Why the apologists for the Islamist far right must make Jihadi John a victim

Islamic State allows its adherents to be both cultists and psychopaths: an L. Ron Hubbard and a Fred West rolled into one. The reasons why young men want to travel across the world to fight its wars and lend a hand to the murder of its victims ought to be brutally and boringly obvious.

Psychopaths are always less complicated, less rewarding, less interesting than their victims. They’re not hard to explain. Where is the difficulty about Abelaziz Kuwan , for instance? His case opens ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan. It is a superb piece of journalism, unsparing in it analysis of the folly of the Obama administration, which thinks it can win over the Sunnis of Syria, while tacitly supporting the Assad regime which gases and bombs them, and the Sunnis of Iraq, while tacitly supporting the Iranian-backed Shia sectarians of Iraq, who will slaughter and oppress them.