Taking a break from the hate agenda:

I was just watching the BBC 2 Genesis, commenting on Phil Collins' thinking about Steve Beco, when it struck me that in many ways, Alan Henning may become the kind of iconic image for the decade. A man of the streets, with more than a bit of baggage, but also doing something right - which got out of control.

Does the act of how he was killed mean that the reality of the ordinary man can or should be disassociated from his virtue, or is it part of it? He was killed because an icon, his British citizenship, was put in front of his humanity: he was held when his colleagues, of Arabic ethnicity, were freed, in many ways making him a victim of reverse racism: his colleagues don't see him that way, he was one of them and they were part of him. It makes this us-and-them rather nonsense, in fact.

In killing him, therefore, the ISxx put themselves up against humanity. They iconised someone to whom that icon did not apply, (one can see elements of Inquisition tactics there: People's Front of Judea, Judean People's Front, how right the Pythons were! The Judean Popular People's Front, the Campaign for a Free Galilee...) and so made a valid martyr icon. It's so tempting to do unto them...