Beyond the book's bizarre cover.

We keep hearing outrageous things from the radical Muslim camp, and keep wondering if they are really nuts. Look deeper.

In her weekly column, Kathleen Parker reports that another Islamist fatwa has been issued against a cartoonist (Seattle based Molly Norris) for a perceived insult to the prophet Mohammad.

In his 2006 book America Alone, Mark Steyn tells of a rumor that swept Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. The rumor told of a Sudanese shop keeper who shook hands with a western man and instantly felt his penis shrink and disappear. The story was supported by another man who said a man from west Africa handed him a comb and told him to comb his hair. When he complied, he immediately felt his penis shrink and disappear.

Are these people nuts?

Well, yes, but they are cleverly being led - no, dragged - down a path to hate all non-Muslims.

Someone, at some ancient time, determined that the ultimate, unforgivable sin was to make a picture of the prophet Mohammad. And, they apparently made it the solemn duty of every true believer to seek out and punish the sinner. How better to foment acts of violence than to identify a sinner and remind the faithful that it is their responsibility to inflict punishment?

Imagine the mental pain (not to mention the physical suffering involved) for a woman who loses a breast in a mastectomy. As much as anything, a woman's breast is symbolic of womanhood.

For a man, the penis is the icon of masculinity. In my opinion, a penis is more important to a man than is a breast to a woman. To a man, Muslim or otherwise, loss of one's penis renders him impotent - no longer a man. In a society so oriented toward sex (What religion other then Islam promises a man 72 virgins as he enters heaven?) that feeling of impotence upon the loss of one's penis, must be overwhelming for a Muslim man. What will those 72 virgins think? Can you imagine the giggling and pointing?

So, what of the Khartoum rumor? It teaches that you cannot even befriend (shake hands with) an infidel without being rendered impotent. You cannot accept charity (a comb) from an infidel without being rendered impotent. And even if you have enough scientific understanding to basically doubt the shrinking, disappearing penis story, why take a chance?

How then can we hope to reason with people so indoctrinated? With people who deeply hold such beliefs? If you offer a hand of friendship to a Muslim man; if you offer to help a poor Muslim man is your offer perceived as an attempt to make him impotent?

Do you find it hard to believe someone could be motivated to violence by an perceived attack on their religious beliefs? Blasphemous phrases against God are so offensive to some Christians that hearing the utterance causes great mental anguish. But, those people usually suffer in silence... they have not been taught that it is their duty to kill the offender.

When you hear talk of moderate Muslims; When you hear that Islam is a religion of peace; keep in mind that all Muslims would welcome an Islamic world. At what point, if ever, would they reject the radicals in favor of peace? To what extremes might they agree in the belief that the end justifies the means?

And, when you hear something from the world of Islam that sounds really kooky, think a little harder before you dismiss it offhand!