Western civilization is under assault and bowing is not a solution

As we in the United States sat in horror, watching the views of a dozen people mowed down by Islamic gunmen in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, we were confronted once again, with the stark fact that there is a civilizational clash between Western liberal democracies and the world of Islamism.

Many of us first became aware of the disproportionate extent of rage that the Islamists have over any depiction of their prophet in 1988, when Salman Rushdie first published his Satanic Verses. This fictionalized account of the prophet Mohammed led to a fatwa calling for his assassination, bringing the writer into hiding for most of his life. This was the opening salvo on our Western freedoms, fired from Tehran, by none other than the Iranian Supreme leader, the late Ayatollah Rouhella Khomeini on Feb. 14, 1989.