In an article entitled, “Do Muslims Around the World Really Hate the United States?”published at Foreign Policy and widely circulated in mainstream media circles, i.e., Yahoo, GOP candidates are being pilloried for their opposition to jihad, sharia, and ISIS infiltration here in the United States.

Countering the reasonable and rational, Foreign Policy warns us that the Muslim world hates us, citing Pew Research Center data and various other surveys of Muslim “publics [that] have been asked whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the United States.” But as is to be expected from Foreign Policy, their focus is wrong, as is their analysis of the problem and their proposed solution.

As the Republican candidates debated in Las Vegas Tuesday night, Foreign Policy tried to portray them as overestimating the jihad threat. Its article claimed that “the race has oddly enough turned into a referendum on the roughly 3 million Muslims in the United States — and on the 1.6 billion outside its borders.” This was unwarranted – or so Foreign Policy would have you believe, for while “intense anti-American sentiment can be found in Egypt (53 percent held a very unfavorable view of America in 2014) and Jordan (51 percent very unfavorable in 2015),” such sentiment “has actually ebbed among Muslims in the Palestinian territories and Pakistan. And in both Indonesia and Nigeria, countries with some of the largest Muslim populations in the world, strong majorities voice a favorable view of the United States. In fact, their pro-American sentiment is stronger than that in Germany.”

All this shows that the establishment media is once again missing the point. Let’s talk about these Pew and Gallup surveys of the Muslim world. The question isn’t so much “whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the United States,” or whether or not the most recent polls show “intense anti-American sentiment” or “pro-American sentiment.” The question is, whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of the infidel, and how favorably they view jihad and sharia. That data will reliably reveal what they really think about America.

A November poll by the Pew Research Center revealed significant levels of support for ISIS within the Muslim world. And another poll released in November shows that a third of Syrian refugees are ISIS sympathizers. The Pew poll validates everything I have been saying and blows the fiction that the media, academic and cultural elites have been spinning, as in this Foreign Policy article, clear out of the water. Even worse, you can be absolutely sure that the real extent of this support is higher than the Pew data indicates. Much higher. These Muslims just admit to it. Others do not.

Other surveys show that 58% of Muslims in the U.S. reject criticism of Islam as a right; 46% want such blasphemers punished legally. Twelve percent want them killed. 25% of Muslims in the U.S. think that jihad suicide bombings are justified in some circumstances. Do you think such people love America in any genuine sense?

The gist of the Foreign Policy article is that we have a problem: many in the Muslim world don’t like us, and it must be our fault, and clearly the rhetoric we are hearing in the fight for the GOP nomination isn’t helping. This is placing the blame, the onus on us, when in fact this Muslim hatred for the United States predates this election. It predates 9/11 — what was their excuse then? It predates the Hizballah bombing of our Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. It predates the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. It goes back to Muhammad.

Articles such as this one in Foreign Policy are designed to shut down and shut up the conversation concerning jihad, sharia, and Muslim immigration. The Republicans have taken a stand against sharia restrictions on speech (“do not criticize Islam”) imposed by the media over the past ten years. When Ted Cruz declared Tuesday night that “political correctness is killing people,” he nailed it. Actually it’s sharia that’s killing people, but I won’t split hairs. The American public is embracing the candidates’ candor. The GOP opened a window and let the truth in.

The hatred of infidels is a religious imperative in Islam. No matter how fast we dance, appease, pay, accommodate, and submit, the hatred and holy war will not cease. On the contrary, the more we submit and reward the hatred and terror, the more we will have to surrender.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.