'Thinking Carefully' About the Koran

This is a courtroom sketch of US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum during attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad’s sentencing in Manhattan this week.

Judge Cedarbaum may be a very fine judge — she sentenced Shahzad to life without possibility of parole — but she did not do her jihad homework.

“Allah Akbar,” Shahzad said, following a rant of jihad labeled “defiant” in the headlines.

“You appear to be someone who was capable of education and I do hope you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people,” the judge said in reply.

Is she kidding?

I wish. But this is the state of enlightened and, alas, empowered thinking on Islam today. It is clueless as to what the Koran says specifically about killing “lots of people” in service to Islam, and it is also clueless as to the zealotry of the faithful — as though reason is a player in this nightmarish game.

I’ll take the utter contempt a fiery Judge William Young expressed when attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid launched into a similar rant on being sentenced back in ’03.