Q&A: What Do You Do in the Following Situation
What Do You Do in the Following Situation
Question
If a sheikh/imam gives speeches saying that Jews should be exterminated and harmed, and afterward it becomes known that people who listened to his sermons went out and carried out terror attacks—do the inciters in the mosque bear any responsibility or any share in the perpetrator’s act?
Answer
Absolutely. Why not?
Discussion on Answer
I wrote what I think, didn’t I? The inciter bears contributory blame. That does not detract from your own blame.
But he definitely influenced my choice.
If I did something problematic (or positive), it started with a thought. Without the thought I wouldn’t have gotten into the problematic situation,
because there would be no trigger at all.
So of course I have responsibility/blame for something good or bad, but you can’t say it’s only on me.
Can you agree with that?
I don’t have full control over my thoughts. Sometimes they just pop up depending on the situations I’m in.
On the other hand, on some level I think this comes from God (or one of His messengers), for example when a thought suddenly comes to me “just like that,” with no connection to the situation I’m in.
If, following a thought about a commandment or a transgression, I came to an action, and it’s normal that after a thought there is some chance that an action will follow—then can one say that it wasn’t 100% from me, even though I chose to perform the act, but that there was something else here that brought me to it and bears responsibility for it as well (just like in the example with which I opened the question)?