A sanctuary, whether pagan or Israelite, Muslim or Jewish, is protected by the ancient norms of refuge and sacrilege. No matter how many exceptions history may show, civilized men respect the inviolability of sacred space. Similarly when the Vandals under Gaiseric sacked Rome in 455, they stopped short of plundering the churches. And when their modern namesakes despoil a house of worship, Americans of all stripes react with chagrin. As if mass murder were not reprehensible enough, Goldstein carried it out in the midst of a mosque.
Fanaticism brooks no constraints.
Almost ten years ago Israeli courts convicted a cluster of Orthodox Jewish terrorists for conspiring to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of Islam's holiest shrines. By affronting tenets of faith such incendiary acts kindle passions that burn without end. How quickly are the dark lessons of recent Jewish history expunged from memory. The Holocaust began with the destruction of nearly 300 synagogues in Germany on the single night of November 9, 1938. The event revealed to all who cared to see the deadly extremism of the Nazi revolution.