After 9/11 the Western world’s response fell between two poles; on the one hand lots of people agreed with General Norman Schwarzkopf that it was not our job to forgive the terrorists, it was God’s job; ours was simply to arrange the meeting. On the other hand some on the American Left asked the question: why do they hate us so?
Perhaps more worrying might be the question: why don’t they hate us?
This week Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the lovely Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—now just ‘Islamic State’—issued a statement to the worldwide faithful in his new role as self-proclaimed caliph.
In a reasonably slick document issued in several languages al-Baghdadi celebrated the month of Ramadan with his own message, rather like the Pope does at Christmas.
‘We congratulate the ummah (people) of Islam, in the East and in the West, on the advent of the blessed month of Ramadan, and we praise Allah (the Exalted) for allowing us to reach this virtuous month.
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