The Death of Bin Laden: An Opportunity to Examine Our Motivation

The world is starting to adjust to life without Osama Bin Laden. In the aftermath of the street celebrations, there have been dozens of opinion pieces, blog entries and Facebook posts on how people “should” have reacted to the news. I’m not sure that people’s feelings can be subjected to a moral imperative. We feel what we feel and in a free society, nobody else gets to control that.

Were the crowds celebrating death and extolling assassination or was something else happening? It’s not for me to say. What we can say is that Bin Laden was the face of world terrorism for over 10 years. His voice and his face appeared in repeated videos gloating over the death and destruction that he and his followers caused.

My feelings differ vastly from those whose lives were directly touched by the events of 9/11 and I do feel that the world is a better place without Osama Bin Laden. Although others might step into the position he once held, nobody will take his place. The face of terrorism has changed forever.

I am not a pacifist although I greatly respect the courage and message of non-violence advanced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They along with their followers chose the route of non-violence as a way of making their respective cases in the court of public opinion which eventually won the day for them.

It was an effective and admirable strategy under those circumstances. However, self sacrifice in the name of non-violence is always a personal choice; it cannot be made for others. To say that we must never oppose evil by force in the face of a fanatical ideology that is dedicated to as much human destruction as it can bring about might be seen as a form of complicity or appeasement.

The word “evil” properly applies to Bin Laden and his followers. Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore once said that; “Evil is a parasite. It has no permanent life of itself. Its whole existence depends on the life it borrows from its parent. When its connection with the parent is severed, nothing remains.”

The parasite known as Al Qaida was slowly sucking the life out of its Islamic host. In return, it offered a perverse ideology which essentially said to their Muslim brothers and sisters that if you oppose or even disagree with us, we will kill you. After the death of Bin Laden, the parasite no longer has a visible, living face and even before that, a significant shift was taking place.

In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, a new generation was starting to reject the parasitic ideology of death and oppression represented by Bin Laden in favor of something more liberating and life affirming. Intelligent people eventually realize that parasitic evil is always taking and has nothing positive to offer. When the host rejects it, parasitic evil ultimately collapses under its own dead weight.

What is the “proper” response from a spiritual standpoint? Our spiritual discernment must first start with a consciousness that is free from fear, hatred or a desire for vengeance. The next step is to understand that there is more than one alternative. Sometimes nothing needs to be done and indeed nothing can be done. Other times, the eventual collapse is helped along by a little nudge from the outside. And in some cases, an even larger effort is required.

Whichever choice is deemed appropriate under the circumstances, the final step and each step after that is the same as the first; to proceed with a consciousness that is free from fear, hatred or a desire for vengeance. If that means that we should stop cheering, then let there be silence.