I wandered past the stacks of drying wood, thinking about how many great skills the world had lost, how many things of value had passed without any o… - Terry Hayes

A few years after the bonfire of the mob came for him and his family. Like he said, it's always the same—they start out burning books and end up burning people. Out of his parents and five kids, he was the only survivor.
"He passed through three camps in five years—all of them death camps, including Auschwitz. Because it was such a miracle he had survived, I asked him what he had learned.
"He laughed. 'Nothing you call original,' he said. Death's terrible, suffering's worse, as usual the assholes made up the majority—on both sides of the wire.
"Then he thought for a moment. There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he'd learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you—just listen to them."
Whisperer turned and looked at me. "So that's what you meant, huh? You've been listening to the Muslim fundamentalists?"
"Yes," I replied. "I've heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They've been burning books, Dave—the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I've been listening to them."
"And you don't think we have—the people in Washington?" He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know.
"Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut."

I went to open the front passenger’s door. It was locked and she indicated the rear seat. Apparently it was okay for a Muslim woman to lead a man to his death but not to share the front seat with him.

The Saracen approached them and lifted the woman’s robe in order to examine her more closely. Underneath, he saw that her cotton shirt was crumpled and ripped and her jeans had lost the buttons at the fly. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her on the trip—the outlaws who abducted her might have been devout Muslims but they were also men. Her tattered shirt barely covered her belly, and the Saracen, being a doctor, guessed from the sight of it that she was about four months pregnant. A different man—a less religious and a more humane man—might have been affected by it. But not the Saracen—the prisoners weren’t people to him, they were a gift from God.