By the way, you don't agree with me that ISIS is the scourge of the 21st century?
ISIS is yet another example of just how depraved humans can become while cloaking themselves in the "righteousness" of a malignant form of religion, ethnic pride or nationalism. The challenge is to separate the malignancy from the whole. Are all Muslims ISIS? Were all Bosnian Serbs involved in the rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims (and Croats)?
My wife claims that I have been depressed since 9/11, and she may well be right. Though I had no personal connection (as in friends or family lost), they were the most shocking and disturbing events to have happened in my lifetime. The ideology behind jihadist terrorism and ISIS is completely alien and repugnant to me. But I also know from personal experience working with Muslims, that they viewed al-Qaeda then, and ISIS now, as a perversion of their faith, and they are equally appalled.
I was 5 or 6 the first time I witnessed uncompromising hatred. An English neighbour of ours openly despised everyone and everything German. He had been a British foot-soldier in World War II, and a prisoner of war. He talked proudly about provoking “the Hun, krauts, squareheads, boche, jerry” every chance he got in the POW camp. And he suffered greatly for his efforts, being beaten regularly. I cannot imagine what he went through. Curiously, though, he almost never used the word Nazi, was “tight-lipped” about Jews, and more openly derisive of any "non-white".
My father also fought in WWII (Canadian Artillery), first in Sicily and later in the liberation of Holland. And my mother served with the British Women’s Air Corps as a radio operator at Hemel Hempstead. They experienced the Blitz together, and lost friends and loved ones during the war. But neither carried a sense of
bitterness forward. My father talked about the Germans who were surrendering to his unit near the end of the war. By this time, many were boys and old men who had been pressed into service. He noticed their belt buckles, which read “Gott mit uns” (God with
us). He spoke about how, if he had been born in Germany, he might well have been swept up in the fever, and joined the Hitler Youth. He cautioned me about the perils of nationalism, but supported the notion that war was, at times, necessary.
I know that my perspective is the culmination of my life's experiences and environment. Were I to have grown up in the Middle East, for example, I might think about things differently. Nonetheless, to me, the scourge of
any century has been bigotry and fear. It's what ISIS promotes, and if we respond in kind, then they have succeeded in making us more like them. By all means, target ISIS and like organizations as a genuine and serious threat. But, please, let us step back from the edge of prejudice and bigotry, and the rhetoric that promotes it.
