Let Them be Executed
The handwringing over the fate of these two men springs not from a genuine commitment to rights, but from the Western political class's moral cowardice in relation to radical Islam. It is worth thinking about the gravity of the crimes for which these men could be charged. The 'ISIS Beatles' are thought to have been responsible for the capture, torture and beheading of 27 hostages, including American journalist James Foley and British taxi driver Alan Henning, who had been helping to deliver aid to Syrians. They beheaded people, on film, 'without the slightest scruple', in the words of one of their former hostages. Their Middle Ages barbarism, broadcast online to horrify Western viewers and titillate aspiring jihadists, summed up the extreme backwardness of the ISIS movement and its desire to mock the very foundations of Western civilisation. Moral cowardice is never an attractive trait. Moral cowardice disguised as principle is even worse.