Steven Gern, a 10 year Marine veteran, was working somewhere in Iraq when President Trump issued his executive order on immigration and refugees, pausing entry into the US from seven Islamic countries including Iraq for a whopping 90 days.
In a video posted last week to his Facebook page (viewed an incredble 41 million times!), Gern discussed the effect of the EO on "the local population" according to his own Iraqi colleagues. When Gern asked what would happen to him if he, as an American, now went out into town, they told him the locals would "snatch me up and kill me within an hour," probably behead him, and upload the video of the bloodletting to the Internet. Gern underscores the fact that this is not ISIS talking, not Iranian militias, not al Qaeda -- this is what other Iraqis say is the probable reaction of the local Iraqi people.
Although shocking for people used to Islam-is-peace apologetics, this should not be a surprise. Pew polling shows that 91 percent of Iraqis actually want to live under sharia, or Islamic law. Such law includes death penalties for apostasy and blasphemy. (Indeed, according to one of the leading Muslim clerics in the world, Yusef al Qaradawi, Islam would not even exist without its law for killing apostates through the ages.) If we stop and consider the hatred and aggression that must be inculcated in a culture to generate support for such laws against freedom of religion, conscience and speech, it becomes easier to understand the mundane but murderous rage that would likely greet Gern outside the wire.
By the way, only Afghanistan has a higher affinity for sharia, 99 percent, which is not exactly an argument for America's moderating influence. Indeed majorities of Muslims in Europe believe that sharia supersedes the laws of their host countries; here in the US nearly 60 percent of Muslims say they do not believe criticism of Islam should be permitted under the US Constitution.
As the Islamic demographic increases anywhere, through the immigration and refugee resettlement that President has, in extremely limited fashion, attempted to pause here for a few lousy months, such "beliefs" take increasingly violent form, just as they have throughout the history of Islamic conquest.
As if to prove this violent Islamic point, Gern, according to his latest video (below), has now been evacuated from Iraq due to death threats.
It's just not enough anymore to shake our heads and say, "unbelievable." It's believable, all right. It's Islam.