Harvard professor quoted in NPR article "Is it Wrong to Celebrate Bin Laden's Death

Impromptu celebrations erupted near the White House in Washington and ground zero in New York when news of Osama bin Laden's death was reported and tweeted.

Laura Cunningham, a 22-year-old Manhattan reveler — gripping a Budweiser in her hand and sitting atop the shoulders of a friend — was part of the crowd at ground zero in the wee hours Monday. As people around her chanted "U-S-A," Cunningham was struck by the emotional response. She told New York Observer: "It's weird to celebrate someone's death. It's not exactly what we're here to celebrate, but it's wonderful that people are happy."

Those mixed feelings get at the heart of the moral ambivalence of the moment: Of course there is relief that an evil mastermind cannot commit acts of terror in the future. But is it ever a good idea — from a spiritual or philosophical standpoint — to celebrate with beer and good cheer over the death of anyone, even a widely acknowledged monster?

Not 'Our Finest Moment'

The Roman Catholic Church responded to the news of bin Laden's death with this statement: "Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of everyone before God and man, and hopes and pledges that every event is not an opportunity for a further growth of hatred, but of peace."

"I think that's on the mark," says Mike Hayes, a campus minister at the University at Buffalo. "As a Catholic Christian, I cannot celebrate the death of anyone, especially when it is done violently. Naturally, my human nature fights against that idealism, especially when I think of those who I lost personally that day and all those who lost their life on 11 September."

However, adds Hayes, who runs the Googling God blog for young adults, "I don't think that the celebrations in the streets were our finest moment as Americans, and reminded me much of the anger I felt at seeing Afghans dancing in the streets at the fall of the Towers on that dreaded day."

Hayes says: "We are called to forgiveness. And that is the only way that we can be truly free. Holding onto our hatred keeps us in slavery to bin Laden's madness and gives the terrorists continued power over us."

There is also a sense of false elation, he adds, "because many believe that the world is a safer place because of this death. That relief is probably misguided."

Is Rejoicing Morally Justified?

Still, some Americans are wrestling with the rightness and wrongness of the party-like responses. A popular status update on Facebook today is a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

On a practical level, some people are concerned that such public displays of elation — similar to those following a sports victory or a political election — will create more animosity and even greater danger. "This closes a chapter, but the most sobering aspect of this is that this is not the end," Jack Cloonan, a former FBI special agent, told The Huffington Post. "The reasons they hate us have not subsided, and this could reinvigorate things."

And the question remains: Is there moral philosophical justification for rejoicing over the demise of someone like bin Laden?

"Most people believe that the killing we do in war is justified as the only way to disable an enemy whose cause we believe to be unjust," says Christine Korsgaard, a philosophy professor at Harvard University. "And although it is more controversial, many people believe, or at least feel, that those who kill deserve to die as retribution for their crimes.

"But if we confuse the desire to defeat an enemy with the desire for retribution against a criminal, we risk forming attitudes that are unjustified and ugly — the attitude that our enemy's death is not merely a means to disabling him, but is in itself a kind of a victory for us, or perhaps even the attitude that our enemy deserves death because he is our enemy."

It is important, Korsgaard says, "not to confuse the desire for retribution with the desire to defeat an enemy. But because terrorism partakes of both crime and war, it is perfectly natural, and perhaps legitimate, to have both of these attitudes towards Osama bin Laden: to think that we had to disable him, and to think that he deserved to die."

The two sentiments should be kept apart, she says. "If we have any feeling of victory or triumph in the case, it should be because we have succeeded in disabling him — not because he is dead."

A noteworthy piece in Guardian (UK):

The US government is being accused of pumping millions of dollars into unregulated training schemes for local police officers and other law enforcers that give a distorted, dangerous and inflammatory picture of the Muslim faith.

Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based progressive thinktank, spent nine months investigating the burgeoning industry of counter-terrorism training. It concluded that in seminars and conferences across America, police, transit and other law-enforcement officers were being given an ideologically skewed impression of Islam that impugned the entire religion, presenting it as inherently violent and sympathetic to terrorism.

One training conference, which PRA investigators attended, was held last October by the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association, a body formed by New York police officers in the wake of 9/11. The conference was addressed by Walid Shoebat, a speaker used by several of the private training outfits.

Shoebat is a convert to Christianity, having formerly been a Muslim with links to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In his presentation, called The Jihad Mindset and How to Defeat It: Why We Want to Kill You, he accused Muslim men of raping women, children and young boys. "They are paedophiles!" he shouted.

According to the report, Shoebat went on: "The Muslim beheads with a smile. You can see it on YouTube, on TV; the Afghan child trained to execute Christians. You say that Islam is a peaceful religion? Why? It hates the west."

He also said: "Islam is a revolution and is intent to destroy all other systems. They want to expand, like Nazism."

Another training firm that is highlighted is Security Solutions International, a Miami-based company that has worked with some 1,000 law enforcement agencies since 2004. It gives seminars with titles such as "The Islamic Jihadist Threat", "Jihad 2.0" and "Allah in America".

At one seminar, SSI's trainer showed footage of the 2002 beheading of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist, by his al-Qaida kidnappers.

The report is published as the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives is poised to open controversial hearings into the radicalisation of the American-Muslim community. Peter King, who chairs the committee, has been accused of launching a witch-hunt.

A third training outfit, the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, based in Alexandria, Virginia, uses experienced FBI, CIA and other former federal agents to conduct its training of about 8,000 national security employees a year. PRA investigators were not allowed to attend the centre's seminars, but based on its website and the writings of some of its key trainers, the report concludes that its course, Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine, uses the framework of the cold war to portray Islam as an existential threat equivalent to communism.

Walid Phares, who trains on behalf of the centre, argues in his writings that jihadists are infiltrating western organisations posing as civil rights advocates: "The most important mission is to further recruit and grow their numbers until the 'holy moment' comes."

Thomas Cincotta, the author of the PRA report, called on Congress and the Homeland Security department to begin an inquiry into the use of public money to provide training that he called dangerous and unhelpful. "Police officers and law enforcers who attend these causes will walk away with the impression that law-abiding citizens should be suspicious of the broader Muslim community. I'm deeply troubled by that – it impinges on fundamental freedoms to practise religion, and it jeopardises our safety and national security by potentially alienating Muslims at a time when we need to work together."

The report says that in the wake of 9/11 a huge sum of taxpayers' money had been invested in counter-terrorism training for law enforcers. Two federal grant programmes alone, led by Homeland Security, paid out $1.7bn to states across the country in 2010.

Some of the training schemes are closely monitored by the Homeland Security department, but much of the money, the report says, is filtered through a host of largely unregulated training schemes, some of which are conducted by private security bodies.

SSI's president, Henry Morgenstern, defended his company's track record. "We have a very good reputation training law enforcers. We are not a kooky organisation." He said of the report's authors: "These people are out to weaken the anti-terrorism effort and it's clearly politically motivated."

He added: "You cannot whitewash radical Islam – they really do cut people's heads off, they do carry out honour killings, so we are trying to show law enforcers that this is what they are up against. We are not saying that all Muslims chop people's heads off."

The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies declined to comment.

The involvement of anti-Muslim groups in federal and state training has caused consternation in the past. Last August Reverend Jesse Jackson protested to the FBI after it was discovered that Robert Spencer had been used as an official trainer on counter-terrorism for police offers.

Spencer is a founding member of Stop the Islamisation of America, a group that virulently opposed the building of a Muslim community centre near Ground Zero in New York and that has links with the far-right English Defence League.