Islamist barbarism's "gigantic and intimidating lurch forward."

Sometimes when I'm between columns I just have to post something on the op-ed page. In today's Ottawa Citizen I point to a few things that I am willing to accept for the heck of it as all just one big damn astonishing coincidence. But only up to a point:

This isn’t about a “clash of civilizations.” We should all know by now that the struggle for the final extinction of slavery is an existential contest between civilization and barbarism. There is no “Muslim threat” to civilization. The threat comes from those of civilization’s most privileged beneficiaries. It comes most lethally from those among us who would apologize and pander to the ruling-class barbarians in black turbans and in medal-bedecked uniforms who already hold the citizens of the “Muslim world” hostage.

In unwitting connivance with the usual rabble of otherwise marginal bigots and conspiracy-traffickers, it is that caste of well-appointed capitulation-mongers who go around in the bellbottoms of liberality, multiculturalism, diplomatic engagement and interfaith dialogue that most fatally hastens civilization’s betrayal. They do so in their ceaseless and cowardly commitments to serve the interests of fairness by having all of us held hostage to the terror of offending the powerful, equally and everywhere. It’s what they’ve always done. It’s what’s they are there for. It’s their job.

Maybe I'm just channeling my inner Bolshevik again but really, when will the Obama administration learn that you can't appease fascists, they'll move into every crevice you allow, and for every square inch of space you willingly vacate they'll reciprocate by taking it and conjuring new demands that you vacate more and again and again:

The OIC had been forcing its will in these matters at the UN every year since 1999, when it  secured majority enlistment from the UN’s mock human-rights chamber, and since 2006 the OIC had managed to push annual blasphemy law resolutions through the UN General Assembly. Last year, the Obama White House combined with Pakistan to formally and jointly monkey with the OIC’s resolution so as to turn it into an edict that purports to be about fighting “intolerance” based on “religion or belief,” as though this would be some sort of improvement.

It was not an improvement, it is now more than fair to say. While the U.S.-Pakistan consensus targets only speech that involves the “incitement to imminent violence,” the current round of manufactured-outrage tumults and OIC boss Erdoğan’s candour about his intention to push the envelope again next week should be enough for even the most casual observer to see that the most retrograde of totalitarian impulses are not satiated after all.

That is why Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be back at the UN next week with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's plans to push the envelope even further. Erdoğan, remember, is coincidentally presiding over a country with more journalists in prison than even China or Iran. He vows to renew the OIC's call for the UN to adopt “international legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred, on religion.” And no, it won't stop there.

Meanwhile, our friends carry on the struggle in Libya, where tens of thousands of citizens have now risen in protest to demand an end to armed reactionary factions. Four Libyans have died while  storming the headquarters of the jihadist Ansar al-Sharia, widely understood to have been behind the September 11 atrocity at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

La lutta continua. If you can't lend a hand then at least get the hell out of the way.