With Taliban militants who shoot children in the head, one by one, there is no common humanity, no common language
Just when one thought that the last word on depravity and inhumanity was in, along come Taliban “militants” who kill children, one by one, in a “revenge” attack.
Note the logic, if you can call it that: The government of Pakistan fights the Taliban, and in response the Taliban murders children. It’s the same “logic” that has Palestinians murder rabbis in the synagogue, or children sleeping on the Sabbath, or customers in a coffee house, in response to Israeli policies.
Is there one humanity, or two? One cannot avoid the conclusion that there are two. There is the one humanity of John Donne, under whose wings no man is an island; and there is the other humanity, over whom the devil presides. There is no dialogue between the two humanities, since one is human and the other merely dresses and breathes that way.
Keep in mind: This mass murder in a Pakistani school this week was not carried out by the criminally insane, the drugged, the bullied, the alienated. It was carried out by the criminally sane, the sober, the ideologically driven, the religiously motivated. There is an unbridgeable divide here, between two-legged creatures who speak one language and the rest of humanity who speaks another.
It is depressing, to say the very least, at the time of Chanukah to learn of people who, just prior to murdering children, tell them to say their final prayers. These adherents of one religion regard death as if the line between death and life were the merest quibble, nothing but a smudge, and between another religion that commemorates an ancient event embodying the absolute value of life under freedom. These particular adherents of the one religion define with absolute accuracy the deepest depth of darkness; adherents of the other religion commemorate light.
Just as there is no common humanity between the Taliban “militants” and the rest of us, there is no common language. No dialogue. No negotiations. There is this: a Muslim country with an atom bomb, namely, Pakistan, and certain Muslims who want that bomb strictly to use it. It is time to awaken to the unalterable threat posed by these “militants,” and the need to defeat them in battle wherever they are.
Any conversation with them, be it in the form of peace negotiations or theological dialogue, is strictly a matter of us talking to ourselves. There is no interlocutor. There is no listening, second side. If nothing before — beheadings, suicide bombings, cold-blooded murders — has taught us this fundamental truth, then surely this week’s mass murder in a school in Pakistan should. There are no “militants” here, only terrorists. There are no “freedom fighters” here, only murderers. There are no adherents of a religion of peace here, only lovers of violence and death. Yes, it is time to awaken to the reality.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
