It’s not just in Baghdad, and it’s not just because of an American invasion.

Multiple international press reports [links here and here] document that Muslim secondary students “mobbed and lynched a female Christian school teacher” in Nigeria. If you happen to have bought into the idea that radical Islamic fanaticism only exits in Iraq – that the only reason for the violence in Baghdad is because our troops are there – this horrific incident is a wake-up call.

The teacher was monitoring the students who “accused her of tearing a portion of the Koran she seized from a female student during the exam.”

Radical Islam has been spreading throughout Northern Africa and violence has been spreading right along with it. Ridding the planet of infidels – even other Muslims who are not of the same sect – is clearly their purpose. As one report states, “The Nigerian government and Muslim leaders have failed to stop the recurrences of Islamic terrorist attacks on Christians in Northern Nigeria.”

Sound familiar? It should. This is being played out in Iraq. Not by the majority of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but by a minority of fanatics. In the Palestinian regions of Israel, the radical Arab Muslims not only have a visceral hatred of Jews, but they have systematically run virtually all Christians out as well. We’ve seen it in Indonesia, Madrid, London, Paris, New York and Washington DC. And, now increasingly across the north of the African continent, and spreading south.

I do not pretend to know for certain exactly how to counteract and defeat this incarnation of evil. But, I won’t pretend that by ignoring the reality of the existence and purpose of radical Islamic terrorism that somehow it will just disappear, or that the effects of it will never harm those close to me.

It can be fought and it must. Education, Freedom, Opportunity, Rule-of-Law and Democracy all help, and it is our best interest to advance these ideals. It does not always take military intervention, but when we ignore the planting of the seeds of evil, they quickly blossom and multiply just as failing to weed a garden will eventually choke the life out of the good plants.

At a minimum, the fight against radical Islamic terrorism has to begin with an understanding of its nature and its objective. Ignoring, rationalizing, and imagining a different reality will only lead to a much higher cost at a future moment in time. However, I fear that much of Congress, the liberal dominated American media, and even many of our fellow citizens prefer a fictional, surreal world to the one that actually exists. One day our children may wish we had been more pragmatic and objective.