“Islamism”, “radical Islam”, “Islamic extremism”? They don’t exist. There is only Islam. All Muslims believe that sharia law and its punishments – limb amputations for theft, death for adultery, apostasy, and homosexuality – are the best of all possible punishments. How could any be better, when these have been prescribed by Allah himself?

So says this Norwegian. And almost all the Norwegians in his audience agree with him.

Is that a flight of pigs on the horizon?

Is a crack of light breaking at last into the darkness of Islam?

President Sisi of Egypt, speaking at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, said (translation by Raymond Ibrahim at Front Page):

I am referring here to the religious clerics.   We have to think hard about what we are facing — and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before.  It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!

That thinking — I am not saying “religion” but “thinking” — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al-Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema — Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Daniel Greenfield comments (in part):

The implication is that he’s calling for a departure from texts that promote international holy wars. Obviously he isn’t taking issue with the Koran. But it appears he is calling for a religious framework that invalidates freelance Islamic expansionism of the ISIS kind. That would be a somewhat conservative step. …

And Sisi is “telling Al Azhar’s clergy to take an enlightened perspective and look outside themselves. That is dangerously close to secularism.”

Will Egypt, with the consent of Al-Azhar, become a secular state? There is a precedent in the Turkey of Kemal Atatürk and his immediate successors. (Turkey is reverting now to an Islamic theocracy under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.)

Is it possible that Egypt will persuade Islam to give up its jihad?

And even perhaps – to hazard an even wilder hope – revise sharia law, set women free, tolerate apostasy … ?

Nah! Pigs may figuratively fly, but never very far.

Should our civilization collapse under Islamic aggression – aided by our own political correctness, cowardice, laziness  – the only known place with intelligent life in this universe will be a dark and destroyed planet drifting through space, populated by billions of mostly inbred humans living in total misery, enslaved by the freedom-hating, death-loving, brutal, mind-numbing Sharia. What tragedy could be worse than that? 

We quote from an article at 10news, by Nicolai Sennels:

Islam knows no borders and no mercy, and if our generation does not stop them, the next generation will not even have a chance to make the attempt. Our grandfathers defeated Nazism, our parents’ generation overcame Communism. The great challenge of our time is Islam – an enemy of freedom more present, fanatic and vast in numbers than any totalitarian system before it. This enemy is different than anything we have encountered before: You can not intimidate an enemy who loves death more than life.

Our police is already unable to uphold the law in many of the Muslim ghettos mushrooming everywhere, even in smaller towns. Ever more regular outbreaks of what can best be described as minor incidents of civil war give us a taste of what is waiting for us later this decade (according to Al Qaeda’s prophetic plan made in the 1990s, this will happen in 2016 – Arab governments should be toppled from around 2010 and an Islamic state was planned to be established from 2013 …).

Muslim dominated areas are increasing in numbers and boldness – encouraged by the lack of consequence from Western authorities – and it is only a matter of time before they evolve into permanently warring Muslim enclaves fighting for unconstitutional, religious rights. Through our self-inflicted invasion we are creating our own Gaza Strips, which are already spawning an unending stream of attacks against non-Muslims and the surrounding non-Islamic society. Muslim immigration is crushing our economy, undermining our hard-won safety, attacking free speech and increasingly changing physical areas of our cities into unrecognizable, dangerous no-go sharia-zones.

Muslims believing in jihad are neither extremists, nor a minority. Muslims believing in the obligation to wage jihad to fulfill their religious duty are following mainstream fundamentals of Islam as it is clearly written unambiguously and repeatedly in the Quran and Mohammed’s equally holy life story, the Hadiths. 75 percent of the roughly 56 million Muslims living in Europe believe that the Quran must be taken literally and 65 percent think that the Sharia is more important than democratic laws. 80 percent of young Turks in Holland believe that Jihad against non-Muslims is fine. 27 percent of all French youth and 14 percent of all British youths – presumably including the vast majority of young Muslims in these countries – support the Islamic State. What do these numbers mean? They mean that the countless Muslim ghettos eating up Western towns and cities are populated with hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people supporting the jihadi doctrine. What will happen when they feel strong enough to destroy and overtake our societies? Will they remain passive and peaceful, or will they seize the chance? Many, surely, will do the latter.

Instead of being thankful for the safety and welfare provided by hard working Western tax payers, Muslims in Europe have raised an army of jihadis supporting Islam’s genocidal agenda.

What can we do? Or rather: What must we do, in order to prevail for the sake of humanity and future generations?

Through democratic means, we must mobilize the immense power and organizational talent that lies behind the creation of the most free, rich, and technologically advanced societies in world history and direct it towards our own survival. If we manage to awaken this sleeping giant before our countries are destroyed by barbarians – just like all other high cultures before ours – we will be able to defeat the hordes of inbred fanatics without panic or hate. During this crucial historical period we must not lose our human face and destroy the very values we are trying to protect. We must stay honest, outspoken and engage with realistic means and force, while staying focused on long term win-win solutions. By approaching the problem without fear, but only with mental surplus and a broad overview, we can succeed while creating only a minimum amount of unavoidable harm. Reacting with totalitarian measures such as banning Free Speech to protect “social cohesion” or succumbing to immature emotions for revenge alone will not benefit our cause.

Peaceful societies with social values and a high degree of morality have been exploited to a devastating degree – economically, culturally and demographically – by myriads of Muslim immigrants and refugees.

Modern welfare and decades of peace have put our survival instinct into hibernation. This makes it difficult for us to understand that we will not overcome this historical challenge without the use of real force. A gentle approach that might be affordable under healthy demographic conditions is suicidal when confronted with a weapon of mass-destruction like Islam. We have come to this point because for too long, we have taken freedom for granted. …

We can hate the system, but we can not hate the people. … Muslims are the first victims of Islam, as their system is full of rules and brutal punishments aimed at themselves. Muslims are the real islamophobes: only fear can explain peoples’ submission to such a joyless, unfree and painful system, forcing them to think and behave in ways that creates ever more suffering in their own lives.

Until Muslims free themselves from the chains of sharia, we must make sure that the trouble that their religion brainwashes and forces them to make, happens from a sufficiently safe distance. Therefore we must stop non-Western (Muslim) immigration, and make it as difficult as possible for followers of the religion of submission to live here by banning any kind of Islamization. If they want mosques, halal, prayer rooms, cousin-marriages, and Islamic holidays, they must settle elsewhere. We do not want any mosques or minarets, no public or foreign funding of Islamic organisations or imams.  All Muslims coming to our lands must actively and publicly reject the violent and criminal passages of the Islamic scriptures. Performing or promoting jihad is treason and should result in loss of citizenship. This means that we would probably have to find ways to accommodate large [numbers] of people …  in or near Islamic countries where they do not suffer from living outside their cultural circle. …

In this way can we save humanity from what is probably the greatest catastrophe in the history of mankind: a monstrous weapon of mass destruction that has already killed millions of people and destroyed countless cultures and societies before ours. A system that is robbing its own followers of the most basic human rights and which is forcing them to suppress and kill their own. A system that is aiming at subjugating all human beings – Muslims and non-Muslims – under barbaric, totalitarian laws. A system that calls itself a religion but is so much more than that. A system that praises death more than life. A system that knows no mercy and no borders.

A system whose name means “submission”.

A system that bears the name Islam.

These opinions and prescriptions voiced by a spokesman of a group in Britain are similar to those of rebel groups growing in many parts of Europe. (For just a few of many reports see here, here and here.)

The Left dubs all of them “extreme right-wing” to raise connotations of twentieth century fascist and racist movements, and recalls their anti-Semitism to strengthen its case. Watch, if you have the stamina, this video and hear what the leftist pro-Islam pundits have to say. The irony is that Leftism is now the most virulently anti-Semitic ideology in the world, after Islam itself.

It is true that some of the new movements are fascist and racist and anti-Semitic, but not all of them. They are on the rise because Islam is truly a terrible enemy gaining power in the heart of Europe, and fiercely and insanely protected by European governments. Almost all the main political parties are still choosing to ignore the threat of Islam, or at best to play it down.

If many of the protest rebel groups turn out to be destructive of liberal democracy itself (which 1onews takes care to deny is any part of its own agenda), the establishments will have only themselves to blame. Most Western European countries are still not just allowing but encouraging more Muslim immigration, despite the carnage and crime that members of their present Muslim populations inflict on them continually and increasingly.

Many Europeans are predicting violent uprisings in their countries, and even civil wars – ever more plausibly.

A rise of nationalist sentiment in small nations is adding to the rebellious mood. (Here’s a video about it.)

So the peace that Europe boasts of keeping on its own soil since the end of Word War II – many Europhiles claiming that the European Union has made wars between the states impossible – seems almost certain to be shattered.

If there is little doubt that it will happen, the question is – how soon?

Europe is dying anyway, as its indigenous populations dwindle away. Civil wars will hasten its end in a welter of blood. Then, because of its peoples’ own folly, bleak cruel primitive Islam will inherit the continent, and undertake the holy task of destroying every last vestige of its high civilization.

ISIS is blowing up Shi’a mosques and shrines, and other ancient monuments, the heritage of mankind.

From the Assyrian International News Agency:

ISIS is planning to destroy the walls of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire and one of the most important archaeological sites in Iraq. Nineveh was sacked in 612 B.C. when the Assyrian Empire was overthrown.

Residents of the Bab Nergal area of Mosul said ISIS has informed them that it will blow up the walls of Nineveh with the start of operations to liberate Mosul by the Iraqi army.

In the last month ISIS has seized the content of the cultural museum in Mosul as well as destroyed Assyrian monuments in the city, which ISIS claims “distort Islam”.

Assyrians are the the only indigenous people of Iraq, going back to 4750 B.C. In 2003, just before the U.S. invasion, there were 1.5 million Assyrians living in Iraq. Today there are about 500,000 remaining. A sustained, low grade genocide perpetrated by Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds drove hundreds of thousands of Assyrians into exile in Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

On August 7 of 2014, ISIS moved into the Nineveh Plain, the last stronghold of Assyrians in Iraq, forcing nearly 200,000 Assyrians to flee their homes and villages, where they now live as refugees in the Dohuk and Arbel areas.

The remains of the walls of Nineveh in north Iraq

Less to be regretted is that ISIS also plans to blow up the Kaaba, if it manages to capture Saudi Arabia, and if this report – of which we’re somewhat skeptical since ISIS is a Sunni organization and the Kaaba is a Sunni shrine – is true:

Representatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) stated that they will ruin the Kaaba after capturing Saudi Arabia. …

ISIS member Abu Turab Al Mugaddasi said that they would destroy the Kaaba in Mecca: “If Allah wills, we will kill those who worship stones in Mecca and destroy the Kaaba. People go to Mecca to touch the stones, not for Allah.”

Today the number of lethal terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11, as tallied by (deliberately ironically named) “The Religion of Peace”, reached 24,700.

The daily number is reflected in our margin. And from time to time we reproduce the 6 latest attacks recorded by the same website.

Here is today’s snapshot of Islamic atrocities:

Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace

“Mohammed is God’s apostle.  Those who follow him are harsh
to the unbelievers but merciful to one another”  Quran 48:29

2014.12.29 (Taji, Iraq) – A Shahid suicide bomber dismantles eleven Shiite mourners at a funeral tent.

2014.12.28 (Aleppo, Syria) – Two children are among six souls sent to Allah by a caliphate car bomb.

2014.12.27 (Mozogo, Cameroon) – Boko Haram burn down a village and slaughter at least thirty residents.

2014.12.27 (Bhiri Sha Rehman, Pakistan) – An Ahmadi is shot in the head shortly after a TV preacher rails against the religious minority.

2014.12.26 (Nad-e-Ali, Afghanistan) – A woman and child are among three killed by a Religion of Peace IED.

2014.12.25 (Ndalya, DRC) – ADF terrorists hack ten villagers to death in the middle of the night.

IED = improvised explosive device.

ADF stands for the laughably named Allied Democratic Forces, a coalition of Islamic terrorist groups in the also laughably named Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The politically correct establishments and media of the Western world protect Islam from criticism no matter what is done in its name. But they have made an exception of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL). Or rather, they claim – ludicrously – that IS/ISIS/ISIL has “nothing to do with Islam”.

That exception explains why a documentary about Muslim men of IS/ISIS/ISIL selling Yezidi women and girls as slaves, was actually produced by the BBC.

Here’s the clip:

This picture of Christians slaughtered by the Nigerian Muslim terrorist organization Boko Haram was published here in August 2014:

It’s remarkable that not even two years ago senior State Department officials were denying before Congress that there was any religious dimension to Boko Haram’s reign of terror. 

Why did Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, adamantly refuse to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization? The explanations given by her State Department were, in our judgment, unpersuasive excuses.

So what was the reason? Could the answer have something to do with the Obama administration’s reluctance to acknowledge that Islam is the enemy of America and civilization?

We quote Patrick Poole who writes at PJ Media:

For much of its five-year long insurgency in Nigeria costing thousands of lives, Boko Haram enjoyed no sanction by the U.S. government. That changed just over a year ago when they were finally designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.

That notwithstanding, Boko Haram continues to expand its terror campaign across the north of the country, now controlling an area the size of Maryland. …

The strategic stakes involved for the U.S. are extraordinary, but you would never be able to gauge that from the absence of any alarm from the Obama administration or from either side of the aisle in Congress. Not only does Nigeria have the continent’s largest population at 173 million and the largest economy in Africa, it also is the 10th largest oil producer in the world.

With a failed Libyan state (thanks in no small part to the Obama administration), Egypt — the world’s largest Arab country — fighting its own counterinsurgency in the Sinai, and Islamist insurgencies inflamed from Nigeria to Kenya, the loss of Nigeria to jihadists could be the tipping point to lose the whole of Africa. …

What Boko Haram does:

Within just the past few months, more than 1,000 churches have been ransacked and burned, and hundreds of thousands of Christians are being driven from their homes. …

Neighboring Cameroon … is struggling to accommodate nearly 50,000 Nigerian refugees and another 250,000 from the Central African Republic with extremely scarce resources. Another 100,000 refugees have fled to Niger, with 30,000 arriving just in the past two months. [But] there’s no guarantee of safety in taking refuge in neighboring countries, as Boko Haram has staged cross-border attacks. Inside Nigeria, it was reported that 400,000 refugees are in the Yolo area, severely taxing the city’s resources.

Overall, 1.5 million Nigerians have been displaced by the violence, with 650,000 in the northeast alone. …

Conditions in the [refugee] camps are universally reported to be unsanitary and breeding grounds for cholera and measles. Because resources are stretched so thin, most refugees are left to fend for themselves for shelter, food, and water. As winter begins to set in, observers on the ground … warn of possible mass starvation in the months ahead. …

When nearly 300 school girls were abducted from Chibok in April, it grabbed the world’s attention. …  When Boko Haram stormed the town of Lassa on December 3, they carried away 20 more girls.

But while girls are targeted for abduction, boys are targeted for killing. Just last month, dozens of young men were killed when a suicide bomber dressed as a student bombed a morning assembly. This targeting of school-age boys is a pattern for Boko Haram, such as when they attacked a boarding school in Yobe state back in February where boys were shot, had their throats slit, or were burned alive when their dorms were set on fire. …

Last Wednesday, two young girls in hijabs conducted a dual suicide bombing in a high-traffic textile market in Kano city, the largest city in the north. Another 13-year-old girl was found wearing an explosive vest just hours later.

Boko Haram is using young female suicide bombers at an increasing and disturbing rate, though this tactic is not isolated to their operations in Nigeria and has been endorsed elsewhere by preeminent Islamic scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The use of female suicide bombers requires security forces to target women as well as men, and then the terror group is able to use the “abuse” of women being searched as a propaganda ploy.

What is especially troubling is a VICE News report last week that indicated that Boko Haram has dispatched 50 female suicide bombers in the hopes of inflicting 100,000 casualties. …

Boko Haram jail breaks … freed 2,251 prisoners [who] launched an attack on a French cement plant and recovered a large cache of dynamite that could be used for future jail breaks. With thousands of Boko Haram operatives and supporters presently in jails, along with hardened criminals conditioned to violence, targeting more jails will continue to swell their ranks. …

More people are being killed by Muslims terrorist attacks in Nigeria than in Syria or Afghanistan.

Boko Haram was responsible for 801 deaths last month alone …

Boko Haram’s violence is now on par with ISIS in Iraq, which is why in 2013 Nigeria climbed to fourth in the Global Terrorism Index, up from seventh in 2012 and twelfth in 2011. According to the Council on Foreign Relations tracker, the violence in Nigeria from May 2011 (when President Jonathan came into office) to November 2014 has claimed more than 26,000 lives. …

But you would never know how desperate the situation is in Nigeria in light of the absence of any urgency or alarm from the Obama administration or from Congress.

It’s worth repeating: Congress had to drag a reluctant Clinton State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated [a terrorist group] in November 2013.

Members of Congress also discovered earlier this year that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.

There are considerable national security and other strategic interests for the United States in Nigeria. … [And] the risks of inattention and inaction in Nigeria threaten to jeopardize the whole of Africa.

This video is dated October, 2012.

The world desperately needs a global campaign by all decent sane adults to eradicate religion from every culture of every nation, tribe and clan on earth.

No need to stop the quaint celebrations of old superstitions and myths. Feast days can still be feasted on. The good stories and the fine poetry of the Jewish bible can still be read. There can still be Christmas trees and ecstatic singing in halls on Sundays. Shia Muslims can still whip their bodies with razorblades if they want to. Environmentalists can still sort their garbage into special containers for recycling if they enjoy it. Leftists can still claim that socialism would have worked if only it had been properly tried. It just needs to be acknowledged that no religion is true. 

We know that, saying this, we are crying in the wilderness. But still we say it. Who knows but that one day the cry will be taken up by millions, and the long and terrible age of religion will at long last be over? 

The Independent reports: “ISIS executes 150 women for refusing to marry militants and buries them in mass graves.”

We’re not sure if this picture of a barren field, used by the Independent to illustrate its story, is the actual graveyard. But the picture seems to us to convey a feeling of the sad, bleak, lonely, hopeless life of a middle eastern Muslim woman, living her life – long or short – in a black bag.

At any moment, at the whim of their savage men, such women are likely to be killed – for his “honor”, for her disobedience, or just for their fun.

Today Taliban terrorists entered a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, wearing army uniforms, and massacred more then 140 people, mostly children between the ages of six and sixteen.

They poured gasoline over one of the teachers and burnt him to death in front of his class.

They cut off the heads of some of the children.

Meanwhile, this is what is happening in Britain, where the reigning monarch is head of the Church of England: –

We quote from an article by Hal G. P. Colebatch at the American Spectator:

Christians are being killed in tens of thousands in the Islamic World and Africa. A Christian woman in Pakistan is sentenced to be hanged for drinking from a Muslim cup. An official who tries to save her is murdered by his own bodyguard, who becomes a popular hero, and Jewish babies are murdered by more Islamic heroes in Jerusalem.

The Church of England, meanwhile, devotes its energies to attacking the British Education Secretary for plans to teach “British values” in schools, calling them potentially “dangerous, divisive and undemocratic”.  …

The government guidelines were drawn up after it was found schools had been infiltrated by Muslim extremists. [But] the church said it had major concerns about the use of inspectors to police instances of promoting the values that diverged from the politically correct ideas of equality and diversity. …

In October a small Christian school in Berkshire was failed by inspectors for lacking sufficient political correctness, and failing “to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain”. … The school was punished by officialdom for being too British.

The headmistress was questioned by government officials as to why she had not brought in a Muslim Imam to lead assemblies …

There was, of course, no suggestion of reciprocity — that Christian chaplains lead assemblies in Muslim schools … to prepare their pupils for life in modern Britain by teaching tolerance, diversity, and respect for other religions, for instance.

It is not hard to imagine how such a proposal would be received, though the recent revelations of the sexual abuse of 1,400 British children in the small city of Rotherham alone by “Asian” [ie Muslim] grooming gangs suggests there may be a need for wider education in such values. Surveys show that a large part of Britain’s younger Muslim population subscribes to extremist propositions, and has provided a large number of recruits for ISIS.

One wonders what would be the response if the Imam [who should be “brought in to lead assemblies”] advocated death for female adultery, child marriage, and judicial amputation for theft, female genital mutilation, stoning to death for homosexuals and the annihilation of Israel? …

Further, if Imams must lead assemblies, why should cults like the orange people or transcendental meditationists not get a look in, to say nothing of the rather larger religions Buddhism or Hinduism? Furthermore, the whole complex paradox of extending tolerance and pluralism to an absolutely intolerant and uncompromising creed is simply denied or ignored.

Another high-achieving primary school, this time in Lincolnshire, has been attacked and denied its “outstanding” rating by government quango Ofsted because the pupils are “too English and too white”. How can it be expected to have non-white pupils if none live in the area? …

The church’s criticism came from its chief education officer, Nigel Genders, who warned against allowing a government definition of “Britishness”.  The Church also published a submission to the government warning against such an allegedly “negative” and “divisive” approach.

A government spokesman defending what should not have needed defense, said: “The fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual respect and tolerance were set out by the Government four years ago and have been commonly used since.”

Four years ago? Funny, we thought they were British values for much longer than that: the rule of law from the signing of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215, and democracy of a kind since the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William and Mary became the first constitutional monarchs, and individual respect and tolerance since the days of King Arthur and his Round Table.

[The government spokesman] continued, wetly, “We believe that all young people should develop an appreciation of these values as this will help them to contribute to and succeed in modern Britain.” …

A senior Anglican Bishop, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, a former Bishop of Oxford, said Prince Charles’s future coronation service should be opened with a reading from the Koran.

The gesture would, he claimed, be a “creative act of accommodation” to make Muslims feel “embraced” by the nation.

Hal Colebatch expresses the irritation and disgust we also feel at the Bishop’s “patronizing arrogance combined with cultural shame and masochism”.

He told peers that the Church of England should take the lead in “exercising its historic position in a hospitable way”.

He claimed further that at a civic service in Bristol Cathedral last year authorities had agreed to a reading of the opening passage of the Koran before the beginning of the Christian ritual. This, he said, “was a brilliant creative act of accommodation that made the Muslim high sheriff feel, as she said …

Pause there a moment to notice that the Muslim high sheriff is a she! Also that the opening passage of the Koran is the Shahada – the declaration of faith, the words that are said by a convert to Islam to turn him/her instantly into a Muslim. Did the congregation repeat the words? If so – gosh, Nigel! – do you realize that the entire congregation in the cathedral that day has now become Muslim?

… warmly embraced but did not alienate the core congregation”.

No – the poor ingenuous dears were totally unaware of what was happening to them.

“That principle of hospitality can and should be reflected in many public ceremonies, including the next coronation service.”

Perhaps, to make the embracing even more complete and ultimate, the two Muslims who showed their appreciation of the principle of British hospitality by beheading one of Prince Charles’s soldiers, Lee Rigby, in a London street, could place the crown on the new King Charles’s head. Or should ISIS’s chief headsman be flown in to do the job?

What of Omar Bakri Muhammad, the extremist preacher who is said to have played role in radicalizing the murderers of Lee Rigby and who has attempted to justify the killing of those fighting against ISIS jihadis, using Facebook to say that it is sometimes necessary to kill women and children sheltering in schools and hospitals? What could be more inclusive and multicultural than a place for him at the Coronation with the ISIS executioners?

Or they could invited the Taliban beheaders of children to enhance the inclusiveness of that historic occasion.

Just a suggestion.

Why are Western leaders reluctant to face the truth about Islam? Why are they “in denial” that Islam is the greatest threat to civilization in the world today?

Why are they anxious to pretend that the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) “has nothing to do with Islam”?

Robert Spencer writes at PJ Media:

Last Tuesday, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) declared that the State Department “ought to hire one or two experts in Islamic jurisprudence,” so as to refute the ideology of the Islamic State. “One must be able to turn to the Quran, to turn to the Hadith and show how ISIS is making a mockery of a great world religion,” he said.

The Congressman could  try reading the Koran and the hadith himself. He doesn’t seem to have thought of that.

This followed just days after Pope Francis characterized moderate Muslim spokesmen as saying, “They (Muslims) say: ‘No, we are not this [i.e., jihad terrorists], the Koran is a book of peace, it is a prophetic book of peace.’”

Same goes for him.

The “prophetic book of peace” has been in the news recently, but not always in ways that show “how ISIS is making a mockery of a great world religion”. In fact, it has been quite the contrary:

1. Islamic State: Qur’an-waving gunmen murder 39 Indian workers

IndiaToday reported that in Mosul last summer, gunmen of the Islamic State murdered thirty-nine workers from India, after first inquiring to make sure they were not Muslims. All the while, in a vision rivaling the wildest leftist fantasies about “Bible-thumpers,” the gunmen were clutching copies of the Qur’an.

Somehow these gunmen got the crazy, Islamophobic idea that their actions were in accord with the teachings of the book they were holding. Yet Barack Obama and John Kerry and David Cameron and Theresa May and a host of others assure us that the actions of such people have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. Who could be right? How to tell? It’s a conundrum!

Suggestion: how about read the Qur’an and see what it says? “Slay the pagans wherever you find them” (9:5) — ah, but only “Islamophobes” quote such verses. It’s a “prophetic book of peace”,  and no doubt these Qur’an-thumping gunmen were making a mockery of its teachings, right?

2. Boko Haram leader: “We follow the Qur’an … in the land of Allah”

Well, maybe not – or at least it can be said that all too many Muslims seem not to have gotten the “prophetic book of peace” memo.

After recent reports that he had been killed, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian jihad group Boko Haram, roared back defiantly in a new video. “Here I am, alive,” he proclaimed, “I will only die the day Allah takes my breath.” Shekau added: “We are running our caliphate, our Islamic caliphate. We follow the Qur’an … in the land of Allah.”

He follows the Qur’an? After massacring Christians, torching churches, and taking hundreds of non-Muslim girls as sex slaves, he claims to be following the Qur’an? Brad Sherman, as well as Obama, Pope Francis, and the rest, better hope that he is wrong about that, but unfortunately, he has many Muslims on his side, agreeing with him.

3. Jihad group quotes Qur’an to justify massacre of Christians

One of them is the al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage. Last Tuesday, al-Shabaab jihadis raided a quarry inside Kenya, separated the Muslims from the Christians, and murdered thirty-six Christians.

In a statement justifying these murders, Rage exulted:

“We are uncompromising in our beliefs, relentless in our pursuit, ruthless against the disbelievers and we will do whatever necessary to defend our Muslim brethren suffering from Kenya’s aggression.”

“Ruthless against the disbelievers” is from the Qur’an. The full passage is: “Muhammad is Allah’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless against the disbelievers but merciful to one another” (48:29).

But perhaps Rage is blinded by his namesake vice – so blinded as to think that a command to be “ruthless against the disbelievers” means to be ruthless against the disbelievers, rather than to treat them to hummus and pita at outreach meetings. Yet unfortunately, others have read Rage’s guiding book, missed the “book of peace” passages, and come to similar conclusions.

4. Kenya: Muslims murder 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses

In fact, only a few days before their quarry murders, al-Shabaab did the same thing on a bus in northern Kenya. A passenger on the bus, Ahmed Mahat, recalled that the jihadis ordered the passengers to get off the bus. “When we got down, passengers were separated according to Somali and non-Somalis. The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Qur’an, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range.”

That kind of action can make a mockery of a great religion in a hurry, and for it to happen twice in a week only underscores the cognitive dissonance between Western leaders’ view of the Qur’an and what it really is.

But surely things must be better in the West, no? No:

5. UK: Qur’an-quoting Muslim plotted to murder Tony Blair

A young Muslim named Erol Incedal recently plotted to murder former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife.

When Tony Blair was Prime Minitser, he once stated in public that he had “read the Qur’an  twice”, and still was of the opinion that it taught peace. Lying always came easily to Mr Blair. On that occasion, either he was lying about having read the (ill-written, boring, thoroughly unpleasant) book, or he had read it and was lying about what he found in it.

When searching Incedal’s home, investigators found a notebook that included this:

“Oh you the believers, fight those of the infidel who are near to you. Why do you not fight in Allah’s cause for those oppressed men, women and children who cry out: ‘Rescue us from this town.’”

Ironically, in light of Blair’s fulsome praise for the Qur’an, Incedal’s note is an amalgamation of these Qur’an passages (not that this has anything to do with Islam):

“O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him)” (9:123) …

These Qur’an passages are truly inspirational, but what they inspire is not exactly what Pope Francis, Barack Obama, Brad Sherman and the rest hope for or expect. Yet these five are by no means singular in their view of the Qur’an, and as long as the West persists in refusing to recognize the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, there are only going to be more of them.

We know why Obama will see, hear, speak no truth about Islam. He loves Islam.

But why do the others cling to their illusion that Islam is “a religion of peace” against overwhelming and terrifying evidence to the contrary?

Your theories are invited.