Revisiting the 'Religion of Peace'

The savages who practice radical Islam continue their march down the road of seventh century barbarism. No other religion in the modern world is so vile, so hate-filled, and so violently aggressive in the pursuit of its goals.

In Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic state, three Christian teenage girls walking home from school were abducted and beheaded as "Ramadan trophies" by militants who conceived the idea after a visit with fellow jihadists in the Philippines. Plastic bags containing the severed heads were dumped in the girls' village in Indonesia's Sulawesi province.

Accompanying the grisly "trophies" was a handwritten note threatening more such attacks. The note read: "Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head."

In Sudan, the genocidal nation whose Muslim majority is systematically slaughtering Christians in Darfur, a court has sentenced a British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, to fifteen days in a filthy, disease-infested Sudanese prison, followed by permanent deportation from the country. Her crime? She allowed her young pupils to name a teddy bear "Mohammad."

As the kangaroo court sentenced her to this ridiculous sentence for this absurd "crime," protesters in the streets outside brandished swords and other weapons and demanded that she be executed!

Then there are our good friends, the Saudis, who laugh at us from the sands of their kingdom as they hold us hostage to their oil while they brutalize their own people, mostly women, in the name of Allah.

The latest in an ongoing string of outrages from the kingdom is the case of the young woman who was gang raped. A Saudi court sentenced her - that's right, her - to 90 lashes for the "crime" of sitting in a car with a man who was not her husband.

This is the same group of savages whose morality police allowed a group of girls to die because they tried to escape their burning school without their heads properly covered in the manner proscribed by this sick religion. Fifteen girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were trampled to death and 52 others were hurt when a blaze swept through their school.

Some 800 schoolgirls were crammed into a building designed for only 250. The main gate to the school was locked. There were no emergency exits, no fire alarms and no fire extinguishers in the building. When the building caught fire, the girls tried to flee. Police stopped them, refusing to allow them to leave the burning building. When male bystanders tried to rescue the girls, they were told that "It is sinful to approach them."

As Mona Eltahawy, a reporter and a Saudi Muslim now living in the United States, wrote at the time, "Girls died because zealots at the gate would rather see them burn than appear in public dressed inappropriately."

As merciful, peace-loving people, whose character derives from the grace of Christianity, Americans find it hard to fathom the twisted values that inform such religious teaching as that practiced across most of the Middle East. Ignorant celebrities and misguided politicians are deluded to think that such barbarous dogma is anything but evil. Fools like Rosie O'Donnell tell America that so-called radical Christianity is more dangerous than radical Islam. To his credit, President Bush has not told us lately that Islam is a religion of peace hijacked by extremists. Perhaps now he understands that it is simply a religion of extremism.

Tens of millions of Muslims the world over subscribe to these beliefs. They believe that women should be subjugated, "infidels" murdered and iron-fisted legalism imposed on the world. Nothing less than civilization itself depends on the outcome of the struggle.