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Avoiding Trial By Error: Cooperation as a means of ending Witch Hunts
- by Dreogan M. Eleor
1612, Pendle Hill, Lancashire, England. In what has been known as an inkblot on our pages of history – a forgotten tragedy which we dismiss as Muggle error resulting in Muggle victimisation – 12 “witches” were executed for having “practifed fundries murthers and feditious perfecutions of the people therein [Lancashire] through the deuil’s artes and inchauntments”. The facts remain this: they feared our power of enchantment—that ability to force, compel, and control through mysterious ends; it could take away liberty, force a recipient of a spell to be acted upon. Magic became a non-consentual act; they feared us because our power is great.
Notwithstanding these “witches” being Muggle, it was at this time that we as a community of British witches and wizards, magical folk, shut ourselves off from their society. Here is the fact that we do not all like to admit: we came to fear them because they are great in number and we are small—and rightfully so. If history and various ethnic cleansings and genocides have taught us anything, it is that the majority, the Normate, will exact vengeance upon those who do not fit within its constructed system: it is the minority Others which suffer.
The fears then – that of the power of numbers and the power of magic – both lie in the fear of being acted upon, of losing one’s liberty. Yet it is the source of these fears—the powers numbers and the powers of magic—which, though they can lead to great tyranny as our histories do tell, can also lead the way to a solution: Why can we not in a mutual endeavour use our respective power for mutual good and liberation?
A recent article has come out, of which many of you are aware. For the sake of the readership who might not have heard this message, however, I will reiterate because, notwithstanding various logical contradictions, it is of valid concern in our day and age: an anonymous “we” has come out in denunciation of purported Ministry practises of gross negligence and willful deception, particularly in the treatment of werewolves (which are, it would seem, however inexplicably, are the root of this argument). It has been said that the Ministry, like some dictatorial and vindictive wizards of our past are content to lead wizardkind down the smooth and easy path to subservient blindness, focussing on minor threats and creating unnecessary factions and divisions in wizarding culture while also, it would seem, furthering misguided werewolf equality, thus showing the Ministry to be at once hierarchical and egalitarian. The results are first a deprivation of wizarding liberty; the second, a distraction from a Muggle threat which is (contrarily) a threat so negligible it can and must be easily overcome in a tour-de-force and physical—and presumably—brutal manifestation of magical power.
I warn against any absolute rhetoric which would have readers believe they must either choose one option or another—that there is a simple “this-or-this” solution to a problem of many sides. Their call is inflammatory and, however well-meaning, misguided; it is reductive in the attempt to crystallise a salient point. Yet the situation is not as clear nor, indeed, as stark as they would believe. Revolution has always been the eradication of existing laws for the legalisation of acts which past orders have called “crimes”. Reform and revolution can be just, but it behooves us to inspect what conduct the anonymous author wishes, exactly, to be legalised in such a proposed order. Since before Hammurabi, men have always viewed it their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty. I can see nothing in this order but reverse tyranny in which we, the persecuted and oppressed, manifest our own agency and autonomy through oppressing our oppressors. Such will ever lead to a cyclical power of destruction and cannot lead to the fulfilling empowerment which our anonymous “we” seeks for. When liberty comes with hands steeped in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her. Allow me, then, to propose an alternative, considering all sides and encompassing—not rejecting—these views.
Let us move, for a moment, to Saudi Arabia where a new witch trial is underway today. Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali is in a Saudi Arabian prison for exercising witchcraft. She is to be executed. Condemned in April 2006 to death for a crime not explicitly stated in Saudi law. At this moment, agencies in eighteen countries, representing six international religions, are working towards freeing her, appealing directly to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. Not one group denies her the right of practising magic by seeking to clear her of charges; on the contrary, they assert magical practise her right. She should be set at liberty: free to practise, free to be who she would choose to be. However, Saudi courts have maintained that the charge and sentence against Fawza Falih stands in the name of “public interest”.
I see in Fawza Falih’s case the tyranny of 1662 and the anonymous “we’s” concern with 2008: a desire to break from the State which, in insisting upon a “public interest” and common good, enacts tyranny against minorities despite the opposing view of the true Common voice. But I see in Fawza Falih’s case also a great opportunity. One in which we ought not hide ourselves nor become the tyrants we seek to overthrow, but one in which we as humans move towards a mutual understanding and betterment of society. One in which multifarious religious, nationalities, and activist groups have already joined. We may boldly and freely practise our right and prove ourselves capable of asserting our great power of magic for the great benefit of mankind. It is a difficult step to make, requiring sacrifice and, I will own, persecution until our aims are known and our intentions clear: they fear our ability to do wrong to them. May we prove ourselves capable of doing right by them. May they prove themselves capable of protecting and accepting. A Jewish proverb states: “Locks keep out only the honest.” By opening the door, may we allow a free exchange of thoughts and ideas.
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[Nov 22] Avoiding Trial By Error: Cooperation as a means of ending Witch Hunts