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# A New Pattern for a Cursed Landscape
- URL: https://otherwise.ghost.io/a-new-pattern-for-a-cursed-landscape-06e/
- Published: 2025-11-12T21:09:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T13:43:00.000Z
- Description: A Review of PAX ARABICA
- Author: Khaled Salih
- Tags: Podcast, #Migrated-1792244264359, #Import 2026-10-17 14:38

\[**FOREWORD:** Senior (Iraqi) Kurdish official, government advisor and academic (and *Guerre and Shalom* Founder Member) Khaled Salih has written a wonderful review of **Pax Arabica,** my new book available exclusively for paid subscribers. [Chapter 18 was published yesterday. ](https://danielclarkeserret.substack.com/p/a-paradigm-shift-for-the-middle-east?r=2bk821)Chapters 19 and 20 are to be released over the coming week. Please subscribe. Please write a review! Thank-you again Khaled.\] [Daniel Clarke-Serret](https://danielclarkeserret.substack.com/p/a-new-pattern-for-a-cursed-landscape?utm%5Fsource=post-email-title&publication%5Fid=1905825&post%5Fid=178516436&utm%5Fcampaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=14r1h0&triedRedirect=true&utm%5Fmedium=email).

By Khaled Salih

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/2c/d62cdd13-a476-41c5-8f2c-29270c99d95d/content/images/2026/10/6ba6f5a1-411e-4192-a9ab-a56cc1943b24_1024x1536-heic.jpg)

> “Some things you read don’t give you any new facts at all. They just give you a new pattern for understanding the facts you already have.”  
>  
> — Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

**A Tale of Two Creeds**

To comprehend the moral and ideological chasm that defines the modern Middle East, one must first confront two starkly opposing visions of humanity. One is a creed of systematic de-humanisation, of a lust for power that reduces human beings to objects of sectarian hatred and instruments of gratification. The other is a creed of defiant solidarity, a belief in a shared humanity so profound that its adherents will choose death over betrayal. The struggle between these two visions is the central, bloody drama of a cursed landscape called Middle East.

The first creed revealed its horrifying nature in the summer of 2014\. When Islamic State terrorists stormed the Yazidi communities in Sinjar, they were not operating blindly. They carried lists detailing every household, identifying every family member, with a particular focus on young girls. This intimate knowledge was provided by their Arab Muslim neighbours, who facilitated the selection of their preferred prey: girls with blue eyes, blond hair, and light skin. The horror that followed was a direct consequence of an ideology that sees the “other” not as a neighbour, but as property. Sounds familiar? Think of thousand of workers from Gaza in Israel who returned with a different mission on October 7th, 2023.

> “IN THE FALL OF 2014, a Saudi fighter for the Islamic State, ISIS, in al-Shaddadi, Syria, bought a female slave in the market, a 34-year-old Yazidi captive. He raped her over and over again. Why else do you buy a female slave? Then he purchased a second sex slave. This one was a 12-year-old girl. And suddenly the handcuffs of the Saudi fighter’s lust came off. Said the 34-year-old sex slave after she escaped, the ISIS fighter raped the 12-year-old youngster “for days on end despite heavy bleeding.”10 The 34-year-old escapee says with a mixture of despair and disgust, “He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’ And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her.”  
>  
> “‘She’s just a little girl,’ pleaded the 34-year-old. But the ISIS fighter answered: ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.’’’ Then he added something vital: “And having sex with her pleases God \[Allah\].” So the fighter never provided medical care. Instead, he prostrated himself on the floor next to the adolescent girl’s bed, prayed to Allah, then mounted the child over and over again. Each time when he was finished, he laid himself out on the floor again and prayed. We do not know the end of the story. We do not know if Allah the merciful, Allah the compassionate ever answered the prayers with healing. And, frankly, we do not know if the fighter even bothered to pray for such a thing.”  
>  
> — Quoted in Howard Bloom, 2016, *The Muhammad Code*.

This is the Middle East some have been propagating for hundreds of years.