While European and Middle Eastern Muslims riot and set fires over controversial editorial cartoons criticizing radical Islam's violent tendencies, members of the al Qaeda-linked Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf are reported to have perpetrated the religiously-motivated killings of five Christians and a nine-month-old baby Friday on Jolo Island, Mindanao Province, The Philippines. AsiaNews.it reports:

Muslim extremists raided the farm over night in Patikul township, killing six Christians, including a nine-month infant girl, said Brigadier General Alexander Aleo, the island's military chief, who also confirmed that five other people were seriously wounded, among them a three-year old boy. The gunmen appeared to be from the Abu Sayyaf (Bearers of the Sword) Group, a Muslim extremist organisation believed to be al-Qaeda-linked. According to one eyewitness who survived, the attack was clearly motivated by religion. “Survivors of the carnage told military investigators that the attackers asked them for their religion. The gunmen left and then came back soon after and just opened fire on the Christians,” Brig. General Aleo said.

Reuters carries the story, as well, adding that local Islamists had just protested against U.S. imperialism, prior to the attacks - and inferring, in classic Reuters agitprop style - that if the U.S. would only bugger off, poor persecuted Abu Sayyaf would stop killing Christians.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Department of Justice says an Abu Sayyaf member who has turned states' witness says the radical Islamist group is planning bomb attacks on or before Valentine's Day to avenge the conviction of members for three simultaneous explosions last year on Valentine's Day which killed 11 people in Manila and Mindanao Province.

Local government corruption and a deadly campaign against journalists in the Philippines greases the skids for terrorist groups such as Abu Sayyaf, which wants to turn Mindanao Province into an Islamic theocratic state.

Yes, surely, cartoons about violent Islamists are THE clear and present menace. As opposed to the Islamists themselves, who are reluctantly forced to kill, even behead Christians in order to throw off the brutal yoke of Western cultural imperialism.

TECHNORATI TAGS: KILLINGS, MUSLIMS, ABU SAYYAF, CHRISTIANS, PHILIPPINES, JOLO, MINDANAO, CARTOONS