We must admire a fanaticism that inevitably leads to the demonisation and destruction of its foes:
The Taliban can be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to one another, the new Bishop for the Armed Forces has claimed.The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists that recognises their humanity…
“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the west could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation because it’s not honest really.
”The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”
Venner is, of course, just channelling Lyse Doucet, a BBC apologist for the Taliban:
A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan’s ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the humanity of the Taliban.
AP today reports on what the admirable and humane Taliban is up to at the moment in Pakistan:
The Taliban has routinely attacked schools, particularly ones attended by girls....
In one month in Peshawar, 221 people were killed and nearly 500 wounded in bombings. A single truck bomb in a market that sells mostly women’s clothes and children’s toys killed more than 100. The latest attack was Monday when a bomb went off outside the courthouse in Peshawar, killing 10 people…
Dr. Arif Attaullah says he does not cry easily. But when the truck bomb killed 112 people in Peshawar’s Mena Bazaar he could not stop the tears.
“A father came in and he was holding a small boy. The boy’s body was burned black and his father was crying: `I sent you to school to learn, not to die,’” Attaullah says. “That made me cry. I am a tough person — a surgeon — but day after day we are seeing these things that are too horrible.”
Praise the fanaticism that can inspire such barbarity. So the bishop of Britain’s armed forces instructs.
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