Every once in a while we hear of an "honor killing" carried out by a family member against one of their own. A recent article about an Iranian father who stoned his daughter to death, for bringing "dishonor" to him and to his family, is a case in point. The girl may, or may not, have consorted with a man without the father's approval, but he took it upon himself to restore his "honor" in the cruelest way possible, by taking the life of his own flesh and blood.

 

How is it that people come to believe in such things? And the Muslim world is not the only place where such thinking abounds. You could be riding a subway or a bus in a modern American city, and you make the mistake of looking at a young man in the wrong way. He pulls out a gun and shoots you in the head for "disrespecting" him, simply by looking at him in a way that, in his mind, demeaned his sense of "honor."

 

A lot of times you see this kind of thinking among the poor and among the uneducated, but not always. If you are poor and uneducated, and if the weight of a hard life weighs heavily down upon you, then you man find yourself grasping at straws trying to reclaim a sense of honor and a sense of dignity. When you have nothing in your life that gives you dignity, or respect, you may end up looking for it in the strangest places: by stoning your daughter, or by shooting a fellow traveler for looking at you the wrong way.

 

What can I say? We have come to believe in a lot of stupid things. Why? Because many of us have no other reference point, and because sometimes it's just easier to accept what we are told is right, instead of thinking it out for ourselves. But if we think things out before acting out, we may think twice about acting out in the wrong way, and against our own best interest.

 

Common sense would suggest that there is no honor in killing. Honor is not bestowed on us as a matter of right, but is earned by each of us with the good things we do for one another. We are not entitled to honor. We earn it as we go. Common sense would also suggest that we were put on this good earth to live; not to kill, and not to die, before our time.

 

But poverty and ignorance do play a part, as many of you rightly point out. They make it more possible for stupid thinking to grab hold. If a father, for example, has a decent job, and a decent education, and is able to provide adequately for his family, then chances are good that he will find his sense of honor in the good things he has, and does, without resorting to the perverse notion of "honor killing," as a source of honor. If his daughter goes astray, he will find the strength, within himself, to set her straight with love and understanding, because his life gives him the self-respect he needs to respect others. But if that same father is left poor, and ignorant, he will find it difficult to respect others, even his own family, when he has no respect for himself.

 

People the world over will have to begin rethinking some of their deeply held beliefs, so that a semblance of order  has a chance to emerge. We will need a new framework for rational thought based on universal notions of common sense-the collective wisdom borne of shared experience. We will also need to invest in one another, as many of you so rightly point out, so that the moderating influence of education and prosperity could begin to neutralize the influence of extremist thinking. Ideology plus Investment equals Hope, and with hope, all things are possible, even the kindness that we owe it to ourselves, to show one another.

My brother and I were talking the other day and he was wondering how it could be that medical doctors in England could have been part of a terror cell. Doesn’t terrorism, at the very least, violate the Hippocratic Oath? You would think so, wouldn’t you?

 

My response was that many of us naturally assume that an educated person, particularly a physician, would be less vulnerable to ideological extremism. But that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be the case. Al-Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a physician. Bin Laden himself is highly educated and comes from a prominent family. Many of the 9/11 hijackers were highly educated and well off financially. And during World War II, Dr. Mengele, who personally and ruthlessly tortured thousands of people during the Holocaust, was a medical doctor as well.

 

So obviously, education and financial well being do not, in and of themselves, protect a person from succumbing to ideological extremism. In fact, it could well be argued that along with a high level secular education comes the ability to rationalize, which in turn could better enable a person to rationalize the validity of his extremist ideas. Similarly, financial security could liberate a person to pursue his inclinations toward extremist thinking.

 

Promoting secular education and financial opportunities in the Middle East are not likely to deter the extremists in their pursuit of the ideological imperative. So why bother to promote education and financial opportunity? The hope is that if you empower the vast majority of moderate Muslims, with an education and with a job, and give them a place at the table, a stake in their future, they will then be willing to exert some pressure on the extremists. When you have nothing, and are finally able to grab hold of something good, you may think twice about letting someone else take it away from you. Especially if that person makes no sense to you.

 

In fact, the moderate majority may well be in a better position than we are to defeat the extremists. When we take the extremists on, we, in effect, augment their power and influence by anointing them as martyrs in the eyes of their own people. However, when the moderate majority takes on the extremists, they can make their will known quite powerfully, and they usually don’t take "no" for an answer. The will of the masses will not be deterred! Empower the man on the street and he will use that power to hold on to what is his.

 

When the man on the street looks at the table, and there's nothing there except extremism, then that's what he's probably going to buy into. But if he looks at the table, and sees a job waiting for him, he may think twice about jumping onto the extremist bandwagon. The West is well advised to put that option on the table.