The glories of the Muslim world

Honestly, the world's worst Islamophobe couldn't do more damage to the image of the Muslim world than do Muslims themselves. Did you hear that the British government is going to knight Salman Rushdie? In Pakistan, they don't like it one bit:

"If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, his act is justified," the Minister for Religious Affairs, Ijaz ul-Haq, told Pakistan's national assembly.

"This is an occasion for the (world's) 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mr ul-Haq said. "If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British Parliament."

His comments provoked an angry response around the world. Effigies of the Queen and Rushdie were burned in the eastern Pakistan city of Multan as students chanted: "Kill him! Kill him!"

Note well that this isn't some wild-eyed imam encouraging Muslims to commit suicide bombings in England to protest the Queen's honoring a writer. This is a senior minister in the Pakistani government. You know, Pakistan, the US's great ally in the war on Islamic terror.

Meanwhile, in Hamastan, we now see what Islamism means for Christians unlucky enough to live under it:

Christians living in Gaza City on Monday appealed to the international community to protect them against increased attacks by Muslim extremists. Many Christians said they were prepared to leave the Gaza Strip as soon as the border crossings are reopened.

The appeal came following a series of attacks on a Christian school and church in Gaza City over the past few days.

Father Manuel Musalam, leader of the small Latin community in the Gaza Strip, said masked gunmen torched and looted the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church.

"The masked gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church," he said. "Then they destroyed almost everything inside, including the Cross, the Holy Book, computers and other equipment."

And this exciting news from followers of the Prophet:

Christians can only continue living safely in the Gaza Strip if they accept Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol and on women roaming publicly without proper head coverings, an Islamist militant leader in Gaza told WND in an exclusive interview.

The militant leader said Christians in Gaza who engage in "missionary activity" will be "dealt with harshly."

The threats come two days after a church and Christian school in Gaza was attacked following the seizure of power in the territory by the Hamas terror group.

"I expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza," said Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, an Islamic outreach movement that recently announced the opening of a "military wing" to enforce Muslim law in Gaza.

Writing in today's New York Times, Fouad Ajami says the Palestinians have nobody to blame but themselves for their own misery:

No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.

I think that's more or less true for the entire Muslim world. Q.E.D. I have been privileged to meet and to become friends with Muslims who take their faith seriously, and who are very fine, intelligent, moral, tolerant people. And if they lived back where they or their parents came from, they'd be either living in complete fear of these barbarians, or crucified by the deranged mob.

This berserker rage is expressed in Islamic terms, but it is a human trait. Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, neither of them needed Islam to goad fanatics into acts of barbarism, paranoia, malice and self-destructive passion. For that matter, we're now reading "All Quiet on the Western Front" and blogging about it at a summer book club blog at Dallasnews.com (you are welcome to join the discussion), and you see that Europeans didn't need Islam to throw themselves headlong into civilizational suicide. We know, of course, what arose in Germany after World War I, and in Russia after World War I -- neither of which required Islam to establish themselves as history's greatest examples of mass hatred and murder.

But: in our time and in our place, Islam is the vector through which the impulse to barbarism is most fully articulated and realized. We hear constantly -- constantly -- about how we in the West shouldn't be Islamophobic -- that is, fear Islam. But who are you going to believe, CAIR, or your lying eyes?