As if you don’t think humans can get any more barbarous and bestial, we have this video via the website of Tarek Fatah, Canadian writer and critic of Islamism. It’s a Wahhabi Muslim cleric instructing his coreligionists on the proper method of and attitude towards beheading. (Hint: it’s supposed to give you pleasure.) Fatah’s comment:

It’s interesting to note how most Islamist groups in America have condemned the beheading of journalist Foley with claims that such beheadings are not Islamic. As a Muslim, I know these groups are not being truthful. Here to enlighten us all on how to behead the non-Muslim is an Islamic cleric. Watch and weep.

The YouTube notes say this:

A video has recently emerged that shows a Wahhabi cleric explaining to a group of his followers the proper way to behead people. He points out that it is different from slaughtering animals. He states that the sword should be placed on the neck and then moved back and forth while slitting the throat. He said that people performing the killing should enjoy themselves while doing it.

And if you don’t think that is dispiriting, have a look at the results of a poll commissioned by the Russian news agency Rossiya Sevodnia (Russia Today). Before you discount that because it’s Russian, realize that the poll was actually conducted by ICM Research , a British polling agency that seems quite respectable. As reported in RT , the ICM organization polled citizens of three states—France, the UK, and Germany—about their sympathy for ISIS. Here’s the summary chart:

As you see, France has the highest proportion of people sympathetic to ISIS, followed by considerably lower (but not low enough) percentages for the UK and then Germany. The French sympathy for ISIS declines with age, but 27% and 20% are still horrifically high.

Lest you think that the French positivity comes only from Muslims, be aware that the proportion of Muslims in France is only 7.5%. In the UK and Germany, however, most of the positive answers could have come from Muslims, as the proportion of Muslim citizens in those countries is 5% and 4.6% respectively. Nevertheless, we tend to think of Muslims in Western countries as being more temperate than their jihadist brethren, so any number there reflects a disturbing approbation for the terrorist organization of ISIS.

Naturally, excuses abound; here’s one by a Russian who sees the positive figures not as approbation for ISIS, but as something reflecting “the country’s [France’s] accumulated potential rejection of the existing system as a whole”—whatever that means:

“This is not a result of sympathy of a significant number of French people for this extremist terrorist organization,” Yury Rubinsky, the head of the Center of French Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Rossiya Segodnya. “This is simply a manifestation of the country’s accumulated potential rejection of the existing system as a whole. This is a form of rejection of the elites, a form of protest.”

What mendacious gobbledygook! It’s just “protest of the existing system”? Which system? And aren’t there better ways of protesting the “system” than conquering, mass executions, forced conversions, and imposition of sharia law? That has nothing to to with approbation of terrorism? I don’t believe it for a second. This is Muslim apologetics, and Orwellian doublespeak, at its worst.

Finally, there’s been some discussion about foreign nationals fighting for ISIS. There are repeated reports of Europeans and Americans being recruited to kill apostates and establish the Caliphate, but the Russian piece gives some (varying) estimates for British citizens:

Earlier this year the British press cited Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood as saying that at least 1,500 British nationals are likely to have been recruited by IS extremists to fight in Iraq and Syria. Then-Foreign Secretary William Hague earlier this year claimed that around 400 young British nationals have gone to the Middle East to join the fighting.

What with the bloody and seemingly irresolvable conflict between Israel and Palestine, the war in Ukraine encouraged and funded by the thug Putin, the advances and horrible brutality of ISIS, and the continuing threat of Islam, there doesn’t seem to be much good news in the world these days. My friend Malgorzata (on Hili’s staff) informed me yesterday that she gave Hili a treat of real cream. When I chastised her for giving such a fatty treat to the cat, she explained:

When I finished reading morning news, with rockets, beheadings, condemnations of Israel, anti-Semitism, dead in the Ukraine, and some other assorted horrors, I looked at Hili: soft, furry, warm and waking up on the sofa. It was time for her to get something to eat and she was so nice to look at after all I’ve been reading that I gave her a bowl of cream. Am I excused?

I excused her.

h/t: Barry