I won’t stand idly by as atrocities are committed

Surely it’s redundant to list the acts of violence committed by Muslims specifically in the name of Islam. I could fill this newspaper, let alone this column, with accounts of the beheadings, the crucifixions, the rapes, the suicide bombs, the hacking off of limbs, the grotesque, deliberate and sadistic violence inflicted on usually innocent and vulnerable people by Islamist fanatics. Frankly I am sick of the denial, the cowardly relativism, the sordid attempts to pretend this has nothing to do with the Muslim faith but is about occupation, oppression or poverty. That’s childish politics and unworthy of serious consideration. 

This isn’t the place for a detailed analysis of the psychotic state of contemporary Muslim extremism but we do need to react to the common response that Catholics act or have acted just as badly. It’s a banal, hysterical position. One of the most regular of these spasms concerns the Crusades. 

First, it was a very long time ago, Popes have apologized for any pain caused in the name of the Church, and while Crusaders could be brutal, they were engaged in a medieval warfare in which soldiers, whatever their religion, fought on equal terms and as willing combatants.