Do Inhumane Terrorists Deserve Human Rights?
Warning: Graphic photo below.

I am a firm advocate of non-violence, other than in self-defense. You can achieve more through love and nurturing than through hatred and violence. But there are those who believe that the only way to achieve their goals (whatever those twisted goals might be) is through brute force, so they go around stealing, raping, pillaging and murdering. Then you have those who take that “brute force” to the next level- the terrorists of this world, who take hostages, torture them, behead them, broadcast those beheadings in all their gory brutality on the Internet, massacre innocent people with their bombs and suicide missions. It’s the cold, calculated inhumanity of these acts that place me in a moral quandary.

I believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, but what about terrorists, who have no respect for human life? Animals, who bomb funerals and wedding convoys, massacre school children, behead westerners and non-westerners alike, behead children, force kids to behead hostages, torture those who refuse to convert, do they deserve human rights, when they have lost what little vestige of humanity they might have had and blatantly violate the rights of others?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states :

Article 1

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Article 5

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Article 18

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Terrorists have no conscience and certainly no spirit of brotherhood. They massacre, torture, degrade and punish. Islamic extremists kill those who refuse to convert to Islam, or those who have converted to Christianity, violating at least 3 articles of the Declaration of Human Rights. Do they deserve the same rights as those who choose to participate in the brotherhood of man?

The spiritual part of me reluctantly says yes, the human part of me says no.