Complicity

I remember a morality experiment from an ethics class that went something like this: you witness two muggers attacking a man in an alley. You are physically fit, know several martial arts and can handle yourself. What do you do?
Some of the class waded right in to the rescue of man.
Some were inclined to wait until the muggers departed.
Some just kept on and did nothing.
I always found the last two to be amazing. Given some time to think about this (which one wouldn't have, presumably, in real time) some people would just keep going.
When the professor asked these classmates for their reasoning, their answers varied slightly but all basically claimed they did not have enough information.
They felt as though the man maybe deserved it; it wasn't a mugging but two fathers beating up a perv, and so on.
The other group, those who waited for the attackers to depart had interesting reasons too.
What if they were hurt, how much help would they be? Is it just to use force against men who are doing the same, and so on.
This group believed they would make the situation worse by wading right in, so they opted to wait until the man was alone, before getting help.
Finally, there were those who waded right in; those who believed that no matter the reason for the attack, or the consequences of helping, it was better to do something decisive than to wait.
The professor then added a new aspect to the thought experiment. What if by not acting to save the man being attacked made you morally complicit in his attack? What if, by not helping him, for whatever reason, you became as bad as his attackers? He redid the votes, and far more came out for wading in to help immediately.
This always fascinated me, because by adding this one caveat -- complicity -- people saw themselves as being in the wrong even for inaction. Where once it seemed morally justifiable to wait and do nothing, faced with their own guilt, they would wade into fight for the man.
We spent the whole class changing up various aspects of the scenario and recording responses. Only two people maintained that they would wade right in to the victim's defense, no questions asked.
The point here is not to illustrate that people are motivated differently by different situations. The point is to call to mind the question of complicity.
There are many people who do not condone violence in the name of religion, even if they are adherents to said religion. They believe to their core that the violences, verbal or physical, perpetuated against others by members of their own faiths are the worst possible thing.
But what do they do to stop it?
I posted a video yesterday that showed a pastor advocating for a literal reading of the Levitical laws regarding homosexuals. (Scroll down to find it.)
I asked, what if there were people in that congregation who had a secret that they were terrified to share, because they felt trapped into being in that man's congregation?
What I failed to ask was how everyday common run-of-the-mill believers would feel if I told them that by not standing against this evil dogma within their own faith, that they were just as bad as this pastor.
What I failed to make absolutely clear was to point out that, even if you disagree with his doctrine or ideology, if you don't stand against him and his type, you become just as morally complicit as if you were up there yourself touting his sermon.
Christians and Muslims today are not all of this caliber of evil. But, again, by failing to root extremism of any sort out of their faiths, they are not only allowing monstrous evils to continue against innocent people, they are also morally complicit in those evils.
It's not enough to claim you don't follow that dogma. You have to actually do something about it.