The above photo and caption are from today’s New York Times (thanks to Bill). It illustrates how the call to jihad can override all existing loyalties — such that a Syrian Alawite can suddenly be murdered by his Sunni friend. There are innumerable other examples, such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s 9/11/11 throat-slitting murder of his Jewish “best friend.”
An anecdote from the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century:
Then one night, my husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them “” killed them with his own hand. (Sir Edwin Pears, Turkey and Its People, London: Methuen and Co., 1911, p. 39)