Just because we don’t yet know the scale of the atrocities committed by Islamic State doesn’t make the events of their happening any less atrocious. We didn’t know the scale of those committed by Assad, Pinochet, the Khmer Rouge or Franco either.

The problem of comparison is that it diminishes for us what we address now. IS might be underequipped and relatively small – it surely lacks the engines of war machine construction that fueled Germany in the 30s. And the numbers they subjugate surely can’t match the 11 million destroyed in the Holocaust. Yet.

That said, let us try to keep before us that the scale of a persecution may be great or small, but it is the existence of persecution that should horrify us, not its scale.