VIDEO: Shep Smith Not OK with Calling Paris Attackers Muslims

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith went on an editorial rant against those rushing to judgment and suggesting that the terrorists who massacred twelve people at Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday might be — gasp — Muslims.

“To call the kind of religious extremists who do this sort of thing Muslims seems waaaay out there, anymore than the guy who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma might be considered a Christian,” Smith said on Wednesday.

The two-decade-old Tim McVeigh reference aside (McVeigh was a lapsed Catholic who said “Science is my god”), there is just no way any sentient being could conclude that the terrorists are not Muslims who are motivated by their religious beliefs as they understand them from the Koran.

According to witnesses, the attackers who stormed the Paris offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday shouted, “We have avenged the prophet!”

Were they avenging the Old Testament prophet Zechariah, who was stoned because  he had denounced the people of Israel for their unfaithfulness? Or were they seeking revenge for Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist?

Clearly not, since the terrorists also shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” in tribute to the Muslim god of the Koran.

It’s not Catholic, it’s not Jewish, it’s not Mormon, it’s not 7th Day Adventist, it’s not Buddhist. No one in the intelligence community is running around Paris today looking in Baptist churches for these terrorists or checking their connections to the local Jehovah’s Witness community.

The terrorists are Muslim, by their own definition. Who is Shep Smith to define what Islam is for these jihadi terrorists, who self-identify as Muslims?  Or who is President Obama, who has said the Islamic state is not Islamic, to tell anyone one else what the parameters of their religion must be?

This doesn’t mean that all, most, or even a high percentage of Muslims are terrorists. The vast majority are peaceful and nonviolent. But the fact remains that the vast majority of terrorists in this modern era are self-proclaimed Muslims. Pretending otherwise — and defining Islam through a narrow American lens — denies both history and reality.

Brother Rachid, a Christian convert from Islam, tried to explain the connection to President Obama recently. “You think ISIL does not speak for Islam because they beheaded an American and they kill those whom they consider infidels,” Brother Rachid said in a video to the president. “In the same way, Islam’s prophet Muhammad beheaded — in one day — between 600 and 900 adult males in a Jewish tribe called  Bani Quraiza. In fact, beheading is commanded in the Koran, in Sura 47, 4th verse it says, ‘When you meet the unbelievers and fight, smite their necks.’” Killing prisoners is also an order from Allah to Muhammad and all Muslims, Brother Rachid said.

“Mr. President,” Brother Rachid continued, “I grew up in Morocco, supposedly a moderate country. Yet I still learned at a young age to hate the enemies of Allah, especially Jews and Christians. These are represented today by Israel and the West, especially the Great Satan, America.” He said, “We have been brainwashed to hate all of you in our sacred texts, in our prayers, in our Friday sermons, in our educational systems. We were ready to join any group that one day would fight you and destroy you and make Islam the religion of the whole world, as the Koran says.”