Are we seeking an absolute answer?
It seems to me that the answer is in fact "Yes and No."
Yes, if the moral outlook at least allows for reciprocity.
No, if the moral outlook does not.
Let me crow my own self for a moment. The reason I'm so hard on certain sociopolitical, moral, and ethical paradigms is that they are fixed and do not allow for certain vital deviations. I believe I understand something about what some Muslims don't like about the idea of "America." Not because I understand Muslims, but because, being a human being, I have some understanding of human nature. Is my vision any sharper than the next person's? In the abstract, no, but observationally I tend to be rather quite happy with the amount of time I spend thinking and reflecting because past incarnations shame my brain into submission with a certain amount of inflexibility. But think about it: there are some things we bemoan about our own culture. If the Muslims or anybody else don't want those aspects of our society--not just the indignity of having the highest unwed teen birth rate in the industrialized first world, but what of the indignity experienced daily by millions of workers in fast food, entertainment concessions, specialty retail, and telemarketing subjected to the task of "suggestive sales"? Look, if Ahmed doesn't want to call thousands of people at dinnertime for weeks on end asking them to take a survey--what turns out to be a very disturbing opinion poll about child pornography and abortion, draw whatever connections you will, no matter how silly--that runs for eighty-some questions and thirty minutes for a lousy six bucks an hour, well, that doesn't mean he's jealous of America and hates freedom.
I understand ... there are some things about my cultural values that make other people shudder. At the height of my glory days, I smoked dope with porn stars. There exists a real possibility that I've actually subverted democracy on one occasion, but I beg forgiveness because I did once administer an eighty-some question, thirty-minute survey calling people from 5:00 pm until 10:00 pm, asking them questions about abortion and child pornography.
And now consider that beady-eyed, five-foot tall, red-faced KKK guy that looked like a garden gnome on moonshine and methamphetamine that used to make the rounds on second- and third-tier talk shows in the 90s. You know, I think it's fair for me to morally condemn his inflexibility. Niggers and spics an kikes and yadda-yadda-yadda.
That guy at the former "World Church" (now known as "The Creativity Movement") who wept for a fallen soldier in the racial holy war, a guy who murdered people before committing suicide.
I feel I have the right to judge my lying, cheating President of the United States.
The thing these three have in common isn't actually racism. Let's not make the mistake of that joke, no matter how much it might make some of us smile. The thing is that I perceive an inflexibility in the way they view the world. They do not understand the idea of judgmental reciprocity, that their own ideas might seem as strange to the other guy as his do to them.
What I can't seem to do is judge a body I don't understand enough to see the inflexibility. Whether in Liberia or Rwanda, it's hard for me to figure why the people who were left begging for relief were left begging for relief. Fourteen years into a civil war? In the waning days, 25,000 Monrovians marched and attempted to place themselves smack between the lines and were pushed out by government troops. Yeah, I kind of think that maybe if they'd had every able-bodied peacebeggar in Monrovia with them that day, it would have been a different outcome. But when LURD shells civilians, the perverse logic is that they are implicitly endorsing the government and are therefore fair game, or else that the people should respond by rising up against the government for lack of protection. They're bloody terrorists. F@cking f@ck! You don't do that! Moron thug terrorst!
And sometime those ideas are easy to figure out.
If you ask me about a weird cultural tradition like clitoridectomy (note the judgment of the word "weird") you'll get a strange answer: Read Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mt. Kenya. It's actually an excellent book. But ... there's an old myth that says once upon a time the women ruled the world. Incidentally, this is in proper terms with an anthropological assertion that primitive cultural associations were matricentric until men figured their role in reproduction. So says the myth, the women got decadent, so the men rose up and saved the world. For at least one tribe, that was the explanation for clitoridectomy: taming a woman's decadence. And I don't so much condemn it as immoral as I do so unutterably stupid that I can't really do much other than shake my head because, and this is the important part: As long as we allow myths to define reality in such a literal manner--e.g. religion?--there will always be a reason for slicing off a young girl's clit.
Welcome to the human race. Whether or not we make it to the finish line is beside the point. The reasons don't actually have to make any sense. We humans seem to prefer it that way.
Here's a clincher question: Could one of those tribal members comprehend the idea that I think they're damn near insane?
Would they care at all?
Dare I be so condescending as to forego judgment claiming the idea so primitive that it signifies non compos mentis, or however that's stated?
Would that not be a judgment in itself, and, in relegating the idea to "amoral" for its insanity, would that not be a moral judgment inasmuch as, say, atheism is a religious assertion?
Do I judge poor people in the third world for some of the things they eat? I don't think I have the right. If I had to butcher and eat my neighbor's dog ... I think I'd wander around and suck on rocks and trees until I died, sometime early the next week.
As to what point requires action ... I haven't a clue.