My Thoughts are With Al-Arish

The terrible enormity of the attack on the Al-Rawdah mosque by terrorists under an ISIS flag is a stark reminder of the destructive nature of terror--its nihilism and ultimate defiance of meaning. There was no reason, no strategic rationale, no purpose, for these people to die at prayers. They were murdered by people who murder because they have found a group that lets them do so. The absolute grief and horror that the deaths of over three hundred people, dozens of them children, would mean to any community is impossible to contemplate without being stricken oneself with a sense of mingled sorrow, anger, and injustice. 

What has happened here defies the cold answers of political agendas and "thoughts and prayers" blandishments. Rhetoric: the kind of nonsense that parks itself between the political dreams and racial and cultural nightmares, and the call to use ersatz-spirituality in an attempt to justify outrages, lead to this bloody and brutal event, and my words are barely any kind of comfort because I think words themselves can only do so much. 

The viciousness of this act must speak for itself. But what it must say is that this tactic, this lifestyle of terrorism comes to nothing but grief. That is all there could be. People die, people mourn, and nothing is ever changed for the better because this is not how anything better ever happens. 

But I think the West needs to look long and hard, here. The first and last targets ISIS chooses will be, more often than not--Muslims. This is not about Muslim vs West. This is not a clash of civilizations. This is just civilization being violated by people who have lost their civilization. And that is not a problem with Islam, but something else. A problem with civilization, and its discontents. A failure to connect people to a sense of value. A romanticization of the idea of violence and war as life and culture-changing. I don't know what. I only know something so horrible could not ever be simple.