have been discussing terrorism lately, I was intrigued by the recent review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews of Vicente Medina’s Terrorism Unjustified: the Use and Misuse of Political Violence (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/terrorism-unjustified-the-use-and-misuse-of-political-violence/). The review strikes me as a bad review in a number of ways, but, probably unintentionally, illustrates what seems to me to be the relatively sterile character of debates about how to understand ‘terrorism.’

Continue reading →

Stephen Hicks on Islamic Terrorism: A Response

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Stephen Hicks (Philosophy, Rockford University) has an article up at his website, also published elsewhere, on “How to Tame Religious Terrorists,” meaning, essentially how to tame Islamic terrorists. Below I’ve posted a long comment I wrote in response. I’ve added hyperlinks in the version below, and added a clause to one sentence to clarify its meaning (“as is typically done in the United States”).

It should go without saying that my point is not that all Islamic terrorism can be justified as a legitimate response to real grievances (it can’t), but simply that some Islamic terrorists (and would-be terrorists, or sympathizers with those terrorists) have real grievances. One way (though not the only way) of “taming” terrorism would be to reduce the number of real grievances they have, especially when we ourselves are the direct or indirect source of the grievance–as in the Israeli case, we are. Continue reading →

From West Philly to Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Back

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I was in Philadelphia this weekend, visiting with my friends Sinan and Amy. Sinan was my ‘handler’ at Al Quds University this past summer and the time before; he handles the logistics there that I can’t. Amy is a nice Midwestern gal from Texas (go figure). They met a few years ago in Bethlehem, Sinan’s home town, recently emigrated to Philadelphia, got an apartment, got married, and settled in. They cooked me (well, really Sinan cooked us) a sumptuous dinner of maqluba followed by Palestinian coffee and pastries. We had dessert on a couch in front of a window that looks west and frames West Philadelphia. The window lets out onto a big ledge with just enough room for the two of them to sip wine and watch the sunset.

Continue reading →

Are You There, ISIS? It’s Me, Irfan

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It is unlawful for a believer to kill a believer except by accident…He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell forever. He shall incur the wrath of Allah, who will lay His curse on him, and prepare him for a woeful scourge.

Qur’an, Surah An-Nisa’a, 4:92-93, tr. N.J. Dawood

Not that I’m saying that they should go around killing non-believers. I’m just saying that basic acquaintance with al-Primary Text’ul Qur’an shouldn’t be too much to ask of aspirants to al-Khilafat’ul Muslimin (the Caliphate of the Muslim Community).

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Here’s the “explanation” for the title of my post, for the sadly deprived minority of you who didn’t spend fourth grade memorizing the Qur’an while reading Judy Blume.

Eid Mubarak to PoT’s Muslim readers, by the way–whenever it was.

Postscript: And yes, the “Eid Mubarak” link goes to a story about a fifteen foot birthday cake baked for the Prophet Muhammad in Faisalabad, Pakistan. You don’t need to know any Urdu or Punjabi to get the gist of the story: they’ve been making this Prophet-Cake for the last 25 years; people come from far and wide to eat it, regardless of their religiosity; it’s really big, and requires this much sugar, and this much milk; etc. etc.