A LESSON FROM HISTORY

When I said in a recent article that the Islamic nations were about five hundred years behind the times, operating in the same way as the Christian Fanatics during the Inquisition I little thought how soon my words would be proved correct, I wish with all my heart that I had been wrong.

In burning alive the young Jordanian pilot they have shown to the world their total lack of respect for human life, and their intolerance of any opinion but their own. What is most chilling is their ability to carry out these atrocities in such a calculating manner, not in the heat of battle but with the design of drawing attention to their cause and , they hope striking terror into their enemies.

I have news for these murdering animals, it is not working. We are sickened, we are disgusted but we are not afraid.

I said that Western Governments had seriously underestimated the capacity of the Islamic extremists for violence and cruelty and that they would stick at nothing in order to get their way , and that is true. They wish to rule us all, they want to impose their diabolical twisted version of the faith of Islam upon the rest of the world and they have been trying to do this for almost two thousand years

Yet they are mistaken if they believe that such actions as we have seen, the massacre of Christian children, the burnings, the beheading will fill their enemies with fear. In fact in the use of such extreme cruelty they run the risk of alienating not just The West, but the more peace loving Muslim Nations, the true followers of Allah of which there are many.

Perhaps this is their true crusade, it could be that it is they who are afraid that they are losing ground to those who's faith is true to the word of the Prophet Mohammed, those who believe in peace.

I recently exchanged views with a young man who wrote so eloquently of his faith and his belief in the truth of his religion, that I began to hope that the agents of terror, who twist the words of their Holy Book to further their own ends might not prevail. In spite of what has happened recently I still have that hope.

We must never give in to the temptation of believing that all of Islam is evil. The young Muslim men and women who have been radicalised by such organisations as ISIS are as much the victims of their ruthless teachers as those who's lives they take. These young people hazard all, for what they believe to be the truth, while their cowardly leaders stay well away from the firing line and this willingness to give their lives for their belief is common to all faiths, history teaches us this fact over and over again.

Yet for every one of these misguided youngsters there are thousands of young people who do not follow the teachings of those who desire to plunge the world in to darkness and it will be they who will prevail, if we are wise enough to trust them.

The practitioners of my faith were, in the past burned at the stake in their hundreds for their beliefs , they were burned by Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, so as you see Christians can hardly take the moral high ground here.

Islam, like Christianity began with a good man and some great ideas,it began with truth ,honour, peace and love. Centuries of schism and corruption have made such inroads into this simple truth that those who founded these faiths would not recognise in today's form the faith for which many of them died a martyrs death.

I cannot see how a practitioner of either faith in it's true form could reconcile the killing and torturing they use to further their cause with the words of their God. I do not recollect Christ telling his followers to slay their enemies, quite the reverse and yet for two thousand years Christians have committed such atrocities in the name of God in the same way that Islamic State does today,

If in all this time nothing has been achieved, if all that blood has been shed and innocent lives sacrificed for nothing,there can be no chance that these inhuman practices from a time when mankind knew no better, will be effective now.

If we are to survive we must learn from history that tolerance is the only way to achieve lasting peace. We must learn to share the earth's resources fairly. We must respect each other, beliefs and we must learn above all to love each other, no matter what faith, colour or caste we are, or we are doomed, to destroy this lovely world of ours and everything in it!

If mankind cannot do this then it is to be hoped that one or all of these hypothetical Gods will wipe mankind from the face of the earth with fire, flood and pestilence.......while there is still a world to save. Amen.