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A secular West mainly regards jihadism as an attack on modernity, as a primitive hatred for progressive ideals and liberated lifestyles. That’s true. But it is just as much a revulsion against the roots of our Western ways — the Christian stream of thought and practice that has always centred on the idea of the dignity of the individual and the integrity of every human life. We may have forgotten those roots, but the murder of Fr. Hamel, and the manner and place of his murder, should tell us that the jihadists have not.

How long must our leaders, from the White House to the Vatican, blindly argue that Islamists are not who they themselves say they are?

After the attack, Pope Francis was willing to say that this is “war,” but very much declined to say that religion itself was an element of this war: “we don’t have to be afraid to say this (is) a war of interests, for money, resources.” And to make his point explicit, he continued: “I am not speaking of a war of religions. Religions don’t want war.”

Those words are very much to be regretted. After all, these are self-professed jihadists. If religion doesn’t play a part in a holy war, I don’t know what does. How long will it take the leadership in the West to recognize this? How long must our leaders, from the White House to the Vatican, blindly argue that Islamists are not who they themselves say they are; that their motives are not what they declare their motives to be? This is not turning the other cheek. It is shutting their eyes and ears.

The murder of Fr. Hamel was as much a proclamation as a crime, and to deny its symbolism is not a mercy, it is an evasion of declared reality.

National Post