Pearls of Wisdom

By Zach Ruchman

Evil has taken on new meaning in the minds of Americans since Sept. 11th. Just a few months after the horrific events of that day, Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists in Karachi, Pakistan. Danny was brutally murdered by his captors, who proceeded to flaunt their barbaric beheading of the young reporter on videotape that was seen throughout the world.

Pearl was in Pakistan working on a story about Richard Reid, the shoe bomber who had attempted to blow up a trans-Atlantic passenger plane in late 2001. Pearl was working through channels of informants to uncover the truth about Reid's cohorts in the hope of bringing justice to wrongdoers involved in Reid's plot.

Understanding evil of this magnitude is difficult for most people to comprehend. But the Pearl family has had to face this unimaginable evil at the most personal level. To Danny's father, Dr. Judea Pearl, the terrorists who commit a crime as heinous as the murder of his son constitute the epitome of evil. "Evil is any act or any intention to act in violation of some basic laws that human society has adopted over the centuries," he contends. "It's a mode of conduct that we tacitly agree upon not to resort to." Despite the fact that the terrorists who mutilated his son did so as a means of transmitting a message, Pearl says that evil "is an absolute and not politically motivated."

According to Pearl, perhaps the most insidious aspect of evil is the collective mentality on which it relies, a mentality that is apparent in much of the Islamic world. The events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, he says, demonstrate this. "I read one Islamic scholar's explanation [of] why it is more of a violation of honor for Muslims to be abused in such a way as opposed to Westerners because in their environment you have dishonored not only the person but his family, his sister, his aunt, his...tribe and the city from which that person came. All of his collective became dishonored by those acts of abuse."

Not only does Pearl perceive the mentality in Muslim societies to be communal, but he also understands honor and loyalty to be shared phenomena in those societies as well. In such societies, it is very difficult for change to occur because individuals are afraid to criticize the larger system. "[Individuals] feel that if they criticize 'my' kind, they are weaker," he states. "If you criticize part of the collective, you are essentially criticizing the whole collective. That is the modus operandi. Therefore, there is greater fear to criticize part of the collective."

In Dr. Pearl's view, some societies, especially those driven by religious fervor, are vulnerable to having a small number of extremists lead the people away from the true spirit of their religion. "Today we have the weapons and the means for a few individuals to inflict large damage," says Pearl. "It's easy to perform acts of violence and acts of cruelty in the name of religion, and it's easy to [hijack religion]," he said. "It is the duty of every religion to develop the safeguard against being hijacked."

Exacting revenge is often the ready response to grave evil. Yet Pearl's response to fighting evil effectively is through education, which he defines as an entity that extends far beyond the classroom. He maintains, "Education is in the street, in the way your parents speak, the way your neighbors behave toward their neighbors. It's in the air, in the environment in which you grow, the culture in which one grows. And the question is whether the cultural environment contains the respect or reflects the respect for the other human beings."

In an effort to combat evil and the terrorism it breeds, Pearl has created the Daniel Pearl Foundation, in memory of his son. In one of its bolder initiatives, the Foundation offers Pakistani journalists fellowships at U.S. newspapers "in the hope," observes Pearl, "that when they go back to their country they bring the American notion of free press and honest reporting."

One of the most successful events sponsored by the Daniel Pearl Foundation is the annual Daniel Pearl Music Day, which takes place in October during the week of Danny's birthday. A journalist by profession, Danny was a highly accomplished amateur musician. In honor of his love of music, hundreds of concerts on every continent celebrate global harmony in support of Daniel Pearl Music Day.

With programs in Pakistan, other Muslim countries, and, indeed, worldwide, the Daniel Pearl Foundation is going to great lengths to battle evil in its own special way. In tribute to his late son and in a display of fervent optimism and tremendous courage, Pearl explains, "We are using Danny's weapons of words and music to influence the direction the youngsters in Muslim countries are taking. We have in mind the children in Pakistan, the children of the perpetrators of [Danny's murder] and other similar crimes. We want those children to look at Danny's picture and say, 'This is the kind of person I would like to be.'"

In fact, Pearl recently said, "I received pictures from Pakistan of a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of Danny's death. On the wall there was Danny's picture with a sign saying World Center for Tolerance and Humanity, and there was a Pakistani boy lighting candles under the photo of Danny.... That was sort of satisfying my dream, to see those children adopting Danny as a role model. It was very rewarding for me. I am not saying it is typical, but I am saying it's happening in certain...isolated pockets of Pakistan. I am very happy it does."