So Al Gore is launching a 3-year, $300 million ad campaign to frighten us all into doing what he says (not what he does) to counter global warming. It is a safe bet this spectacular propaganda endeavor will feature prominently polar bears who will be described as endangered species due to the impact of climate change on their ever-less icy habitat.

While there remain serious disagreements about the scientific merits of the Gore crusade, one thing is clear: If man-made greenhouse gases actually are affecting climate change, it will be decades – if not a century – before the effects of such changes translate into widespread dangers to mankind.

In the meantime, the world is increasingly at risk from a far more imminent threat, one Mr. Gore and his ilk seem content to ignore. In fact, the caviling about global warming can be seen as a deflection from a menace that is at hand and that risks turning vast human populations into endangered species: the rapidly metastasizing, totalitarian ideology of our time that has come to be known as Islamofascism or, alternatively, Islamism.

Among those most immediately imperiled by the Islamofascists are Muslims who dare to challenge the repressive, seditious theo-political-legal code that the former describe as “Shariah” and seek to impose on their co-religionists and everyone else. Some of these endangered species cling to and seek to reform their faith. Others, like the estimable Syrian-born psychologist Wafa Sultan, have felt constrained formally to leave it.

All such individuals risk death at the hands of the Islamists on the grounds that they are, respectively, “hypocrites” or “apostates” – capital offenses under Shariah. At the very least, they can be charged with “slandering” Islam, which is also according to the Islamofascists’ rule book a capital crime.

This is hardly an academic point. Dr. Sultan is currently in hiding somewhere in this country after an appearance on March 4th on the Islamofascists’ favorite television network, Al-Jazeera. In the course of a heated debate about the Danish cartoons with an Egyptian Islamist named Tal'at Rmeih, she bravely declared:

“All religions and faiths, throughout the history of humanity, have been subject to criticism and affronts. With time, this has helped in their reform and development. Any belief that chops off the heads of its critics is doomed to turn into terrorism and tyranny. This has been the condition of Islam, from its inception to this day. Islam has sentenced [its critics] to prison, and whoever crosses the threshold of that prison meets his death. The Danish cartoons have managed to break down the first brick in the wall of that prison, and to open up a window, through which the sunrays enter, after a lengthy darkness. The Danish newspaper exercised its freedom of speech. Liberties are the holiest thing in the West, and nothing is more important. But if Islam were not the way it is, those cartoons would never have appeared.”

Dr. Sultan added: “If you want to change the course of events, you must reexamine your terrorist teachings, you must recognize and respect the right of the other to live, you must teach your children love, peace, coexistence, and productive work. When you do that, the world will respect you, will consider you in a better light, and will draw you in a better light.” Continued...