"The Islamic State is not Islamic"

President Barack Obama said Wednesday evening that “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’” He followed that up by saying “No religion condones the killing of innocents.”

And Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) agrees with him.

Let's take a look at this logically.

1. “No religion condones the killing of innocents.”
   
   
2. ISIS — which President Obama calls ISIL — unquestionably does condone such killing. So does al Qaeda. So does Hamas. So does Hezbollah. So does the Taliban. So does the Muslim Brotherhood. So does every major Islamic group. So does the Koran. So did Mohammed.
   
   Therefore, by President Obama's own logic,
3. Islam is not a religion.

That seems clear enough to me.

Islamists vs. Islam

The world has gotten even more insane when religious extremists directly and explicitly violate the directives of their founder and their holy book. But that's what's happening in a number of places, and the examples are getting both clearer and more extreme.

As I understand it, Mohammed and the Quran command Muslims to conquer but protect (under a "dhimmi" status of second-class citizenship) the "people of the book" — Christians and Jews. But a bunch of Islamist "Muslims" don't care and violate these commands regularly.

A case in point: Islamist clerics in Pakistan threaten to kill a Christian pastor. His crime? He dared to quote — accurately — from the Quran.

And now, Islamists in Syria have ordered the "infidel Christians" to leave Syria or be murdered.

There is just one solution: All civilized people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, need to work together to end the threat the Islamist "misunderstanders of Islam" pose to everyone.