How do we win the battle of hearts and minds against Isil, Boris Johnson asked on these pages yesterday? Well, comes one obvious answer, by pointing out that they do nasty things to anyone they perceive as their enemy. This is the tack taken by the US State Department’s latest video, aimed at US Muslims at risk of radicalisation. The 70-second video points out that anyone who signs up with Isil is likely to find himself complicit in the deaths of fellow Muslims, and then provides a gory show reel of Isil inflicting atrocities amongst anyone they consider an enemy. “Are you really capable of this?” That’s the implicit message. “Do you really want to go to Iraq, to do horrific things to our fellow human beings?”
Except, as we all know, many of us are secretly thrilled by the idea of doing horrific things to our enemies. That’s the first problem with using atrocity footage to put young men or women off violent Jihad. Particularly – and I write this, shamefacedly, as a doubting-but-pretty-much-believing Christian – especially where religion is involved. The horrors of the French Wars of Religion, just one example, have rather drifted from our school curricula, but my own work as a literary historian involves reading pamphlet after pamphlet detailing atrocities inflicted by Catholics upon Protestants, and vice versa, on European soil. You might not think of it on your next holiday to Lyon, but only four hundred and fifty years ago, the Rhone ran red with Protestant blood.
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