"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was
convincing the world he didn't exist."
--"Verbal" Kint



They're commonplace in offices and on desks everywhere; those spongy, squeezable "stress relievers" that we're supposed to clamp down on during times of frustration. In late September, the British town of Dudley in Worcestershire received a shipment of them for town employees. The rubbery little pig-shaped doodads may have been a waste of town money, but a reasonable person would consider them innocuous in every other respect.

Or, one would think.

The little piggies were viewed as an outrage by the Muslims local to the Dudley area. Muslims, after all, don't eat, keep, or tolerate pigs. Even squishy ones designed for squeezing when you're on the phone with some tough customer. In their ire, the Brit Muslims demanded that the squeezie piggies be rounded up and removed from town offices.

That's unreasonable and childish. This is worse: The township of Dudley complied with the demand. In fact, in an apparent state of panicked appeasement, town authorities even ordered one employee to get rid of a box of tissues because it featured the Winnie The Pooh character Piglet. In a statement that another age would have recognized as comic irony, a Muslim member of the town council declared that the town had acted in "tolerance of people's beliefs."

If this were an isolated incident, it would indicate little more than the silliness level of Dudley, England. But, it's not an isolated incident. It's just one more indication that secular liberals expect the world to crawl under the prayer rugs of Muslim extremists.

Political correctness has turned the idea of religious tolerance into a perverse parody of itself. Secular white liberals, cowed by an irrational shame of themselves and a deeply hidden (and deeply racist) fear of other cultures and races, no longer recognize the devil when they see him. Anyone who agrees with radical Islam's hatred of the west is thought by secular liberals to be a progressive free thinker. Anyone who doesn't agree, conversely, is vilified as an oppressor.

Not only have secular liberals turned religious liberty into a mockery, they've radically distorted another doctrine they claim to hold dear: the separation of church and state. To the secular liberal, that very phrase is really just pale camouflage for his or her hatred of Christianity. If they were really concerned about the evil of state-sponsored religion, secular liberals would tirelessly rail against Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and any other nation where Islamic hatred is public policy.

Speaking plainly, even George W. Bush (certainly no friend of secular liberals) has hardly been as much of an enemy of radical Islam as he should have been. It's inarguable that the U.S. role in bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan has been heroic. Never has the selflessness of the American military been more evident than it has in those two countries. Still, as long as we continue to turn a blind eye to the pro-terrorist activities of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, we aren't doing enough. Alex Alexiev writes for the National Review:

The basic facts of Saudi sponsorship of radical Islam are too well known to require much rehearsal here. According to Riyadh’s own admission, the kingdom has spent an average of no less than $2.5 billion per year for the past three decades to support “Islamic activities.” This has allowed it to build and control 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, 2,000 schools, and 200 colleges in non-Muslim countries alone. As a result, there is hardly a Western city today that does not have an Islamist-controlled institution of one kind or another spewing hatred against the West and Muslims who refuse to submit to radical Islam. It is this infrastructure of extremist mosques, madrassas, “charities,” and foundations that was and continues to be the real incubator of fanaticism worldwide and a foe vastly more potent than al-Qaeda...

Washington exhibits much the same shortsightedness with respect to our other “strategic ally” in the region, Pakistan. After the London bombings — four years after Islamabad switched sides from being a patron of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to becoming an American ally — President Musharraf admitted that he had, in effect, done nothing to curtail the pervasive jihadist networks and madrassa hate-factories in his country. He has now made new promises to do that, but there is no reason to believe that it will happen. Indeed, the man charged with carrying out the task, minister of religious affairs Ijaz ul-Haq, recently denied any link between the madrassas and terrorism...

We might then ask ourselves a simple question: If democracy is good for Iraq, why is it not good for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?

(The emphasis above was mine.)

Given it's agenda, the spread of radical Islam should be viewed as no different than the spread of Nazism in the 1930's and 1940's. Why didn't we learn this lesson then? No world view has been more violently aggressive or destructive as radical Islam since the heyday of Nazism. Given the causes they claim to champion (homosexual rights, women's rights, religious tolerance and pacifism), secular liberals should be absolutely obsessed with bringing an end to radical Islam.

Why aren't they?

I believe that radical Islam is tolerated and even supported by secular libearals because they share one common enemy: Christianity.

Secular liberals aren't concerned with state-sponsored Islam and the oppression and murder it causes because, to the secular liberal, "separation of church and state" begins and ends with getting rid of any Ten Commandments plaques that might be on the wall in some courthouse in Mississippi.

Secular liberals are all for "human rights," and they have the bumper stickers to prove it! But for the secular liberal, support of human rights begins and ends with that bumper sticker and the latest Beastie Boys album. Since actually liberating people from dictators involves getting up, taking real chances, and doing something, secular liberals are dead set against it. They won't be getting their hands dirty, thank you.

Secular liberals hate anyone who ridicules gays and women... and they'll prove it by telling you exactly what they think of Larry the Cable Guy and Eminem. But what about those Islam-controlled nations where women aren't even allowed educations, and where gays are hung for being gay? Hmmmm... somehow, secular liberals don't have much to say about that.

As secular liberals pull further and further away from the real causes they claim to champion, Christianity, merely by being what it is, reminds them of their own hollow core. And, secular liberals see anything that makes them ashamed of themselves as an oppressor. Therefore, regardless of the real barbarity of radical Islam, secular liberals will always see Christians as their greatest threat. Theodore Dalrymple, also in the National Review, exposes their hypocrisy all too well:

Islamists have beheaded hostages and opponents in Algeria, Chechnya, Iraq, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Thailand. In late June, for example, a traveling salesman from northern Thailand was publicly beheaded by Islamists outside a teashop in southern Thailand and his head thrown away a mile or two down the road by his executioners. No doubt this will stifle theological debate in the area for some time...

Compared with this, even the most literal-minded Bible fundamentalist in the West lives, de facto at least, like the child of Voltaire, for even such a fundamentalist probably wouldn’t dare justify decapitation as a policy by reference to David and Goliath. And if by any chance he did, he would rightly be laughed at by his fellow citizens.

Evidence of how radical Islam has secular liberalism under it's thumb is everywhere:

If any nation has bent over backwards to appease Muslims, it's France... and we all know how that's working out for them.

Thomas Klocek of DePaul University scrutinized some technically incorrect information being distributed by radical Islam student groups. He was suspended by DePaul for his trouble.

Lest any Muslim customer ever be offended, British banks are no longer going to give piggy banks to their customers.

Mitt Romney said in a speech before the heritage foundation that the government should closely monitor radical mosques and immigrant students from known terrorist states. The ACLU was on him like grease on bacon.

Some Brits are even seriously worried about Muslims who find the very British flag offensive.

Bowing to pressure that Muslim terrorist references on their hit TV show 24 were offensive to Muslims, Fox promised to include "positive Muslim characters" in future episodes.

The Tate Museum in London recently featured a piece of "art" by John Latham that featured shredded texts from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scripture. After considering wide-ranging advice, the Tate pulled the piece from display. The Tate wasn't concerned about offending Jews or Christians... but they were shaking in their booties at the idea of offending Muslims.

Wake up, secular liberals. You're in bed with the devil.