It’s strange. I don’t really like the sentimentalization of V’s character. What fits well in a Dickens novel or Spielberg film here seems incongruous. By the same token, the added bit about the Qur’an comes across as a cheap, transparent effort to make the film “relevant” to our own time.

And yet, what affronts my aesthetic sensibilities seems to make for good social doctrine. The film, perhaps unwittingly, reminds us that no act—however surprising or abhorrent—strips one’s humanity from the perpetrator. Classifying the individual behind a violent act as a “criminal” or “terrorist” may help survivors superimpose some semblance of order over a traumatic event, and such categories may be necessary cogs in our society’s lego-political machinery, but they are inadequate as absolute identity portraits. Choosing to see the individual aggressor as only an aggressor and not an individual is tantamount to defining him/her by one moment or period in his/her life. This may be the way the media, our government, and our own emotions want us to see such individuals (heck, it may often be the way the perpetrators themselves want to be seen), but it’s not the way we should see them, particularly those of us who believe we are called to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies.

* * *

Four years ago, I was a member of an eight-person group of faculty, staff, and students assigned with the task of choosing the book for the 2002 Summer Reading Program here at UNC-Chapel Hill. In the wake of 9-11, one of the texts suggested was Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations, a collection of suras translated and edited by Michael Sells. After a good deal of heated discussion, the committee narrowed down our options to this text and pop hit The Tipping Point. The late Dr. Kirkpatrick, myself, and another self-identified Christian were among those who voted for the Qur’an text, the book that was finally (by a narrow margin) chosen. Those of us supporting this option did so not because we anticipated such action would put our campus in the national news, but because we felt the selection would encourage vigorous discussion about nation, culture, and spirituality during a period when ardent patriotism seemed to be preempting individual reflection. The uproar which followed our decision was surprising and the lack of support by local and state governments rather maddening, but I felt our decision had been the right one because it encouraged intellectual engagement, and perhaps prompted a few people to reexamine their prejudices.

* * *

Just last semester, I printed out thirteen recommendation letters for a highly motivated and hard-working student of mine named Mohammed Taheriazar, a graduating senior who was applying to graduate programs in psychology.

Mohammed had piqued my curiosity early in the fall when, following a non-graded in-class exercise I use to slot students into peer-review groups, he expressed concern about another student’s glancing at his paper. This and his unwillingness to attend the screening of a film conducted in the evening hours (he preferred taking care of the day’s duties while it was still light) were akin to other idiosyncracies I’ve encountered over the years and, while odd, faded in the light of his strong work ethic and commitment to working through relational bumps with those in his peer-review group. (During a difficult period with his group, he claimed to take inspiration from Steven Covey’s advice that those working collaboratively “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”) His pride and self-confidence also manifested themselves in good product: over the course of the semester, he wrote a highly imaginative and well-researched, APA-style report about the care of individuals with Rhett Syndrome, spun a relatively convincing critique of both Rain Man (1988) and The Other Sister (1999), and successfully collaborated with his peers to develop an effective marketing campaign for the movie What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

In addition to proving himself an able student, Mohammed showed much personal kindness to me. Looking back over our Skype conversations, I find that he repeatedly asked how I was doing during my job search and the exhausting completion of my dissertation in November, that he cited The Power Of Now’s recommendation that we all take “thinking breaks” to relax our minds every now and then, and that he even recommended music (Armik’s Treasures) and a film (the documentary Dead Birds) which he had enjoyed. He asked me my opinion concerning graduate programs in psychology, since I had looked into such programs myself a decade earlier, and (naively, and a bit comically) encouraged me to consider pursuing jobs outside my field if I had no luck finding one this time around.

In late November, Mohammed sat in my office and reiterated a vision he had shared with me a few times throughout the semester, a dream of helping to disrupt the wave of violence sweeping the world’s young men. His statement of purpose claimed he would use his “extensive background in cognitive, social, and personality psychology to study the causes and most effective methods of prevention of violence and aggression in males ages 13 - 25,” that he felt it his “duty as a citizen of the United States of America to do all that [he could] to protect freedom and democracy around the world, by way of psychological intervention in a heretofore recalcitrant population cohort.”

* * *

Nearly a month ago, on March 3, Mohammed charged an SUV into the crowded pit here on campus in an attempt to kill students he considered complicit in America’s military actions around the world. In defending his actions, he quoted passages from the same Muslim holy book to which UNC first-year students had been introduced four years earlier, and, in subsequent court appearances, has seized upon every opportunity to read from the Qur’an.

* * *

Is Mohammed a lying terrorist? Was every sign of humanity he displayed last semester a charade, a carefully constructed mask employed to hide his covert intentions of committing an aggressive act against American citizens? He would have us think so. Mohammed would have those of us who knew him believe that he is not the person who befriended and worked with us, but the mere fleshly vehicle of a divine principle—an idea—and that everything else we know about him is inconsequential in light of a single, premeditated act of outrageous violence.

Now, Mohammed did lie, at least by omission.

During prep for my students’ oral presentations last fall, the class watched and discussed taped presentations delivered by previous students of mine who had chosen—only two weeks after 9/11—to engage this particular current event in their speeches. Mohammed’s peers reflected on my old students’ emotional reactions to the event, and I made a point of directly asking Mohammed if his own experience and nationality gave him a particular perspective on the issue. I do not recall his response, but he obviously declined to share the frustration apparently boiling beneath the surface.

And, Mohammed committed an unmistakable act of terror. He considered various ways to hurt as many people as possible, and regrets only that he was unsuccessful in actually killing anyone.

But is he a “liar”? Is he a “terrorist”? Is he only these things? Is anyone? For the sake of law and order, the state will punish his actions, presumably with life in prison. This makes sense. But how is the individual citizen to respond to such acts? More particularly, how should those of us who call ourselves “Christians” respond to acts of violence made against ourselves and those whom we know and care for?

In the eyes of most, Mohammed has successfully redefined himself, transforming himself instantaneously from aspiring grad student to violent insurgent. Such dramatic self-recreation must be awfully tempting. If you could redefine others’ perceptions of you, could erase their uncomfortable awareness of your social awkwardness and shyness and replace it with the image of a single overwhelming act, how seriously would you consider such a tantalizing possibility?

And if you were on the outside looking in, wouldn’t it be tempting to regard a complex, mixed-up individual who has committed a crime as a “criminal” with no more depth or motion to him than the mask (or fixed smile) he wears? Oh, wait, you already have.

And so have I.

I mean to mend my ways.