It’s a new year, but like toilet paper stuck to a shoe, the old one is being dragged into it all over the world, particularly in the certifiably insane Muslim world.

In Yemen, for instance, Al-Qaida put a contract out on the Jewish U.S. ambassador in Sanaa, Associated Press reports. In a message posted on terrorist websites, al-Qaida offered 30 pieces of silver to anyone who kills the ambassador.

Just kidding.

They actually offered three kilograms of gold, or about $160,000, according to the report. The group will also pay people to kill American soldiers inside Yemen. Isn’t that nice? But, it’s a fire sale, good for only the next six months, A.P. reports. Al-Qaida in Yemen reportedly called on Muslims to kill U.S. diplomats in Muslim countries after the release of an anti-Muslim film trailer in September.

The A.P. story notes that four U.S. diplomats, including the ambassador to Libya, were killed in Benghazi in September, suggesting a connection, though it has been proven doubtful that if such a link exists, it was the main reason for the attack. That’s not to say that something as simple as a film, a cartoon or a sideways glance can’t set off the powder keg that is Islamism. Because it’s been proven time and again that it can.

In Pakistan right now, for example, if you’re looking for the National College of Arts’ academic journal, don’t bother. Its officials disbanded it to save their lives, after publishing “a series of paintings depicting Muslim clerics in scenes with strong homosexual overtones, sparking an uproar and threats of violence by Islamic extremists,” A.P. reported.

So, what else is new? The institution’s officials also pulled all its issues out of bookstores, dissolved its editorial board and disbanded the entire publishing department.

Nevertheless, a court is still “considering whether the paintings’ artist, the journal’s board and the school’s head can be charged with blasphemy,” according to the report. A.P. says “the college’s decision to cave to Islamist pressure underscores how space for progressive thought is shrinking in Pakistan as hard-line interpretations of Islam gain ground.”

This is especially troubling since this institution is among the country’s “leading defenders of liberal views,” the report notes. It’s a sign of the rising black tide enveloping not just the Muslim world, but nearly anywhere where Islam is proliferating and no organized fight is being waged against it. Even the A.P., which tends, like most mainstream media, to avoid if at all possible, calling a spade a spade when it comes to Islamic terrorism, notes in this story that “recent years…(has seen grow) the power of religious hardliners to enforce their views on members of the population who disagree, often with the threat of violence.”

It notes the government is floundering in its attempts to fight a domestic Taliban insurgency and protect its citizens, and often “acquiesces to hard-line demands because of fear, political gain or a convergence of beliefs.” This reality is playing out everywhere. “Now you have gun-toting people out there on the streets,” a former head of the arts college said, describing a nightmare reminiscent of Nazi-occupied Europe.

“You don’t know who will kill you. You know no one is there to protect you.” The terrorist group’s spokesman, naturally, blamed the United States, saying, “It’s part of Western and American plans to malign Islam.”

A lawyer for the college said he’s prepared to apologize to anyone whose sensibilities were injured by the paintings. It’s a shame, but understandable.

It’s hard to be the voice of reason in a sea of violent insanity, and history teaches us such brave people tend to die for their cause and are only recognized posthumously, if at all. But in Pakistan and elsewhere, someone better grow a pair because humanity is approaching a point of no return.

Life is becoming unbearable in many Islamist-controlled areas like Pakistan where, in September, “clerics wielding sticks forced their way into a wedding reception … to stop the guests from singing and dancing,” and “a different set of clerics forced a five-star hotel to cancel a planned concert in August … because… the music was counter to Islam.”

The Supreme Court there ordered the country’s media regulatory body “to look into blocking ‘vulgar’ and ‘obscene’ content on TV, the government’s telecommunications arm banned late-night cell phone call packages for “encouraging immoral behavior,” the government banned YouTube last year and one of the country’s highest courts blocked access to Facebook twice “because of material considered anathema to Islam.”

It was also recently reported that an Islamist legislator in Egypt suggested the remains of that country’s Pharaohnic past – the Sphinx and the pyramids, for instance – be destroyed like the Buddhas of Afghanistan, for being un-Islamic. Islamism must be stopped.

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