Many people believe that the more you understand another culture or religion, the more you will appreciate it.

That seemed to be the assumption of a Massachusetts district court judge when he ordered the Reverend Daisy Obi, age 73, to learn about the Islamic faith as part of her probation.  Reverend Obi was found guilty of pushing her Muslim tenant down a flight of stairs and was sentenced to 6 months in jail, and 18 months suspended provided she take a course on Islam.

In sentencing her, Judge Paul Yee Jr. said, “I want you to learn about the Muslim faith.  I want you to enroll and attend an introductory course on Islam.  I do want you to understand people of the Muslim faith, and they need to be respected.”

There is no evidence that the Reverend Obi was prejudiced against Muslims.  She had other Muslim tenants with whom she had no quarrel.  And ironically, she had, in a sense, already had her introductory course on Islam.  Since she comes from Nigeria, a country near a Muslim majority, she probably knows more about Islam than does Judge Yee.

Nevertheless, his ruling was upheld last month by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.  Reverend Obi, they agreed, needed to be educated about Islam -- presumably on the assumption that once she learned about Islam, her “prejudice” would melt away.

Meanwhile, about the same time that the Massachusetts court was deliberating Obi’s case, in Turkey another court was deciding another case.  Before them stood a 35 year-old man who was accused of assaulting a young nurse and kicking her in the face because she was wearing shorts.

Did the court sentence him to six months in jail, and admonish him for misunderstanding Islam?   Er, no.  They released him on the grounds that he had done nothing wrong.  The man argued that the shorts were inappropriate, and apparently, the court agreed.

It’s a common cliché among liberals that the more we learn about a belief system, the less we will fear it.  That’s true some of the time, but in some instances it’s not.  The more that Jews in Germany learned about the Nazis, the more they justifiably feared them.  The ones who fully understood the Nazi mentality left Germany while there was still time.  Jews are again leaving Europe to escape the threat of anti-Semitism.  This time they are faced with Islamic anti-Semitism -- an anti-Semitism that is rooted in Islamic scripture and tradition.  Will Reverend Obi learn about that tradition in her introductory course on Islam?  It seems doubtful.

It’s true that Americans need to be better educated about Islam.  But that’s because they’ve been subjected to a decades-long disinformation campaign designed to make Islam look like a slightly exotic variant of the Unitarian Church.  That disinformation campaign has had the effect of lulling Americans into complacency about a religious-political system that aims to subjugate all other systems of belief and governance.

One frequently repeated bit of disinformation is the argument that terrorists act out of ignorance of Islam.  According to the bien pensants, the terrorists suffer from the same malady that supposedly afflicts the Reverend Obi:  they don’t understand the Islamic faith and its message of peace.

That sort of talk sounds good in the faculty lounge, but it isn’t supported by the facts. Indeed, studies have shown that jihadists are better educated on Islam than the average Muslim.  And that goes double for terrorist leaders.  The Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, was the author of over forty books.  Abdullah Azzam, the founder of MAK (later renamed al-Qaeda), had a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University.  Omar Abdel-Rahman (“The Blind Sheik”), who masterminded the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, also has a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar.  The late Anwar al-Awlaki, the chief propagandist for al-Qaeda, was studying for a doctoral degree at George Washington University.  Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies.

You might not like what they have done, but you can’t say that they are ignorant of Islam.  It’s a good bet they know considerably more about Islam than does Judge Yee or the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  Before the justices sentence any more individuals to remedial Islam, perhaps they should try a dose of their own medicine -- that is, they should study up on Islam.  They could start by spending some time in a courtroom in Turkey -- or in Pakistan where a Christian boy currently faces the death penalty for “insulting” Islam, or in Sudan where a British school teacher was sentenced to prison because she allowed her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad,” or in Mauritania where the courts are imprisoning anti-slavery activists.

One word of caution.  If you happen to be a female Supreme Court justice, be careful what you wear.

Dr. William Kilpatrick is the author of the brand new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad, which released September 26 by Regnery Publishing.