Today in Syria: Does Tom Barrack know what they are chanting? Does he think a change in Israel’s policy will bring peace? Khaybar was a Jewish community in Arabia, conquered by Muhammad and his followers in 628 AD. Its men were slaughtered, its women taken as slaves, and its property seized.

Those jihadists who opened fire at a church in southern Jordan today most likely went to the same schools I went to and prayed in the same mosques I prayed in. The difference between them and me is that I came to believe that Islam is a death cult and abandoned it. They chose to be faithful to it. Muslims in Jordan, just like Muslims everywhere, believe in the same Quran, follow the same prophet, and see their Christian neighbors as infidels who must submit to Islamic supremacy. They know that what those jihadists did was inspired by Islam, even if they themselves would never carry out such an attack, not because Islam stops them, but because their humanity is better than Islam. And yet, they will rush to defend Islam, even though they know exactly what those jihadists did was according to the commandments of Allah and his prophet. Before any idiot comes into my comment section to say that those Christians were “mu‘ahadun” and therefore should not be fought according to Islam, let me remind them: in the absence of a caliphate, there are no “mu‘ahadun” or dhimmis.

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, said: “O Allah, curse the Jews and Christians.” Muslims around the world repeat that in their prayers every day. Islam is monolithic. The terrorists are not a fringe group; they represent mainstream Islam. Muslims who can't live out true Islam because of the restrictions of international law or their Muslim dictators do not represent what true Islam is. Millions of Muslims from all over the world go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and together they chant “Amen” at the same moment the imam says: “O Allah, curse the Jews and Christians.” Islam is an ideology that threatens the entire world, and the more the world ignores it, the more destruction it will cause.

Let me explain the situation in the West Bank in a very simple way: Before the Arabs waged war against Israel, there was no Nakba. Before the Arabs continued trying to erase the Jews, there was no Israeli occupation of the West Bank or Gaza. Before the Arabs launched the intifadas and began randomly killing Israeli civilians, there were no checkpoints or security barrier. And before Arabs used trees as cover to shoot at Israeli civilians, there was no clearing of those trees. Does this mean there are no criminal Israeli settlers taking advantage of the security situation? Of course not. But Arabs can't blame anyone but themselves.

The Quran is nothing more than the work of a 7th-century Bedouin, a man whose idea of paradise was shaped by the material desires of a desert warrior. If the Quran were truly from God, it would reflect eternal, spiritual truths, not a Bedouin’s fantasy of luxury filled with couches, tents, and drinkware. Look at the absurdly primitive rewards it promises in paradise: •Cups to drink from – “Therein will be raised couches, and cups set at hand.” (Quran 88:13-14) •Carpets and tents – “Chaste maidens restrained in pavilions.” (Quran 55:72) •Beds and couches – “Reclining upon couches lined with brocade.” (Quran 55:54) •Leaning on cushions – “Reclining therein upon adorned couches.” (Quran 36:56) This is not a vision of heaven, it’s the dream of a man who spent his life sleeping in a tent on the desert floor, bribing his followers with fantasies of silk cushions, goblets of wine, and women hidden away in luxurious tents. Muhammad’s idea of paradise is nothing but an upgraded desert campsite. Muhammad was motivating his jihadists, promising them the very things they lacked in the harsh deserts of Arabia. He wasn’t offering a path to enlightenment; he was selling paradise like a merchant pushing luxury goods in a marketplace. And of course, he didn’t stop at furniture and drink, he added virgins, rivers of wine, and young boys to serve them (Quran 78:33, Quran 76:19). What kind of God promises sex slaves and alcohol as a divine reward? The answer is simple: a false god, invented by a man who knew how to manipulate warriors into dying for him. Islam’s paradise exposes the Quran for what it truly is, not divine revelation, but the materialistic fantasy of a 7th-century Bedouin warlord who bribed men with couches and cups of wine to send them to die in battle.

The Catholic Church is making the same mistake Bibi Netanyahu made. Bibi rightly realized that giving the Palestinians a state could be suicidal for the State of Israel, so he looked the other way while Qatar funded and empowered Hamas. He seems to have believed that Hamas’s ugly face would make the case against Palestinian statehood for him, while Israel would still be able to contain Hamas and prevent the damage from spilling into Israel. The result was multiple wars, including October 7, followed by a global campaign against Israel after October 7, which also became a vehicle for the Islamo-leftist war against the West. The Catholic Church is making the same mistake. The Church has been weakened in Europe and has become increasingly irrelevant. European society has become largely secular, and the Vatican’s authority is now primarily symbolic. So, in my opinion, the Catholic Church is encouraging policies that bring more immigrants into Europe, particularly immigrants from Muslim-majority societies, in the hope that their presence will pressure European societies to rediscover their Christian identity and perhaps restore some of the Catholic Church’s former cultural influence. I might be mistaken, and this could simply be a conspiracy theory, but as far as I can see, I struggle to find another explanation for the Catholic Church’s posture toward Europe’s immigration crisis. Perhaps the Catholic Church believes that because it is built upon the rock of Peter, the gates of hell will not prevail against it, unlike the non-Catholic Eastern churches and Christian communities that were devastated or erased under centuries of Islamic rule. If that is true, then the Catholic Church is making the same mistake Bibi made when he believed Israel would be able to contain Hamas. Islam in Europe may begin its assault using the language and political machinery of the left, but it will not remain subordinate to the left forever. Eventually, Islam will pursue its own religious and political objectives. And if Europe continues down this path, even the Basilica of St. Peter may one day face the fate of churches elsewhere that were converted into mosques. I pray that the Catholic Church realizes that we are living in the real world and stops relying on humanly orchestrated political schemes to save the Church. Let the God of the Church take care of His Church. Your responsibility is to do your part to preserve the civilization the Church built.

American conservatives love to boast that they are the people of facts, until they confront Islam and half of them suddenly become liberals. The people of reason, tradition, and moral clarity, who will tear apart every fashionable creed without hesitation, get to Islam and suddenly stop. The same people who tell the Left that feelings do not override facts suddenly become terrified of saying anything that might offend Muslims. The same people who mock emotional arguments everywhere else start pleading for sensitivity. The same people who insist that ideas have consequences suddenly act as if Islam exists in some harmless vacuum. Why? Islam is an ideology that can be examined like any other system of belief. It does not deserve an intellectual force field around it. If you believe bad ideas should be confronted, then confront them consistently. If you believe civilizations survive by defending what is true, then stop becoming a multicultural liberal the moment the subject is Islam. You can't spend all day condemning ideological cowardice and then practice it yourself whenever Muhammad or the Quran are mentioned. Either ideas are open to ruthless examination, or they are not.

Sharia is not a threat because this red devil just found out that Jewish scholar, Maimonides, taught that Christianity is idolatry. Maimonides, who himself was exiled after he was given two choices by Muslims: convert or die. Worshipping Jesus Christ, if you are a Jew, is definitely idolatry. We as Christians believe it is not because we believe Jesus, but Jews who do not believe Jesus, reject the Incarnation, and want to be faithful to the Word of God can't say otherwise. And it is not only Jews, by the way, who say that. Jehovah’s Witnesses do too. Muslims do too. The difference is that, no matter what Jewish law says, there is absolutely no teaching about applying Jewish law to non jewish public life. Sharia, however, has as one of its basic functions the governance of a society of Muslims and non-Muslims, where useful red idiots, and idiots of all colors, would be dhimmis, subjugated and humiliated.

In 1948, Constantine Zurayk, the Arab intellectual who coined the term Nakba to describe the Arab defeat, wrote about the contrast between Zionists and Arabs. He said, “The roots of Zionism are grounded in modern Western life, while we are still distant from this life and hostile to it. They live in the present and for the future, while we continue to dream the dreams of the past and to stupefy ourselves with its fading glory.” Read the full essay “Palestinianism: A New Name for an Old Disease,” the link in the comments.

So what if a Muslim wins an election in America and becomes a congressman or senator? Why is that any different from a Buddhist winning an election? Because Buddhism is a religion. Islam is a state. Islam has a population: the ummah. It has a constitution: Sharia. It has courts, criminal law, family law, taxation, rules for minorities, doctrines of war and peace, and a foreign-policy framework governing relations between the land of Islam and the lands outside it. The ummah is not tied to Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, or any other modern country. It crosses all of them. Islam's population "Muslims" belong to one political-religious community. That is fundamentally different from Buddhism. A Buddhist American may practice Buddhism faithfully, but Buddhism does not give him a second universal political order with its own law, sovereignty, territorial doctrine, and theory of government. Islam does. This is why reducing Islam to “just another religion” misses the point. Muslim officeholders are literally citizens of another existing country, and their loyalties can never be American first, because the two projects are contradictory.