It's old news (Is that an oxymoron? Ok, shoot fire, boys, an oxymoron ain't someone dumb as an ox, get out that ninety-seven-cent dictionary, it's there on the shelf by the clippers and comb sanitizer, and look it up for your "ownself") that Abdul Rahman was arrested and charged in an Afghanistan court for the "crime" of converting from Islam to Christianity. If he had been convicted (his charge was dismissed over the weekend, though he is still in jail) of the charge, our brother in Christ would have been legally murdered, preferably beheaded, so said the leading "moderate" Muslim cleric of Afghanistan a couple of days ago.

It seems that our Brother Rahman converted to Christianity while working in Pakistan for a Christian aid group. That was sixteen years ago. He was safe until his wife recently charged him with the Islamic high crime and misdemeanor of becoming a Christian. He and she were fighting over custody of their children.

The former "enlightened" French colony of Algeria has just passed a law making it illegal for a Muslim to convert to another religion. Becoming a Christian in Algeria will get you up to five years in jail, and probably murdered before your trial. In faux (Ok, it's a French word boys, meaning false or a sham.) "moderate" modern French-civilized Algeria one cannot, without severe penalties, "manufacture, publish, nor keep publications or audio-visual" Christian material in a store or home. By the way, those French riots by "students" we've been reading about and seeing on TV these past weeks and recently are homegrown French Muslims from Algerian grandparents and parents. There's something pleasing to me about the French reaping the flaming rewards of their lazy liberalism and their extolling the virtues of "moderate" Muslims, while those same "moderates" are trying to burn every car in Paris and suburban France. What the French need now are fewer "moderate" Muslims and more fire trucks.

But back to Islam as Islam, slaying Muslim converts to Christianity is nothing new, nor is it "extremist" Islam. It is "mainstream," based on a statement of Muhammad: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." (Bukhari, vol. 9, book 88, no. 6922) In 1982 Ali Dasti, an 80-year-old Iranian scholar and writer, was incarcerated, maimed, and finally executed by Islamic followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the modern Islamic Republic of Iran, for writing his book "23 Years: A study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad" (Costa Mesa, CA, Mazda Publishers, 1994). Dashti was an Iranian Muslim who had the backbone to look squarely at Muhammad's lifetime of war, execution of "nonbelievers," and his aim to conquer the whole world as he knew it for "Islam." Dasti wrote honestly about the Prophet's brutality in dealing with Jews and Christians who would not "repent," and the staggering eccentric and moral defects of the Koran, and much more.

Khomeini, it should be noted, lived in Paris under the protection of the French government, while he directed the revolution against the Shah of Iran. When he returned to Iran, all hell broke loose. I guess I shouldn't say "all" hell broke loose, because "all" hell is yet to come from Iran, and the followers of the late world class criminal Ayatollah Khomeini. I speak of the hell of the Iranians developing a nuclear bomb, and they're about to do it. The Iranians will use the bomb for sure. Then, one can write more accurately that "all hell has broken loose" in the Middle East and Europe.

The Prophet said that Allah had told him ( by way of advantageous visits from, one presumes, the Spirit of Allah whenever the situation called for an "edit" of convenience to strengthen his position, or give him permission to make side deals with powerful tribal leaders) ". . . to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that Muhammad [speaking of himself] is the Messenger of Allah" (Bukhari, vol.1, book 2, no. 25).

This is a good place to state one's observation that history (let it all hang out real history) is a minefield nowadays in the classroom. But that should not prevent a researcher, or a student of human behavior and man's deadly vanities, from drawing on history and historic figures. History being taught today relies on politically correct (thus deceiving), safe for continued employment, "good examples." However, real history is not, cannot be, that which is polite or non disturbing. Thus, young people today know no real history.

Teach real history today, and get fired tomorrow. For example, can you imagine reading the following to a group of history students in, say, Dearborn, Michigan, or San Francisco, California? Here's Winston Churchill on Islam: "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! [Those bound by religions vows, kk] Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, the fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property -- either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinctions of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power . . . " Though Churchill wrote those words more than seventy years ago, today the Muslims in Sudan are still enslaving black Africans, that is, those they have not murdered, which may be as much as millions over the past few years. Yet, not a peep from "black leadership"about that? One wonders how any black American could buy into Islam, except for an ignorance of the history of Islam's enslaving conquered black Africans, and Islam's having been the prime "merchandisers" of black African slavery to the United States, in the forever gone dark days of our own buying and selling fellow human beings? Let's go back in history a little more, here's the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, on Islam: "Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it . . . have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with the iron teeth, such was, and is at this day, [1841, kk] the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind." (From "The Doctrine of Original Sin, Works," 1841, ix. 205) Now, read President John Quincy Adams: "In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab [Muhammad, kk] of the lineage of Hagar the Egyptian, combing the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth." President Adams continues: ". . .and he declared un-distinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind." Finally in this statement, President John Quincy Adams wrote in block letters, "THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE . . ." (John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States of America, 1830.) Try using those direct quotes of the opinions of some of our best minds (and there are hundreds more in history) in a classroom today! You'd be, as they say, "history." Weird isn't it? Islam is treated in the classroom today with tender respect, while Christianity and Judaism aren't allowed any position in the same classroom, except one of restriction and mockery. That can't be right?

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.