While the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were poking the Islamic bear (along with the Christian bear and the Jewish bear and the any-religion-you-choose bear) an awful lot of those who now claim to be Charlie were criticizing them for doing so and repeating the pious blather about Islam being a religion of peace.

No other world religion has an organized political/militant wing that systematically slaughters nonbelievers and “apostates” and attempts to conquer and convert territories and entire countries by force. None.

So treating it like other world religions, pretending its violent side and bloody history don’t exist, and insisting we tolerate the intolerable makes no sense. Until Islam can sort out whether it’s a religion concerned with the spiritual needs of its adherents or a political movement bent on conquest and killing, it must be regarded and handled very differently than, say, rival Christian factions who publish angry scholarly papers arguing transubstantiation versus consubstantiation. I don’t believe I am wrong in saying this…there are all sorts of terrorists but only Islam acts in this manner.