Over the past year, I described the physical and cultural world 5,203 years ago in the Middle East, the set I chose for my Raising up Pharaoh novels. I will later examine the excavations of the cities I chose to place in the plots of the novels. But, for now, I want to acknowledge the foremost cultural influence that drew mankind out of the subsistence of hunter-gathering and into cooperation in cities, where farmers produce a surplus and pay others in grain to do all their other chores, the heart of the Neolithic breakthrough.

That cultural influence emerged at the Gobekli Tepe temple complex. It was man’s deep-rooted and already ancient desire to honor and worship the transcendent and immanent. This was not the birth of religion, which is man’s attempt to gain favor from the unseen, whether forces of nature or personifications of such forces. Rather, Gobekli Tepe suggests something long-standing and of high-value to the growing number of hunter-gatherer communities. Immediately following the intentional burial of Gobekli-Tepe’s massive worship center, decentralized places of worship became commonplace across the Middle East in the regions we studied (see map below). That urge to worship something transcendent became universal over the following 10,000 years up to the present.

There’s no denying the expansion of worship in Eurasia and northeast Africa after Gobekli Tepe shut down. It had long predated major worship centers elsewhere (we haven’t yet found comparable earlier sites). This growth of worship was organic, given man’s rapidly increasing population. The attendant issues in subsequent history have been related to the diversity of beings claimed by different religions to be “the” primary, transcendent, and immanent deity. 72% or the world’s population worship as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists. The Buddhists do not believe in a personal god, whereas all Christians and Muslims, and most Hindus claim they do. All four religions were born among the regions in the above map, which we discussed over the past year.

Over the past half-century, the world has been increasingly embroiled in the expanding religious war initiated by the Wahhabism sect of Sunni Muslims. In the name of their god, they have been killing without scruple: Shiite Muslims, Christians, and other Sunnis wherever they find soft targets. They tell the world they are honoring their personal god by individually butchering men, women, and children of any religious persuasion which disagrees with them. It is genocide. They are destroying, in areas under their power, whatever vestiges of the past they find inconvenient to their world view. The latest are the excavations of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq. Their rampage has exposed hypocrisy, cowardice, and moral corruption throughout the Middle East and around the globe—and within their own ranks. How many of these monsters have enriched themselves by robbing and killing the helpless? Where are they stashing the plunder? Justice will be served. It is given to a man once to die and then comes judgment.

Looking away from the rampaging villains who are defaming the name of their god, we need to focus upon the Christians, the unoffending Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the Hindus, and the others—all those at risk and listed in the above pie chart. Those of us who have faith and a personal god should pray for deliverance—not just for ourselves—but for all the other innocents at risk.

As for me, I am a Christian, and am praying for the souls of those innocents already murdered, and for the deliverance of the others who have fallen into ISIS’s hands. As for ISIS, I am challenged by Christ’s difficult words, “Love your enemies,” but I’m trying.

When I was a Marine on duty, I would have done what my country required of me—because my country didn’t ask me to hate or avenge, just protect the USA from evil such as this. For those who hate America, here’s one more inconvenient truth: it was America who was attacked first in WWII, then funded the Allies and fought the Axis. America defeated and rebuilt her enemies Germany and Japan who had killed 400,000 Americans and caused worldwide deaths of over 27 million civilians and 21 million military, of which losses the Axis suffered only 17%. World War II would have been very different if aggressive force had been met by Allied force at the outset—instead of seeking “Peace in our time,” when war was called for.

After WWII, America didn’t seek revenge, an-eye-for-an-eye, but fed, clothed, and helped our enemies to rebuild. How do ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the other Islamic surrogates compare with America’s generosity? We are talking truth here, not the lies espoused by weak-minded devotees of the new religion of multicultural diversity, those morally incapable of discriminating good from evil.

Questions about compassion and mercy would not have been discussed 5,203 years ago in the Middle East. It was a brutal time and place, despite the great progress. Nor are such moral questions discussed there today. Actions speak louder than words.

During the Empire of Rome, something huge happened in the Middle East which was seized upon by the West, but not by the Middle East. Why are compassion, mercy, and freedom core values in the West, but not in the Middle East? The answer lies in an honest study of history. Hint: It’s not the West’s fault.

Do you know the answer?

Thanks for visiting.

R. E. J. Burke