In today’s academia, the reigning ideology, when it is not socialism, is “multiculturalism.” Try to get a handle on what that means, and it’s not so easy. Go to Wikipedia for a definition, and you will find a string of innocuous and anodyne platitudes (“Multiculturalism as a political philosophy involves ideologies and policies which vary widely, ranging from the advocacy of equal respect to the various cultures in a society, through policies of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity, . . .”) But you know there’s a lot more to it than that. For starters, there’s the characteristic self-loathing for all things Western. And then there’s the insistence that other cultures (however that term may be defined) are somehow inherently superior to ours and may not be criticized.

At the top of the list of cultures that may not be criticized is Islamic culture. For anyone who draws the ire of the progressive left, no list of accusatory epithets (“racist, sexist, misogynist, ageist, . . .”) is complete without the obligatory “Islamophobic.” The suffix “phobic” implies some kind of irrational fear, as in “acrophobia” (irrational fear of heights) or “germophobia” (not a real word, but you get the picture).

But could it be that Islam has a real problem — not something arising out of irrational fear, but something based in actual evidence?

The Gatestone Institute is a think tank with a daily email that covers issues of international affairs and foreign policy that “the mainstream media fail to report.” One such issue is the treatment of Christian, Jewish, and other religious minorities in majority-Islamic countries. . . .