Obviously right now there is lots of this stuff going around on the web with the killings in Paris. We are all upset and afraid and angry at the same time. We want to be sad but we are angry and really angry at these sorry excuses for human beings. We want to feel safe but we wonder when an attack is around our corner. We want to be understanding of other religious beliefs but the situation stretches our abilities to feel good about those that could turn against our way of life at a moments notice. We hate feeling this way because some of those we watch from the corner of our eye are those who we often call friends or co-workers. We want to feel safe but we see what is happening around the world and even here at home. So how do we do this? We do not know yet.

Thoughts by writer Matt Walsh that seem to hit things pretty well on the head.

And here we are again. You might recognize this place. We’ve been here frequently over the past, say, 1,500 years or so. It’s the place where the whole world stands in dumbfounded shock after witnessing unspeakable brutality at the hands of Islamists. Maybe we should stop being so surprised.

This time around, three masked gunmen stormed the offices of a French satirical newspaper, executing 12 people in cold blood, including two police officers. This is the same newspaper that infamously published a cartoon poking fun at the Prophet Mohammed a few years ago, and was promptly greeted with death threats and a Molotov cocktail for their troubles. In fairness, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this attack, but it seems very certain that this was another case of Muslim terrorism. The gunmen took out 12 people while shouting “Allahu Akbhar” and “the Prophet has been avenged.” All of this over some jokes in a magazine.

Can you imagine Christian radicals committing mass murder at The Onion offices because they’re upset about something they found on its website? Can you even fathom such a thing? Probably not, because it never happens. It just never happens. And it’s not like Christians don’t have plenty of provocation. I still remember stumbling upon this lovely little gem from The Onion last year. It’s a hysterical article imagining that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, became a prostitute to make ends meet. Haha?

This is the kind of thing Christians encounter all the time. Brutal mocking and ridicule dressed up as “humor,” but designed only to offend. There’s no wit, no punchline, just scorn heaped upon people of my faith. Kind of like this “Family Guy” episode, featuring an adulterous Jesus looking to have sex with a man’s wife. Or that hilarious “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode a few years back where Larry David peed on a picture of Jesus. Or of course the famous “Piss Christ,” a crucifix dunked in a bottle of urine and passed off as art. Or the painting of the Virgin Mary smeared in elephant dung. Or “Dogma.” Or “The Da Vinci Code.” Or a thousand other examples.

Yet nobody ever died because of any of that. And, oh man, if anyone did, can you imagine the backlash? Can you imagine the media reaction if just one Christian murdered just one person as a reprisal for some offensive joke or provocative cartoon? We’d be ready to ban the entire religion in this country. Progressives are so desperate to prove that Christianity is just as violent as Islam that they frequently cite the murder of abortion doctors as an example. Only, none of those attacks were carried out in the name of Jesus. As far as I’m aware, none of the murderers shouted “Praise be to Christ” when they pulled the trigger. And how many incidents are we even talking about here? I’ll tell you: eight. Eight abortionists and abortion clinic workers have been killed in the U.S. in the past 40 years. It’s happened once in the last decade and a half. Once.

Yet Christians are held to such a high standard that even these extraordinarily rare killings, not even done in the name of the faith, and always condemned by nearly every prominent Christian, are cited in almost every conversation about religious violence. Meanwhile, Muslims just gunned down 12 people over a cartoon this morning, and what do we immediately hear? Islam is a religion of peace.

A White House spokesman came out within hours of the attack and spent about 40 seconds condemning the violence before immediately repeating this same slogan. While another dozen bodies lay dead in the street, we’re told that it all happened at the hands of a “peaceful” religion. (But at least he didn’t repeat Obama’s quote from 2012: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”) This is a sick joke. Islamist militant wreak havoc across the globe, and the best our simpering, kowtowing, politically correct leaders can do is continuously suck up to the religion that produces these travesties like it’s operating some kind of terrorist assembly line. It’s pathetic. It’s shameful.

You’ll soon hear, if you haven’t already, that this latest bout of Islamic violence should be “put in context.” That these murderers are “in the minority.” I’m even being informed that the people who provoke Muslims are partly to blame themselves. But I’ll know we’ve finally progressed as a people, and grown some semblance of a collective spine, when we stop putting Jihad into context and when we stop making excuses for it. These are bloodthirsty barbarians. They don’t have a point. They don’t need to be understood. They don’t deserve any considerations at all.

I don’t know where we go once we’ve reached that point. I don’t have an easy solution to the kind of animalistic behavior that has infected Islam since its inception. But I do know that it starts with honesty. It starts with having the fortitude to say, without qualifier, without equivalency, that Islam is the most violent religion in the history of the world. You can ask why or how, but the “what” really isn’t up for debate.

I didn’t say that all Muslims are violent, or even that most Muslims are violent. I didn’t even say that Islam is the most destructive religion in the world — that title belongs to progressivism, which murders babies, destroys families, and damns souls.

Yet it is the most violent, and we all know it.

Does Islamic law call for its followers to slaughter the innocent? Certainly that’s how a fair number of them throughout history have seen it, but I don’t claim to be a Muslim theologian. I assume there are different ways to interpret Muslim scripture, same as Christians argue over interpretation of the Bible. What’s the “correct” interpretation? I have no idea. But my religion’s Holy Book tells me that by their fruits you shall know them. I am looking at the fruits of Islam, and I see something that so often blossoms into death and terror. That’s the reality. It’s right before my eyes. All I have to do is open them to see it.

But even now, as the news tells us of another Muslim atrocity, and as Islamists continue their thousand year war against every other religion on Earth, and as they violently persecute Christians across the Middle East and Africa, and as they visit death and misery upon millions worldwide, we here in the West are still too afraid to notice that which cannot be avoided.

And when we do notice, we don’t say, “look, Muslims are executing blasphemers, crucifying Christians, and beheading children.” Instead, we use meaningless qualifiers to stipulate that these are “radical” Muslims or “fundamentalist” Muslims. Then we quickly bury even that observation in a bunch of wimpy babble about how all religions have these sorts of “violent elements.”

Hopefully we soon come in contact with a dictionary, or any book actually, because if we do we’ll see that a “fundamentalist” is simply someone who follows the fundamentals of a religion. Saying that “Islam isn’t the problem; fundamentalist Islam is the problem” is the same as saying “Islam isn’t the problem; the basic, fundamental nature of it is the problem,” which is the same as saying “Islam isn’t the problem; Islam is the problem.”

And although it might make us feel better to assume that no culture and no religion carries its own unique flaws and pitfalls, the fact remains that Christians and Jews are not often found brutalizing innocent civilians in the name of their religion. And if such an anomaly were to occur, it would be quite easy to tell that the murderous Christian is not a fair representative of his Creed. After all, his Savior spoke rather extensively about the need for peace and mercy. His Savior also wasn’t a militant figure in His own right, killing infidels and taking child brides along the way.

Rather, our Savior told us to turn the other cheek, and that’s what Christians have consistently done. They were pursued, captured, beaten, killed, and made into lion’s food for 300 years before they finally emerged as a dominant religion. If Christianity is inherently violent, it would have been born in violence and spread through violence, but it wasn’t. Unlike Islam.

These are the simple facts, and I’ve pretty well had my fill of these friendly people, with their polite ways, who are so terribly tolerant that they feel like they have to pretend that, somehow, mysteriously, the impression every rational human being on Earth has — that Islam is more violent than other religions — is off-base. They can’t explain why it’s off-base, they can only offer some trite platitude about how the violent Muslims are not “true” Muslims.

Bull crap, you cowards. There is disagreement about the “true” nature of every religion. Put 100 Christians of different denominations in a room and they’ll argue over virtually every aspect of their faith. What they won’t do, however, is debate whether they’re supposed to be out killing cartoonists, shooting up schools, murdering soldiers at the Canadian parliament, or taking hostages at a cafe in Sydney. Only one religion has to even entertain that discussion. And that, to me, clearly indicates some very serious and inherent flaws.

And, please, don’t tell me that Muslims tend to be violent because they’re a historically oppressed people. All religions have been oppressed at one time or another, but Muslims have also always controlled wide swaths of the globe. Ever hear of the Ottoman Empire? And don’t try to work the Crusades into this conversation, unless you want to prove my point for me. The Crusades were waged against Muslim aggressors after several hundred years of persecution at the hands of Arabic forces. The Crusades were a war of defense, sparked, as usual, by Muslim conquest.

No, there’s no way around this. Islam is more violent than any religion that’s ever existed anywhere.

We have to face that fact. Muslims especially have to face it.

And then we can take the next step, whatever that is.