Andrew McCarthy has published the read of the day. For those few who do not know his background, McCarthy prosecuted the Blind Sheik for the first World Trade Center bombing as an assistant US Attorney. In the course of this prosecution ansd since, he has become a genuine expert of Islamic theology and its relationship to Islamic terror.

For a mixture of reasons ranging from political correctness to naiveté (how can one of the world’s “great religions” be so flawed?) to lusting after oil money (how many universities have received how many millions of dollars from oil producing countries?) to vote pandering, the American political, media, academic, and ruling classes have been in denial about the nature of scriptural Islam.  The cold, hard truth about Islam is daunting.  Its scriptures demand a cruel and ruthless approach to establishing world dominance, and terrorists who are trying to kill us have sound scriptural reasons for believing they will achieve blessings in the afterlife.

I really wish this weren’t so. But it is, and we only harm ourselves by pretending otherwise. And for those Muslims who don’t follow this interpretation of their religion, I say thanks. And keep it up. For those brave few Mulsim like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, who energetically point out the need to reform Islam, I say blessings upon you. And watch your back!  And for courageous former Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali,  who revolt against the oppression and cruelty, I hail their bravery, for other Muslims are commanded to enforce the death penalty for apostasy upon them.

McCarthy lays out in compelling and readable form why President Obama’s obstinate refusal to acknowledge the facts is so dangerous. Read the whole thing. But here are two excerpts:

 It is not just that the word terror appears several times in the Koran; it is that the word appears in a particular context: The duty of Muslims to act as Allah’s instrument to terrorize non-Muslims is a recurring scriptural theme. In Sura 3:151, to take one of several examples, Muslims are admonished:

Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.

Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” I prosecuted in the mid-'90s after his cell bombed the World Trade Center and planned similar strikes against other New York City landmarks, was a renowned scholar of Islamic jurisprudence. Indeed -- and this is worth pausing over -- his mastery of our enemy’s ideology was the sole source of his authority to approve jihadist attacks.

And

Understand: the president is not refusing to associate terror with Islam out of political correctness. His delusion is ideological. It informs his every decision. It is why the terrorist threat has so intensified, and why we are in more peril today than at any time since before the 9/11 attacks.

The Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) strategy has gotten some way overdue attention in the two weeks since 14 Americans were killed by the San Bernardino jihadists. As I’ve recently recounted, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security published CVE training instructions for federal agencies involved in national security. All of the two-page “Do’s and Don’ts” [sic] document is breathtakingly detached from life here on earth, but buried in the middle is a specific directive that speaks volumes:

Don’t use training that is all “war stories,” which may rely too much on outdated information and overgeneralizations. Regaling an audience with a blow-by-blow account of a 2003 terrorism investigation does not address the changing nature of violent extremism we face today.

Obama believes the nature of terrorism is changing. This is absurd. The violence today is executed by jihadists. They are motivated by a scripture-based doctrinal command to impose sharia -- Islam’s societal framework and legal code, which is the necessary precondition to Islamicizing a society and, ultimately, establishing a caliphate. That is why they kill today, it is why they killed in 2003, in 1993, in 1800, in 1565, in 1064, in 732, and so on all the way back to the raids Muhammad himself led in the seventh century. The technology and tactics of violent jihadism have changed over time; the nature of it has been the same for nearly a millennium-and-a-half.

We may or may not be at war with Islam. But Islam is most definitely at war with us, and we live in what it calls “The House of War” (Dar al harb)