Of Monsters and Men

Melanie McDonagh writes:

There are various pieties that politicians observe in the wake of some barbarity committed by Islamic fundamentalists and duly David Cameron observed them in his statement yesterday about the murder of David Haines. Of the perpetrators, he observed:

‘They are killing and slaughtering thousands of people – Christians, Muslims, minorities across Iraq and Syria. They boast of their brutality. They claim to do this in the name of Islam. That is nonsense. Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.’

I really wish he wouldn’t. It doesn’t add anything whatever to our understanding of Isis to say that they are not Muslims but monsters. They may not be our preferred kind of Muslims – my own preference is for the C of E sort you used to get in the former Yugoslavia – but they are, unquestionably Muslims of a particularly unattractive stamp. Calling them monsters is an impolite way of abnegating any effort to understand them...

Why must it be an either/or thing? Why can't they be monsters and Muslims? In which case it would not be inaccurate to refer to ISIS, which along with spearheading today's jihad are also successful oil entrepreneurs, Monsters, Inc.



Sully is cuddly...
 



...Al-Bagdhadi...not so much.