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Now that's an interesting question!

Here's what Wikipedia says: "Islamophobia denotes prejudice against, or hatred or irrational fear of, Muslims. The term dates back to the early 1900s, but its modern use originates during the late 1980s or early 1990s. It entered the common vocabulary after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States."

We all know Muslim people who are not extremists. We encounter these folks in our business relationships, in our neighborhoods, and in many other places. When our children were in school, they had Muslim schoolmates--and everyone got along just fine. So in this sense, it is indeed "irrational" to paint all Muslims with the same, broad extremist brush.

After all, the shoe could be on the other foot, couldn't it? We surely wouldn't want to be identified with "Christian" extremists like the anti-Semitic nut job from Kansas who pickets the funerals of fallen US soldiers holding signs that say, "Thank God for dead soldiers." It would be a big mistake to paint all of us with one, wide swath of the "Christian" brush because 99.9% of the evangelical world has very little in common with extremists who preach a gospel of hate.

So no, we're not Islamophobic. We don't have an irrational fear or hatred of Muslim people in general.

Maybe a better word would be Sharia-phobic. I won't deny that I have a deep-seated and almost instinctive animosity and distrust for any system of law that is cited by mullahs who want women to be treated like cattle (the property of their fathers/husbands), that is used as justification for censorship of the media, that is interpreted by some as sanctioning public executions of dissenters and as prohibiting women from receiving an education, and allowing the death penalty for misdeeds like "blasphemy" and converting from Islam to another religion.

For an insightful view of how the mullahs interpret sharia law in an actual "Islamic Republic" (Iran), click here.

If we want to see what the US will look like in a few years, all we have to do is look at the UK. The Brits have bent over backwards to accommodate Islamists in the British Isles. In fact, it has become politically correct in the UK to wink at the excesses of Islamist extremism. Tolerance--it's the prim and proper way to deal with a sticky issue. Here's a look (from YouTube) at how all of that tolerance and magnanimity is paying dividends for our British friends: click here.

I guess I'm Sharia-phobic--and maybe Jihad-ophobic. But there's nothing irrational about it. It's perfectly reasonable to be afraid of someone who says that he/she wants to destroy both you and your way of life and will stop at nothing to do so.

Fear is not always a bad thing. A few years ago, for example, several of us were walking near a rocky creek bed and found ourselves confronted by a large rattlesnake. Did I suffer from Snake-ophobia at that moment? Yes, I suppose you could say that. But that's an instance where fear was an appropriate response. We were in imminent danger. My friend Mike Scalf (a local realtor who also serves on our ministry finance committee) clobbered the snake with a large rock and sent it slithering away into the underbrush!

The cry of our contemporary culture is, "No Fear!" We're not supposed to be afraid of anything! It's like those moronic Johnny Knoxville movies--an entire franchise (based on a TV reality show) built on filming stupid people doing stupid (and often dangerous) stunts. These crazy people want the world to know that they're not afraid of anything. The folks who frequent these movies aren't exactly from the deep end of the gene pool, but fortunately for Johnny & Co., they can afford the price of a ticket!

But for the rest of us, being afraid of some things is reasonable and rational--and it can keep us safe from harm.

I believe radical Islam is one of those things.