From the Editor: Interrogating Torture
Dennis Hoover Friday, 1 June 2007
While as a society we've become almost nonchalant about the audience-tested segments of fictional torture portrayed on "24" and in horror-flicks, real-life torture is a difficult subject to examine in a clear-eyed way because, among other reasons, the very thought of the real thing provokes fear. A common "response" to the issue is the non-response of simply averting our eyes and minds. And even when we do look closer, we are prone to distortions.
One increasingly common assumption in the West is that torture is mostly a Muslim problem. The stereotype that Islam is somehow inherently violent has come to include not only the image of suicide bombings but also that of death squad torture victims.
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