I agree with everything you said about the author’s assumption of the validity of his viewpoint, rather than making a case for it. What he writes is and will be popular but, doesn’t advance any rational cause.

On another point however…exaggeration, once known usually results in the loss of credibility. It’s 72 virgins, not 79. Apparently you haven’t read the Quran.

You should. Islam is so different from anything Americans think of as a religion that, when confronted with the tenets of Islam, most of them simply refuse to accept they are being told the truth. They choose to not believe that 1.4 billion people have sworn to kill or enslave the rest of us. We choose to be ignorant because to do otherwise would require courage and action.

I was amazed and dismayed to find none of the candidates running for the Republican nomination had read the Quran, not even Rand Paul, whom I like to think of as intelligent.

I was less amazed but, no less dismayed to find neither Sanders nor Clinton has read the Quran. Why would the US Secretary of State want to read the political handbook for 1.4 billion of the world’s people?

How odd - our leaders know so little about the group that has been attacking Europe for over a millennium and our country since shortly after its founding. Even more odd, that selfsame group has produced a 250 page pamphlet, outlining its strategic goals, along with a 4,000 page handbook explaining in detail exactly how to implement the concepts in the pamphlet. The enemy has sworn, very publicly, to conquer us and, has provided us, slightly less publicly, with the blueprint for his campaign and…almost none of our leaders or the people vying to become our leaders have read either of them.

If you take the time to read the Quran then, take the time to read an edited version of the Hadith (mine is 900 pages instead of 4,000) you’ll find the jihadists are doing exactly, in name, word, and deed, what the holy book of Islam orders them to do. Every Muslim must engage in jihad, violent war against all who do not accept Allah as the one and only god and Muhammad as his one and only prophet. Allah (via Muhammad via Gabriel) exempted from armed, violent conquest only those Muslims physically unable to fight (the case arose when a blind man asked Muhammad to consider his unfitness to wield a scimitar).

If you take the time to read those fascinating but disturbing books, you’ll find out those Muslims who deny that the Quran commands them to wage war against us are again, doing exactly, in name, word, and deed, what the holy book of Islam orders them to do. Islam has different words for different types of lies but, the one most important is Taquiya, strategic lying. Allah (via Muhammad via Gabriel) ordered Muslims to deny the goal of violent conquest until they were able to achieve victory thus, the dishonest refrain from Muslims who comprise small minorities that jihad is a journey, the conquest of the soul, instead of the conquest of the world but, once they gain sufficient numbers to achieve their goal, those selfsame Muslims leap at the call to violence. Islamic conquests are usually preceded by peaceful Muslim infiltration of nonMuslim populations. Witness the tidal surges of 1,000 years of Muslim conquests and defeats and -

- what’s happening in Europe right now, with millions of unapologetic Muslims flooding into nonIslamic countries with the stated goal of outprocreating the indigenous populations and converting their countries into Islamic states. History is repeating itself. Last time it took the Spaniards 800 years to reconquer their own country and take it back from the Muslims.

The conflict between Islam and the rest of the world has nothing to do with Israel or Jews or a military presence in the Middle East. It ‘s not about an unintentional offence to Muslims or their religion. There is nothing we can do to not offend them. Our existence offends them. Their religion commands them to kill or enslave us and, that’s what they’re attempting to do. They didn’t conquer Italy for the art or Spain for the beaches. They destroyed the art and used the beaches as killing grounds for the Christians.

After the Barbary Muslims killed or enslaved hundreds of US citizens and, diplomacy failed to stop the attacks, Thomas Jefferson could no longer ignore them. Among his 7 languages, Jefferson spoke Arabic so, he bought and read a Quran. Realizing the Quran is an absolute call to absolute war against non Muslims, he realized if we did not defeat them, they would eventually defeat us. He took the only sensible course and sent our small Navy and few Marines to defeat what he called a menace to civilization. They did the job and, Islam crawled back under its precivilized rock for awhile.

Now it’s back and, until we find a leader willing to invest a few days to understand it, Islam will continue to lie about its ultimate goal and engage in soft jihad until, once it reaches critical mass, we’ll experience the same violence now so prevalent in the Middle East.

I’m left wondering at his ignorance, when Trump says “They seem to, for some reason they seem to hate us.” He’s said to spend an hour a day doing his hair. If he thought it important he could pay someone to read and explain the Quran to him in a few weeks while he coifs his do then, when asked what to do about Islam he could honestly say: “We must defeat Islam before it defeats us because, there is no middle ground. It is now, as it has been for fourteen centuries, a scourge against which civilization must fight or, we will all return to a time before the dark ages and the light of civilization will go out.”

I fear that’s too much to ask of Mr. Trump and, I fear Ms. Clinton is politically invested in the “Islam is just another religion and Muslims aren’t bad people” fiction. We have survived Islam for fourteen centuries because Muslims lacked the weapons and technology to defeat us. President Obama has handed them the weapons they need to kill us in huge numbers.

The stakes have gone up. They’re now life and death for hundreds of millions of us and, we refuse to admit it because we, as a nation lack the courage to face that truth.