THE PLAIN TRUTH

The judge looked at the man who had shot Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and asked him calmly:

"Why did you kill him?"

"Because he was secular," the assassin replied.

The judge frowned.

"What does 'secular' mean?"

The man hesitated for a second.

"I don't know."

In another trial, the defendant had attempted to assassinate the writer Naguib Mahfouz.

"Why did you stab him?" the judge asked.

"Because he wrote a novel against religion."

"Did you read it?"

"No."

In a third courtroom, another man faced charges for murdering the intellectual Farag Fouda.

"Why did you kill him?"

"Because he had no faith."

"How do you know?"

"It's in his books."

"Which one?"

Silence.

"I don't know. I haven't read them."

"Why didn't you read them?"

The man lowered his head.

"I can't read or write."

In all three cases, the pattern was the same.

They killed for ideas they didn't understand. They condemned for words they had never read. They hated for concepts they couldn't define.

It wasn't conviction. It was repetition.

It wasn't faith. It was echo.

It wasn't certainty. It was blind obedience.

The violence was not born of thought. It was born of its absence.

Hatred doesn't spread through knowledge. It spreads where knowledge doesn't reach.

And every time a society gives up on educating, it doesn't create ignorant people.

It creates human weapons who don't know why they fire, but are willing to do so.

That is the invisible price of ignorance.

And it's always paid by someone who did nothing to deserve it.