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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋu |
2002.09.18 – re: Van Dam Verdict, Justice in America?
The injustice that you have correctly pointed out is the rampant perversion of justice in the name of the adversarial system. We Americans define our "justice system" as an "adversary system." However, at times the two concepts are necessarily contradictory. As long as the adversarial role is permitted to dominate over the "justice" role, the system is properly an adversarial system, not a justice system. For our American system to become just, justice must be given unwavering dominion over the adversarial role. That, lawyers and legal associations will ensure, is not going to happen.
America's legal system may also play a key role in Arab and Muslim hatred of America. Granted, the deficiencies of our legal system aren't the primary reason that Arabs and other Muslims hate America to the point of unbridled violence. Many non-Muslims hate America for a variety of reasons – all, however, pull up way short of whatever is driving Islamic terrorism. However, Muslims' hatred, by contrast, is directed at the Christian world due to the religious zeal of Muslims that it is Islam's "right" to wear the crown in this golden age. That the targets in the Bin-Laden training videos were marked with a cross, and not a Shield of David, should tell Christians of Europe, as well as the U.S., something critical.
Consequently, Muslims paint all of the glories of the Christian world – which they teach is run by Jews and Israel – as glories that rightfully belong to the "true" religion, Islam, in contrast to Christianity and Judaism. Thus, the more successful and prosperous the "infidel," the more hated! It is a religious hatred, a collision of religions.
One must learn to see from a Muslim perspective. That Islam and the future of Muslims is indeed at stake is why Muslim clerics who aren't out dancing in the streets are dancing around the questions, and so few are willing to condemn these widely-proclaimed Islamic "heroes" publicly, forcefully and unequivocally. For Christians, America is a central force in Christianity. For Muslims, however, the Middle East is the central force in Islam and American Muslims are a fringe element assimilating with the "infidels." Islam must be judged by the overwhelming majority of its clerics – who are in the Middle East and Asia – not by a handful of fringe moderates living as "marginal Muslims" with the "infidel" in the US or Europe. Though no one dares to say it, this is a religious conflict. Yet, even though our legal system isn't the direct cause of their hatred, if the Arabic word for "adversary" is linguistically related to the Hebrew word (satan) then America's adversarial (satanic in Arabic?) system undoubtedly fuels some of the widespread Arab and Muslim hate-rhetoric.
The solution is as simple as it may be impossible: switch the roles to ensure that justice always takes precedence over the adversarial role. Then we'll have a system of justice. I also submit that this was the intention of the framers of our constitution. Justice was never intended to be sacrificed on the altar of the adversarial (satanic?) system.
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