A peppy, intrepid, and widely read blogger from Denver, Ann Barnhardt, has stirred controversy with a vituperative attack on Islam and a specific denigration of Muhammad. She used bacon strips as book marks while reading from the Koran and then ripped out the pages and burned them on a video.
She has achieved an enhanced status compared to the average denigrator of Islam by replying to the customary death threat by an unidentified guardian of the unimpeachability of radical Islam who pledged to "find and kill" her, by blogging out her address with precise instructions on how to get from Denver airport to her home, where, she assured the would-be avenger of the Prophet, she would happily await him (presumably) with her considerable arsenal of weaponry and ordinance and would look forward to seeing him off into the next life such people often claim eagerly to be seeking.
She did not leave it at that but went on to urge any assailant to wear body armor: "I have some new ammunition that I want to try out...close quarter body shots without armor would feel almost unsporting from my perspective." She added that that fact and the likelihood that her IQ was 50 points higher than that of her assassin makes "it morally incumbent upon me to spot you a tactical advantage." All of this was a mere warm-up to the punch line, that "you are a miserable, trembling coward," likely incapable of carrying out any threats without incontinently soiling his underwear and "sobbing yourself into hyperventilation."
Unfortunately for the rigor of her remarks, she went on to inveigh against Muhammad as a coward and a fraud who would send others into battle to die for him, and then committed further indignities with the families of the deceased Islamic warriors. "Frankly," she added, "I'm terribly disappointed that not a single Musloid here in the United States has made any attempt to rape and behead me."
Ms. Barnhardt identifies herself as a traditional Roman Catholic and pure capitalist: "a livestock and grain commodity broker, and marketing consultant, (and) American patriot." As a Roman Catholic and a capitalist myself, I have a natural tendency to identify with her. And although I do not share her disdain for Islam in general, as I respect almost everyone who acknowledges and worships God (and most of those who do not, as long as they are tolerant of those of us who are religious believers), I admire her spirit in declining to turn the other cheek to all those who insult and provoke the West and do not hesitate to denigrate every aspect of our civilization while bristling with draconian threats against the least and most good-natured tweaking of militant Islamists, who are, after all, an objectively absurd, as well as a sinister group of deadbeats and criminals. This cowardly and unspeakable appeasement of the West's tormentors must cease, not necessarily in the confrontational manner Ms. Barnhardt proposes, but no less fearlessly.
She is also a source of very feisty opinions on other religions, including criticism of Pope Francis for exalting "the Poor" when the reference he cited was in fact, she writes, to the "poor in spirit." The entry of such a person into the fray with Islamists indicates that we are finally starting to scratch the bedrock of articulate and dynamic Christian belief that underlays all the hundreds of millions of Christians who endure in passivity the endless and innumerable insults of extremists among those who in earlier times would have been generally deemed to be wallowing in heresy. Christendom sat inert while Islamists threatened the life of the Danish cartoonist who penned rather innocuous caricatures of Muhammad, and those who virtually tried to do the same with Pope Benedict XVI when he quoted a later Byzantine emperor on the tendency of Islam to violence.
Her strictures against Muhammad are excessive, given that the Prophet has a greater personal following than any ostensibly human religious figure except Jesus Christ, and they are regrettable, but her contempt for the Jihadists is commendable and brave, and should be emulated. Even atheists and agnostics in the West should lock arms with those who are practitioners of Western religions as we rebut the claims of Islamist militants that the West is Godless. The West subscribed to monotheism centuries before the birth of Muhammad, and our secular governments should be much less quiescent in the shameful mistreatment of Christians in many Muslim and all remaining communist countries than they have been.
Ann Barnhardt's spirit, though not all her bellicose Islamophobic invective, is admirable. And there must soon be a stirring of the Christian core of the West to signal the end of its tolerant lassitude in the face of the continuing massacre and oppression of hundreds of thousands of Christians a year. This is the route for the West to follow, not Secretary of State John Kerry's impotent pursuit of "peace talks" with Mullah Omar and the Haqqani Taliban (which has murdered hundreds of Americans and their allies), with no possibility of accomplishing anything while the ungrateful Allied protégé Karzai (president of Afghanistan) dumps America for Iran as a patron. This belligerent Denver commodity trader and blogger is a greater defender of our civilization than the leaders of the U.S., and most other, western governments.