ISIS brutality demands response by the world

It was one heinous execution too many.

With its ghoulish auto-da-fé murder of a captured Jordanian pilot this week, ISIS has awakened a sleeping giant. The Muslim world has spoken loud and clear — with many voices creating a veritable chorus condemning the murder — and now may help defeat the jihadist terror gang.

The murder came after weeks of negotiations over a prisoner swap. When that exchange went south, ISIS set fire to a cage that roasted Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh alive. It was all caught on video and posted online by ISIS.

Words fail.

Ever since its emergence over the last 18 months, the Islamic State (known variously as ISIS, ISIL and IS) has horrified the world with its bloodlust. The group’s videos depicting beheadings of foreign journalists, and others, have become routine. Its slave trade in women and children violates every standard of human decency.

These monsters must be stopped. Indeed, key players, including the United States, the European Union and Kurdish forces have been fighting ISIS, notching some victories.

The fact remains that ISIS has claimed an enormous swath of Iraqi and Syrian territory, and stopping them will not be easy. They are well armed, well financed and, inexplicably, drawing volunteer fighters from around the world.

The West has condemned ISIS from the start. Unfortunately, elements in the Sunni Muslim world had been reluctant to issue full-throated condemnations, perhaps out of an uneasy solidarity with the group’s core religious convictions.

No more. The murder of al-Kaseasbeh has energized Muslim critics. As reported in the Times of Israel, the sheik of Egypt’s Al-Azhar Mosque, considered the seat of Islamic learning, said ISIS fighters deserved death. Statements of outrage poured in from the Arab foreign ministers, from the leader of the 57-nation-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and, of course, from Jordan’s political and military leadership.

Just as the Arab world allied with the global coalition to turn back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait 25 years ago, so, too, may it more robustly ally with the West now to destroy the scourge of ISIS.

The Jews have a vested interest in this fight. ISIS may train its sites on the Jewish state someday, so it is doubly essential that the group be utterly destroyed, no matter who pulls the trigger.

Radical jihadist Islam threatens the entire world. It’s time to take the gloves off and deal seriously with this problem.