Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 17 learn from our mistakes when we roll out the red carpet for a dictator like General el-Sisi. Or we learn the wrong lessons, such as when we conclude from the disastrous wars in Iraq and Libya that it is best to stay uninvolved even when a genocide is underway. We still have no idea how to prevent the murder being committed by the Syrian regime against its own people for the last four years. Similarly, we have seemingly come to terms with the existence of a new religious fascism that con- trols a territory roughly as big as Great Britain, extending from the Iranian border almost to the Mediterranean. Clearly there are no simple answers to such questions as how to liberate a city of millions like Mosul – but we do not even pose the question seriously. Yet for the community of nations, an organization like ISIS with its estimated thirty thousand fighters is not invin- cible – we must not allow it to be. “Today they are with us,” said the Catholic bishop of Mosul, Yohanna Petros Mouche, when he begged for help from the West and other global powers to drive ISIS out of Iraq. “Today they are with us. Tomorrow they will be with you.” I’d rather not imagine what more will have to happen before we heed the bishop of Mosul’s warning. After all, it is part of ISIS’s propagandistic logic to create ever higher levels of horror so that its images penetrate our consciousness. As soon as we were no longer outraged to see individual Christian hostages saying the rosary before being beheaded, ISIS started beheading entire groups of Christians. When we banished the decapitations from our screens, ISIS burnt the artwork at the National Museum in Mosul. Once we had grown used to the sight of smashed statues, ISIS began leveling whole ruined cities like Nimrod and Nineveh. When the expulsions of Yazidis had ceased to interest us, the news of mass rapes briefly jolted us from our slumber. When we thought the terrors were limited to Iraq and Syria, snuff videos reached us from Libya and Egypt. After we had become accustomed to the beheadings of some and the crucifixions of others, the victims were first beheaded and then crucified, as recently occurred in Libya. Palmyra is not being blown up all at once, but is being destroyed edifice by edifice at intervals of several weeks so that each time there will be a fresh news item. This will not stop. ISIS will keep escalating the horror until we see, hear, and feel in our everyday European lives that this horror will not stop by itself. Paris will only have been the beginning, and the decapitation in Lyons will not be the last. The longer we wait, the fewer options remain. In other words, it is already far too late. The Sayyidah Zainab Mosque, Syria Image from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)