None are innocent

On Crime and Punishment

“Often have you heard you say of him who does wrong that he is not one of you, but a stranger an intruder to your world.

But I say to you: even as the saint and the righteous cannot rise above the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you.

And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

Together you move to your divine essence: you are the way and they who walk it. And when one of you falls he falls for those behind him, as a caution against the stumbling-stone. Yet he falls also for those before him, who though swifter and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling-stone.

And this also shall I say, though the word weigh heavy upon your hearts: the murdered is not blameless in his own murder, and the robbed is not guiltless in being spoiled.

The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, and the clean-handed is not undefiled in the doings of the felon. Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured, and still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked; for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together. And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.“

The Prophet – On Crime and Punishment – Khalil Gibran