For centuries on end this was how the Muslim world and the West interacted. Literally, this was more or less the only mode of interaction. Muslim raiders descended upon a littoral Mediterranean town or village on the mainland of Europe or in England or Ireland and dragged their hostages to one or another Muslim city in North Africa.
Later, we would diligently pay the muslim captors to get as many of our people back as we could afford. For hundreds of years thus was business as usual. Western populations were weak and vulnerable to the depredations of a barbaric culture that was stuck in the 7th cenury, and there was no option but to endure the raids and pay the ransom demanded. If any hostage renounced the Christian faith to avoid the cruel treatment given to kaffirs or infidels, the Catholic Church, having limited funds for this purpose, would generally not pay for that person’s release, favoring instead those who had kept the faith. That was the price for apostasy at the time. There still exists some kind of Holy See office, largely dormant now, that conducted this hostage ransoming work. Those who were engaged in it were seen as doing the Lord’s work in saving souls from the grip of Satan. And that’s exactly what they were doing.
Now, the Obama administration didn’t pay 400 million in ransom for this laudable reason. No, it was vulnerable to heavy criticism from the likes of Donald Trump for abandoning the American hostages during the so-called nuclear negotiations and needed to save Hillary’s electoral bacon by eliminating the Iranian hostage situation as an issue during the presidential race. Humanitarian motivations played no part in the calculus.
