Critical Muslim 47

Critical Muslim is a quarterly magazine of ideas and issues, presenting Muslim perspectives on the great debates of our times.

Hannah Arendt spoke of the banality of evil — the normalisation of the unutterable, simply because that was how things were in any given place and time. Is evil really so disappointing? We expect evil to be dramatic, unfathomable and remarkable; the workings of a twisted genius, a fallen angel, Iblis. But what if the mediocre perpetuate it, the followers, the weak, the masses? What defines evil? What is the devil's greatest trick in our contemporary world? Some even claim evil no longer exists — if it ever did. The greying morality of postmodernism begs the question of whether one can even be good.