Glenn Fairman "I wonder if in the cool and quiet of the evening, long after the muezzin’s final call to prayer, the jihadi mulls over the actions he either perpetrates or gives assent to in the name of his cold and distant deity? Does he pray as I do? Does he attempt to strip off the veneer of self-righteousness that whitewashes the ego and feeds that most loathsome core of sinful pride? Does he really believe that the acts of immolating an iron cage filled with Yazidi girls or smashing the skulls of children in their mothers’ arms renders him as a shining pearl -- a holy offering to his god? Is the immersion of perceived apostates in a fountain of acid or the crucifixion of Christians in the town square – in full view of their own young children -- proof of some iron semblance of moral superiority? Does he ever get beyond the rote babble to a place where he wonders – far beyond the wary eyes of his dead-eyed brethren: "Am I a good man, or am I a bad man?" "And if I am the latter, then what manner of hellish Master do I serve?' "
. . . "From the Bible, we fathom that love, justice, mercy, and forgiveness are divine virtues that span the entire panorama of God’s dealings with man. In Christianity, these facets of His nature coalesce at the Cross: in Jesus’ monumental act of atonement that reconciled once and for all the cavernous breach between God and His free yet wayward creation. Flowing from the gospel is a call to repentance and to put down the entanglements of this world – to walk as strangers in a strange land as we are molded in the refinery of this earth into something that will one day display an immense beauty."