Da’ash (ISIL) has sought to recruit by propagandising the cruelty with which it treats its fellow Muslims. There was the gruesome burning alive in public of a captured Jordanian pilot. Then a month or so ago video footage was released to show just how inventive their cruelty could be: a group of captives were tethered at the neck with explosive cord used in construction, and decapitated simultaneously when the cord was detonated; another group were crammed into a car which was then destroyed with a rocket propelled grenade; The worst atrocity was reserved for a third group who were slowly lowered in a cage into a swimming pool to be drowned, with underwater cameras to capture their last agonies.
That these tortures were designed by zealots claiming to be the servants of God, and meted out on their own co-religionists, is truly bizarre. What God is it that they worship? Kali perhaps? Certainly not Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.
In an idle hour on holiday, whilst my wife busied herself in a museum of cookery, I visited a museum of mediaeval torture. These tortures were designed by Christians for Christians. I am afraid the display of ingenuity at delaying the moment of death, whilst maximising the pain and prolonging agony, puts Da’ash to shame. By comparison with the servants of Christendom – in the pain game, at least – they are a bunch of mere amateurs.
What sort of mind is it that busies itself designing gruesome ways of killing others so horribly?
I do not believe that such minds have any place in Islam, any more than they had any place in Christianity. There is a darkness within humanity however, some of us just enjoy killing. Whilst some people may play golf, a tiny number of others plan their next serial murder.
The added horror is when these twisted souls adopt an ideology which they believe sanctions their grizzly hobby. This perversion is apt to give religion a bad name. It seems to me reasonable that Muslims and Christians alike should strive to point out that it has absolutely nothing in common with true religion.