Question

I saw in several of your columns that, in your view, a person who is convinced he is doing something good, even if in practice he is doing something bad, will not be punished for it, since he is coerced by his own understanding.
In the Talmudic passage in Makkot there is a discussion about someone who says, “It is permitted.” They disagree there whether he is closer to intentional wrongdoing or closer to coercion. And the Jewish law ruling is that one who says “It is permitted” is closer to intentional wrongdoing, and therefore Maimonides rules that a gentile who thought it was permitted to murder is liable to death. He should have learned and is not considered coerced.
Does that ruling fit with what you wrote?
I assume one can distinguish between different situations or different commandments or prohibitions (it is obviously different between murder and the detailed laws of the Sabbath), but in general, isn’t it more correct to say that in many cases coercion in one’s beliefs is not really coercion?
More than that: if a person knows that many people are certain that this is forbidden, and for his own reasons he decides to disagree with everyone and commit a forbidden act (like Yigal Amir, about whom you wrote that according to your view he is not “wicked”), isn’t that even worse than an ordinary case of someone saying “it is permitted,” where he does not know that most of the world considers the thing forbidden?