But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
Interpretation
Terrorism cannot be justified as a means to achieve legitimate goals, as it primarily seeks to harm innocents.
This quote by Salman Rushdie emphasizes the point that terrorism is fundamentally about violence and destruction rather than the pursuit of any righteous or noble objectives. It challenges the notion that perpetrators might claim their violent actions serve a higher purpose, highlighting that their true aim is the murder of innocent individuals, thereby creating a moral distinction between terrorism and valid political discourse or action.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of violence in political movements.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.
Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that's common to every single one of them. Right?... So it's reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
"God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
When you go into the space of nothingness, everything becomes known.
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
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