A stunning reversal
[ by Charles Cameron — Dabiq vs the Qur’an — again, it’s the formal precision of the reversal that inrerests me ]
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It is not the fact that the Islamic State delights in killing infidels that surprises me, it’s the utter reversal of the Qur’an’s own emphasis on the value of a single life that catches my eye.
For the Qur’an, a single human life is worth the world, unless that life is subject to the death penalty for murder or mayhem; for IS, the lives of a world of infidels are worth less than a single Muslim life.
The one and the many, an individual and the whole world — how differently they are regarded in these two texts.