HOLY CRAP, BEN STEIN REALLY IS NUTS

Earlier this month I wrote about Ben Stein's fears of the Apocalypse, and now I see that he's decided we're already living under media-imposed sharia:

Don't look now, but Islam is becoming the MSM's official religion of America.

Stein is upset that there are U.S.-created ads running in Pakistan that denounce the film Innocence of Muslims (I'm not sure if Stein was equally upset when President Bush denounced the shooting of a Koran by a U.S. soldier, but never mind). But what's really bugging Stein is this:

I am referring to something worse: Have you noticed that in the past few years, and especially in the past few weeks since the murder of the Ambassador and his guards and colleague in Benghazi (a city that Erwin Rommel loved and whose inhabitants he praised), whenever the New York Times refers to Mohammed, they always call him, without quotation marks, The Prophet Mohammed, as if everyone with any sense understands that OF COURSE Mohammed is The One True Prophet and that it's just understood that Mohammed is The Prophet....

Have you ever seen any major newspaper here in the USA refer to Jesus Christ as "The Son of God, God Incarnate, The Lord Jesus Christ"?

... somehow, probably because the people writing the articles and editing them or the producers on TV news shows fear being beheaded -- and who doesn't? -- we have adopted in our media the Muslim assertion that Mohammed is The Prophet while giving other religious figures the back of our media hand....

First of all, the Times does not "always" refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet Muhammad." He isn't called that in headlines. He's called that only the first time he's mentioned in a news article. After that he's just "Muhammad" (unless "the Prophet Muhammad" shows up in a quote). See, for instance, this story ("French Magazine Runs Cartoons That Mock Muhammad") or this one ("19 Reported Dead as Pakistanis Protest Muhammad Video").

But there's a more obvious reason for the ID: a huge number of people on the planet are named Muhammad -- in various spellings -- and many of them show up in the Times. Mohamed Morsi. Muhammad Ali. Microfinancier Muhammad Yunus. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta. Jazz drummer Idris Muhammad. New York Jets defensive tackle Muhammad Wilkerson. Pakistani chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Times employs a photographer named Ozier Muhammad. Muhammads show up all over the place -- from Sudan's military intelligence agency to the British Olympic tae kwon do team to the high-ranked chess team at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.

Imagine if one of the most important religions on the planet had been founded by a person who had only one name -- Jones. Now do you get it, Ben?

So give it a rest. And stop bothering that nice Mr. Godwin:

Hitler saw it long ago. Terror and fear of violence can bring about amazing changes in people's behavior. So can a misguided political correctness and self-loathing for the greatest nation on earth.

Enough! Seriously.

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And I should point out that while the Times has not always referred to Muhammad in this way, the first Times reference to "the prophet Mahomet" appeared in 1855. I really don't think that was out of fear of Al Qaeda.