The Paradigm
23rd December 2014
John C. Wright reminds you what Islam is all about.
Maybe we can find Baptist on Mormon violence around the time of the Civil War, or something else not in living memory. For Catholic versus Protestant atrocities, we can uncover many in Ireland, and, before that, we need to dive back far enough in history that everyone is wearing lace or ruffs. My amateur’s knowledge of history tells me of few or no battles between Catholic and Greek after the Great Schism, and some tumults and riots between Orthodox and the Nestorians or Arians. The next time religious atrocities appear in Western history is the persecutions of Diocletian or Nero. Before that, the Roman pagans engaged in the greatest witch-hunt in history, wiping out members of a cult whose practices were abominable.
Hence there is no moral equivalence here. What is the occasional and historically anomalous aberration for Christendom is the heart and soul of the Dar-el-Islam. What for us is a freakish departure from our code of conduct is their code of conduct. A more perfect and absolute evil than performing the most grotesque and nightmarish atrocities the vile imagination of man can conceive in the name of God does not exist. Even the Nazis were more civilized than this — they did not use nerve gas.
The battle is existential and absolute. Compromise or coexistence is not possible if the enemy is unwilling to compromise and coexist.