The great division within man is rooted not in ideology or religion or tribe, but in darkness and death, counterposed against light and life, which comes not from man but is placed within him. The line separating dark from light is the battleground of the soul, and it runs, as Solzhenitsyn said, through the heart of every man.
I thought about this as I listened to an NPR report this morning about Iraqi artists, both a refugee whose art is strikingly beautiful, and his fellow artists who remain in Iraq, where they are targeted by killers who believe they transgress Islam. The servant of death and darkness is never more exposed, it seems to me, than when he advocates the murder of children and artists, for each participate in Creation, children by living out its replication among mankind, and artists by crafting images which, when they have talent and are not themselves thoroughly shot through with evil, point the mind back to the Creator.
And Islamofascists, of course, seem to take great delight in the murder of both children and artists, which speaks volumes about the nature of the god they claim to serve, as it does the state of their own twisted souls.
