What's worse: physical evil from an open enemy or clandestine evil from a supposed friend?

One need look no farther than to Islam and the so-called "left" — in this case, the U.S. Department of Education — to appreciate the distinction.

First, consider the Islamic institution of slave-soldiery.  For many centuries in those southeastern European regions that were subjugated by Islam, especially in the Balkans, the Turks compelled Christian families to make an annual blood tribute of their own sons.

The Muslims would select the strongest, healthiest, and most talented young European boys and then march them off to the Ottoman heartland.  There, the youths would be forcibly converted to Islam, indoctrinated in the teachings of jihad, and trained to be — and rewarded for being — warriors par excellence.  The Turks would then set loose these janissaries —  meaning "new soldiers" — on their former Christian kin, thereby perpetuating the cycle of conquest, enslavement, and conversion, always to Islam's demographic gain and Christendom's demographic loss.

As the author of Balkan Wars explains,

[d]espite their Christian upbringing, they [janissaries] became fanatical Muslims and earnestly maintained their faith as warriors of Islam.  This cruel practice of what today can be defined as the "brain cleansing" of the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the most inhuman Turkish legacy.

As bad as all this sounds, in his recent review of Defenders of the West, William Kilpatrick made some interesting observations:

Thus indoctrinated, the youngsters [Christians-turned-jihadists, or janissaries] often developed a slavish devotion to Islam and their Islamic masters, and a deep hostility toward Christians. Although the institution of the janissaries was novel at the time, we have seen several similar examples in the modern era. Both the Hitler Youth and the Soviet-era Young Pioneers aimed to inculcate youngsters with beliefs and values that were often in opposition to those of their parents. Moreover, children who betrayed their parents to the authorities were held up as models for other youth to emulate.

The most recent example of an organized attempt to separate children from their families and from the faith of their families can be found no further away than your neighborhood school. All across the country, children are being indoctrinated to believe that gay is okay, that boys have the right to use the girls' locker room, and that children can choose their own gender.

Some teachers and counselors even encourage children to believe that they have been assigned the wrong gender and offer to assist them in transitioning to their "true" identity. In the meantime, they advise the children not to inform their parents.

And why should parents be informed? Like the Ottoman rulers of old, many education "professionals" have convinced themselves that the children belong to the state, not to their parents. Never mind what parents believe, teachers know best. And, indeed, it is now common knowledge that a K-through-college education often has the effect of turning children away from the values of their parents.

Not only is all of this true, but it highlights the two primary forms of evil, as well described in Dante's masterpiece The Divine Comedy.  The first part, Inferno, describes the nine circles, or levels, of hell.  Broadly speaking, its denizens can be categorized as having committed one of two sins — sins of force or sins of fraud. As author Ron Tobias summarizes:

In Dante's Inferno there are only two basic sins in all the levels of hell.  One is called forza, crimes of violence and force.  The other basic sin is called forda, Italian for fraud.  Force and fraud.  The damned who have been sent to Hell for crimes of violence weren't at the lowest circles of Hell; those were reserved for people who committed fraud. ... In Dante's mind, anyway, crimes of the mind were far worse than crimes of violence [italics added].

Another author describes the divisions as follows:

Each successive circle [of hell] represents progressively more heinous sins. ... The eighth circle of hell is reserved for those guilty of ... various types of fraud: seducers, flatterers, simonists, sorcerers, unscrupulous politicians, hypocrites, thieves, deceivers, schismatics and falsifiers.

Although the Inferno is a product of fourteenth-century Italy, surely some of these categories — unscrupulous politicians, hypocrites, deceivers, seducers, and falsifiers —  ring in a bell.

In short, when it comes to indoctrinating children into hating their parents and heritage, the U.S. Department of Education is not as bad as the Muslims who forcibly, but at least openly, enslaved and indoctrinated Christian children into hating their parents and heritage.  It's worse, because it's a hidden deception — a damnable fraud being committed by those who call themselves and are trusted as "friends."

Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Defenders of the West, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Image: CreaPark via Pixabay, Pixabay License.