Lee Smith at Slate notices something we’ve been railing about at LGF for years—that the mainstream press relentlessly, ignorantly whitewashes Islam, even when the truth is right in front of their eyes: The Quran mentions beheading. Why does the U.S. press claim otherwise? (Hat tip: ted.)

Some commentators claim that centuries ago beheading was simply the easiest way to kill people. That’s not quite accurate. Even the old Arabs knew it was a spectacularly vicious way to send people to their deaths, so savage that sometimes the executioner would pay the consequences for his murderous zeal. In fact, there’s a famous story in pre-Islamic literature about a decapitated head having its revenge. Shanfara was a great warrior who boasted that he would slay 100 of his enemies. After he had killed 99, he was struck down in battle, decapitated, and his head tossed away. When one of Shanfara’s enemies passed by and kicked his skull, the man injured himself and eventually died from the wound. So, even in death, Shanfara had his hundred.

Now, instead of many warring Arab tribes, there are just the infidels and the Muslim faithful, and it seems that there aren’t many of the latter willing to break ranks by admitting that beheading is in the Quran. As I noted earlier, there are a number of arguments that might contextualize decapitation and distinguish it from the mainstream beliefs of contemporary Islam, but it is simply wrong to say that the Quran does not mention beheadings or that there is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies decapitation. Islamic history is giddy with heads separated from their bodies, a tradition detailed in news outlets that are generally considered right-wing and on conservative Web sites, but apparently whitewashed in the mainstream press.

Why? It can’t be that decapitation is too unbearably horrifying, since the image—from the head of John the Baptist to the grisly end of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in the movie Seven—is familiar enough in Western culture. No, the press’ sensitivity seems to be triggered by the combination of Islam and beheading. Why? Do newspaper editors and TV producers worry that their audiences could turn into genocidal mobs ready to murder their American Muslim neighbors if they knew that Allah encourages beheading in the Quran?

If the press recognizes that most Muslims don’t want to behead infidels, then infidels should be given the benefit of the doubt as well. Of course we won’t kill our Muslim friends and neighbors, but we really wish the Muslims who are lending their expertise to our infidel press would tell the truth. Otherwise, this conversation between cultures isn’t going to work. We are surely destined for a very violent clash of civilizations if one dialogue partner will lie about something that is written down for anyone—even American journalists if they make the effort—to read.

The secondary theme of his article is, of course, that Islamic “authorities,” from university professors to imams of mosques, people who have read the Quran and know what it contains, are disturbingly quick to lie about these things to the incompetent media.

Following the recent beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. press turned to various experts to identify a precedent in the Quran or Islamic history for this kind of gory murder. “Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all,” Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today. Yvonne Haddad, a professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University agreed, telling New York Newsday, “There is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies cutting off a person’s head.”