Why do we cringe and cower

in the face of islamist barbarism?
Not in the face of Nazis. Or the gulags–in those cases people were moved to anger and to speak up. But islamism has become the disease that none dare  name, the unmentionable, the almost-unthinkable core of an ideology that’s reflexively referred to as “the religion of peace”.
If islam is the religion of peace, then Communism is the creed of the free market and liberty.
Islam is very plainly NOT the religion of peace, as thousands and thousands of atrocities and abuses of individual liberties demonstrate. Yet the description persists.
It persists because the left sees in islam an ally in their project to dismantle Western civilisation and re-make it in their own warped image of Utopia, it persists because politicians see the “war on terror” (but not islam) as a convenient diversion from the need for reform and because it gives undreamed-of opportunities for control, because we in the West rely on Saudi oil, because the media are no more than mouthpieces for the leftist worldview.
But most of all it persists because we–we the people–have become uninformed, lazy, apathetic cowards, afraid to swim upstream against the prevailing narratives for fear of endangering our comfortably numb lifestyles.
The West we knew is dying, dying of neglect and cowardice and appeasement.
And yet..there may be signs of a dawning awareness of the enemy within the gates:
Man burns Koran pages at mosque site
Christians rip pages from Koran
Dueling protests over New York mosque