Cowards

If this is jihad, then jihadists are cowards.

But they aren't the only cowards. I've read comments on more than one blog this morning claiming that the Pope should have known what effect his statements would have and should have kept his mouth shut. Is that what it's come to? We're going to tippy-toe around the ridiculously fragile sensibilities of extremists who want us dead? Appease them like a bunch of four year olds in the grocery store, hoping to avoid their tantrums?

These are men we're talking about. Grown men who are every bit as responsible for themselves and their actions as any other men. Men aren't coddled, they're held to account.

Their manufactured outrage is laughable and their violence: damnable. If they want to go on rejecting modernity to live like a bunch of barbarians, they do it at their own peril. The rest of the world and the non-extremists among them will not tolerate their depraved exploits forever.

The god of people who commit these heinous acts of terrorism and violence is not Allah, though they vainly call on his name. Their gods are blood and death and violence and suffering. If they do not give up these gods, they will die among them.