Q&A: The Boundaries of Your Position
The Boundaries of Your Position
Question
Hello Rabbi,
As I understand it, your position is that a person should not be punished for a belief he arrived at in good faith but that turned out to be mistaken—for example, someone who believes in idolatry because that is truly what he thinks, based on his own reasoning. If so, then if a terrorist truly and sincerely believes that Jews should be killed, would he be punished? I thought perhaps one could distinguish between thought and action, but it is not clear to me why. After all, he really thinks that this is what should be done, and acted for the sake of Allah, for example.
Thank you very much
Answer
Obviously. Why should there be boundaries? See column 372.
Discussion on Answer
He talked about this once on Daniel Doshi’s podcast—that he does not see them as bad people; he sees them as mistaken people. So he would kill them because they are harmful to their surroundings. I recommend you go listen ☺️
He really analyzed it beautifully, and also explained that even this idea of judging a person by his own view does not have infinite value, and that you can judge the reasons why he decided to do what he does, because when you do a radical act—you are a human being—you need to be very sure of what you are doing in order to do it…
Am I a good student or what? 😉
Corrections—
*This idea of judging a person by his own view does not have infinite value
*When you do a radical act—you—a murderer—a human being
An excellent student. 🙂
You summarized it excellently.
I assume you see terrorists as utterly wicked. Why, exactly? Because you think they do not really believe that it is right?