[Editor's note: The question of religious war haunts the world today. Some, but not all, Muslims believe a religious war is long underway and will continue until the entire world submits to Allah. Last week, J.R. Dunn began a series of articles advocating avoidance of religious war rhetoric. Today, Michael Geer makes the contrary case. The American Thinker will gladly host a debate on the subject in coming days and weeks.]

Given events in the Middle East and the near certainty of escalation, it's time to name our enemy, because Israel is our canary in the mine of world events. And the canary is singing.

Ever since Thomas Jefferson's replied to the Danbury Baptists with the phrase wall of separation between church and state and James Madison penned "Strongly guarded . . . is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." and Ulysses S Grant called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate" the policy of America has been to rest upon a foundation of respect for authentic religion and to shun the disaster of making religion our government.

The Left in our nation, who make government their religion, have formed ranks around separation of church and state as a bedrock. A Google search of Separation Of Church And State yields 21,500,000 results. The larger percentage of those results are hardened secular positions, like Wall Builders, Suburban Guerillas and Americans United For Separation of Church and State. Many of these are not just Constitutional argument websites, but more secular and obdurate anti—Christian web sites. Fine. We're a big nation.

How does this relate to the current crisis between Israel and her enemies?

The conflagration breaking out around the world like a fever coming to the fore, is religious. It's not oil, it's not haves and have—nots, it's not Marxism versus Capitalism, it's not Globalists versus independent free thinkers.

It's religion.

It is a war to the death between those who stand for Religion as State, and those who will not live under their rule of religion as state policy.

Oil is not that name. Oil is just a bargaining chip. Globalism is not that name. Globalism is only a sidebar. The virulent remnants of Marxism play a significant role in money and state—sponsored support, but Marxism is not the name. Our enemy, the enemy of civilization, and I dare say the enemy of Mankind itself is a religion which will kill, maim and terrorize any who will not accept religion as the State.

Islam is the name.

Islam was founded as a religion that is the state, where the state is the religion. The ultimate theocracy. There is no separation, no wall, no division. It is a seamless whole and any behavior is allowed to maintain that power. No crime is too gruesome, no argument too convoluted, no terror too shocking, and no theology too cancerous to be off limits in conquering the world for their god.

They mean to have government be religion, and for religion to be government. Jihad is the mechanism by which all of mankind will be brought into to ummah, the world community of Islam.  And only then will we know peace.

I stand in shocked anger that those in America who work so hard for the separation of church and state are not horrified at the Islamist threat. Those who passionately insist on the separation of church and state ought to be on the front lines every day denouncing Islam and their global terror campaigns. making noise, agitating, pressing for Islam to be eradicated. But they aren't denouncing Islam. Quite the opposite. They advocate eradicating George W Bush and the United States.

This is madness beyond my ken.

The very people inside our borders who work the hardest to see to it that America and Israel are ruined and kicked into the dust bin of history are the same people who take every opportunity to remind us about the separation of church and state. Are they not paying attention? Are they blind and deaf? Are they made dumb by their hate?

I am truly flabbergasted that these separation people seem to have no concept that if Israel is cast down and if America is driven to her knees, they're going to get a church that is the State in such totality as to defy description. And it won't do for America to simply refrain from international affairs as if a disinterested observer. This is the kind of annihilating threat that must be stopped before it grows any larger. Acceptance and diversity are fine—sounding phrases, but not when we're discussing the end of civilized man.

A word of warning to our citizens who live on the Left side of the aisle, the anti—war crowd, the anti—globalist crowd, the anti—America crowd .... you say you are as separation of church and state as can be .... but what you're going to reap is the soul crushing whirlwind of church as state and state as church if you don't get a grip and wise up. You're rooting for the worst kind of theocracy the world has ever seen, the kind that treats women as less than objects, that kills dissenters, whose distaste for homosexuals is literally beyond polite discussion, and whose Friday afternoon schedule is not cocktails but beheadings of those who take drugs, have sex out of wedlock, have a taste for pornography or show too much skin in public. Among the many crimes you now take for granted as your liberties.

Islam is the zenith of religion as government, and government that is religion. Our friend Israel is on the front line of the war to determine the future of mankind. Religion as state, or secular freedom that guarantees religious freedom.

Do you really want to bring to pass a murderous medieval theocracy? Is that the future you think you'll enjoy? Is that the outcome you're working for? Because if you keep tearing at our foundations and empowering this nation's enemies, if you keep heaping scorn and invective on our President, if you insist that America is evil and must be radically assimilated into a metastasizing United Nations global plan, that's exactly what you're going to get and there will be no wall of separation. You will have torn it down.