The burning alive of the captured Jordanian pilot reveals the deepest motives of ISIS: to conquer by terror. It also reveals diseased minds that can not conceive of any better way to achieve their goals than public cruelty to prisoners.

It unmasks the pretense of religious ideals. To consider this barbarity consistent with any religious beliefs is ludicrous. Muslims of every political stripe should recoil at the methodical cruelty of burning a human being alive. This is a serious miscalculation of minds warped by sectarian hate.

And yet there will be justifications of terror going back to the Inquisition of the Middle Ages and the prisons of Abu Grab. But if this act can be justified, then anything, including genocide, can be justified by pretense of punishment for crime. If the thirst for blood can be equated with justice, then no act of cruelty is without justification. The civilized world abhors this formula.

History will likely show that this execution was a turning point in the jihad of ISIS. The residual sympathy for their cause will be silenced. Nations will rally their resources to eradicate a cancerous growth in Iraq. The coalition forces will select marginal targets and risk more to “degrade” the ruthless army. No terror or cruelty can now dissuade the opposition.

It is hard to understand the depth of hate that will inflict public torture on another human being. The civilized world may have given up trying to understand such cruelty, and this could be the most fateful turn of all.