Just for the record, Mohammed was indeed a common desert bandit who used one of the world’s oldest rackets for appealing to the world’s most credulous and ignorent people. He went into his tent, pretended to commune with Big Daddy That Sits in Sky, emerged, went into histrionic fits and perhaps spoke in tongues, and then commanded his audience to go out and kill in the name of Allah. Mohammed was a self-serving bandit and the mindless violence of militant Islam is his legacy to the world. This does not make all people who call themselves Muslims mindless bandits; most Muslims no longer behave like Mohammed’s fanatic horde, ancient Hebrews smiting entire populations in the name of Jehovah, or medieval Catholics and Protestants killing one another to make Jesus happy. Only militant Muslims aka Islamofascists act like stone age savages in the 21st century.

Little has changed, in fact, in the methods the Islamofascists use to get their followers to die for them, excuse us, for Allah. Medieval Popes granted indulgences (forgiveness for all sins) to dirt-ignorant medieval peasants and even illiterate kings who would take up the Cross and go on a Crusade. The leader of the Assassins got his followers high on drugs (Assassin = Hashisheen) and showed them a garden full of beautiful women, which he told them was the Islamic Paradise. As recently as the 1980s,

Ahmadinejad’s demons. From the New Republic, describes how the Khomeini regime imported 500,000 plastic keys from Taiwan to give to children who were to be sent into Iraqi minefields. The children were told that the keys would “open the gates of Paradise” for them.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child’s neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”

At some risk of sounding like Jesse Jackson, we will add the following observation: “Militant Islam is the CANCER, cluster bombs are the ANSWER.” Or, to paraphrase Sylvester Stallone in Cobra, this is the DISEASE

and the electric Gatling gun is the CURE.

It would be hysterically funny, were there not millions of mindless fanatics with guns, bombs, and knives who actually subscribe to this ideology, that said fanatics started to kill nuns and burn churches the instant the Pope cited a Byzantine Emperor’s statement that Islam was a religion spread by the sword. (Hint: it wasn’t Catholic nuns who sacked Constantinople in 1453.) The Islamofascists took immediate exception to the “religion spread by the sword” remark and almost immediately afterward proclaimed that their “war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world.”

Oriana Fallaci’s legacy to Civilization was her willingness to speak the truth no matter how politically-incorrect or unpopular. We must confront the evil of militant Islam the way we recognized Nazism, Fascism, and Japanese imperialism for plagues to be scoured from the face of the earth with flame and steel.