If I were sentenced to live on a desert island but was allowed have two books, one would be the Bible and the other the one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia, Second Edition, 1950.

One example of its greatness, clarity, accuracy and utility can be found in its entry on the Assassins, who were:  

…a secret order of Shiite Moslems founded c. 1090 in the mountain fortress of Alamut, in Lebanon. The distinguishing mark of the order was not in their tenets, but in their methods of disposing of enemies by ruthless murder. Of the organization and its history, it is difficult to speak with absolute certainty, as is the case of most secret societies. The grand master of the order Sheik al-Jabal, known in English as the Old Man of the Mountain, was absolute ruler. Under him, the members were strictly organized into classes, according to the degree of initiation into the secrets of the order. The most important of the classes were one of the lower groups of the hierarchy, the devotees, from whom unquestioning obedience and a fanatic disregard for their own safety were expected by their superiors. Martyrdom was not avoided but sought. These men were the instruments of assassination. It is generally believed that they were prepared for their tasks and rewarded by being taken occasionally into the earthly paradise in the fastness of the Old Man’s fortress, where hashish was administered to them and they were allowed to indulge in the most exquisite forms of sensual pleasure. The order grew strong over Persia and Syria…. About the end of the 12th century the Crusaders came into contact with the Syrian branch… Tales of the Crusaders and the writings of Marco Polo brought the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain into European folklore. The term assassin came into English and is today used to mean murderer and particularly one who kills for political motives.

The word is also used in French, Spanish, and Italian but mostly for common murderers. The English variety confines itself to an ideological motivation, which in effect was the motive of the original Assassins. Yes, they were religious fanatics but in the end, theirs was a political movement meant to expand Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, creating a globe-encircling Muslim empire, a true One World government under a wise Caliph who is simultaneously a political and a religious leader. Islam has never allowed for the separation of mosque and state.

The above encyclopedia excerpt published sixty-five years ago should sound familiar to contemporary ears. A thousand years ago in the age of the Assassins, there were no long-range rifles with sniper scopes, no remote-control bombs. Assassins depended on physical contact with their targets who commonly were stabbed with a poisoned dagger in the knowledge that the victim’s entourage would then pounce upon the Assassin and kill him. In effect, they were bent not only on murder but suicide, forerunners of today’s jihadi massacre freaks.  

Today, charismatic Muslim leaders continue to talk devotees into committing simultaneously mass murder and suicide, and like the Assassins they are told they will be launched afterwards into Muslim paradise where seventy-two virgins await them; where streams flow not with water but wine; where the shahid/martyr will enjoy the exquisite, drunken pleasure of an orgy of deflowering virgins who after every rape regrow their hymens for all eternity.

The latest slaughter of five American servicemen in uniform in Chattanooga, Tennessee was the handiwork of yet another Muslim enthusiast set on massacre and prepared to be killed in the process. As in the 11th century, his motive was political and religious at the same time, for Islam is both a religion and a totalitarian political system in a class with Nazism and Communism aspiring to world conquest.

Those nineteen Muslims who pirated four airliners on September 11, 2001, killed themselves and nearly 3,000 other people were today’s spiritual heirs of the Assassins; likewise the four who exploded themselves in London’s Underground in July 2005, 52 dead, more than 700 injured; likewise the three in those Bali nightclubs the following October, 20 dead, 100 wounded; those in buses and fast food restaurants in Israel during the second Intifada, and in mosques in Baghdad, Aleppo, Fallujah, and Mosul. And let’s not forget the two jihadis who tried to murder Pamela Geller and others in attendance at that Muhammad cartoon conference in Garland, Texas in May but were shot dead by a spiritual heir of the legendary Texas Rangers. The shooting in Chattanooga was only the latest escapade in a history of jihadi assassinations over Islam’s lifetime of fourteen centuries.

But what is to be done in self-defense? Here are three suggestions: First, although the West prides itself on religious tolerance, there are limits. For sure, the West tolerates and even benefits from the presence of non-Western, non-Judeo-Christian religious communities. The melting pot is enriched when the U.S. and other Western countries are home to Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Hindus, Japanese Shinto and other non-Western religious communities.

But rules can also tolerate exceptions (which only highlight the generality), and one of them should be made in the case of Islam. It does not belong in Western civilization. There are fifty-six officially Muslim states and not one is a self-governing democracy. Islam is also a polygamous culture. In the United States, the early Mormon community in the Utah territory was denied statehood for a Biblical generation of forty years until the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints reformed its doctrine and banned the practice.

So every mosque in Western countries today should be shut down on the grounds that it fosters polygamy and is therefore engaged in illegal activity.

Second, the President of the United States, who bears the name of the second martyr in Islam, Hussein ibn Ali, has repeatedly proven himself to be incapable of naming the enemy viz. Islamic terrorism, let alone take serious action against him, and for that he should be removed from office. He also wants to send $150 billion dollars to Iran, which sends money to recognized terror groups such as HAMAS and Hizb’allah who like to murder Jews.

Obama should be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office by Congress; then (possibly) subjected to further criminal charges.

Americans are being murdered inside the country by enemy Muslims and the Republic must fight back. The third step should then be (perhaps, really, the first) the emergence of a courageous senator who steps into the well of the Senate, speaks the painful truth, publicly accuses Obama and Kerry of treason and calls for their removal from office.

If Richard Nixon deserved to be served with articles of impeachment, Bill Clinton too, so does Barack Hussein Obama.

Sha’i ben-Tekoa’s PHANTOM NATION: Inventing the “Palestinians” as the Obstacle to Peace is available at Amazon.com and www.deprogramprogram.com.