Although Ramadan is a holy month of fasting for Muslims, you may have also noticed that it always seems to be a time of increased attacks on infidels. Last year during Ramadan there were 421 dead and 729 wounded. This year, the statistics will be equally grim.

At first this seems like a contradiction. Ramadan occurs during the ninth lunar month in the Islamic calendar. It is time when Muslims fast from their first prayer of the day (at dawn) to their fourth prayer (after sunset). They also refrain from other activities and focus their minds on fervent prayer. Ramadan is a holy month, so why all the violence?

On my radio program, I have tried to explain why Ramadan has become so violent, but let me merely quote from Dr. Jim Denison’s article “Why so much violence during Ramadan?” He explains that Muslims believe they will receive greater rewards during this month on the Islamic calendar. Muhammad himself actually preached a sermon on Ramadan in which he said, “Whoever performs an obligatory deed in [this month] shall receive the reward of performing seventy obligations at any other time.”

One Taliban spokesman therefore proclaimed, “Our fight is Jihad and an obligatory worship. And every obligatory act of worship has 70 times more reward in Ramadan.” So it is not surprising that jihadists use this month to maximize their rewards.

Each attack is different. A gunman stormed a casino in Manila. Attackers killed more than two-dozen Coptic Christians traveling on a bus in Egypt. A bombing in Baghdad killed a dozen and injured nearly 100. A suicide vehicle in Kabul destroyed parts of the German embassy and killed many. And attackers in London drove over pedestrians and then stabbed others after leaving the vehicle.

Sadly, we still have a few days left before Ramadan ends.

A family in Michigan was banned from selling their organic apples, peaches, and cherries at the farmers market. They weren’t banned because their produce is inferior or unfit for human consumption. They were banned because they believe in traditional marriage.

They own a 120-acre farm and often bring some of their produce into the city to sell at the seasonal market. The farm also has a Facebook page. Their problem started when they expressed their traditional view of marriage on the page. They received a warning from an official but no one showed up to protest, so they continued to sell their apples, peaches, and cherries.

This year the town of East Lansing moved to ban the farm from participating in the farmers market this summer. The city cited its human relations ordinance that includes sexual orientation. In fact, they made it clear that their decision to exclude the family farm had nothing to do with their religious beliefs but with the family’s decision not to host same-sex weddings.

A few years ago, two lesbians wanted to get married on the farm, but the family turned them down. The family merely referred them to an orchard that held same-sex weddings. The two women were married a year ago at that venue, but one of the women wrote a Facebook post discouraging consumers from doing business with the family.

It is worth noting that the family farm is 22 miles outside the city. But the East Lansing city officials have prevented the family from selling their produce because they believe the public statements from the family violate the city’s human relations ordinance prohibiting discrimination.

This is but one more example of how a state or local ordinance or a public accommodation rule has been used against Christians who believe in the biblical view of marriage. The Alliance Defending Freedom is pursuing the case. Christians must be allowed to apply their biblical convictions to their business and property.

In a speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew McCarthy told the story of leading the prosecution in 1993 of the terrorist cell that bombed the World Trade Center. At the time, other government officials told him that he “should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims.” These officials explained that the terrorist actions weren’t representative of Islam, because it is religion that encourages peace.

The government also portrayed the leader of the terrorist cell (Omar Abdel Rahman) as a wanton killer and an unbalanced lunatic. Andrew McCarthy discovered he was anything but. He was a globally renowned scholar with a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from a major university in Egypt.

That presented a problem. Andrew McCarthy needed to know enough about Islamic interpretation to press the case. He hoped to find inconsistencies between what the Qur’an teaches and what the leader of the terrorist cell taught. What he found was alarming. Every time Omar Abdel Rahman quoted the Qur’an or other Islamic sources, he quoted them accurately.

“When he said the scriptures command Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up. When he said Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage war until Islamic law was established throughout the world, the scriptures backed him up.”

Andrew McCarthy discovered the flaw in the oft-repeated argument that Muslim terrorists are perverting the religion of Islam. They are accurately quotes verses from the Qur’an. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims will be terrorists. Many do not know of these passages or have been able to contextualize them. But it does illustrate why we cannot continually argue that radical Muslims who are calling for jihad are teaching something that is contrary to Islam.

College costs so much more than it did a few decades ago. When baby boomers went to college, they often paid for college with money they earned from summer jobs. Today, the millennial generation graduates with crushing amounts of student loan debt.

So why is college so expensive now? The typical answer you get is that public funding for higher education was slashed and so the universities had to raise tuition year after year. It makes for a good story, but Professor Paul Campos says it is a fairy tale of the worst kind.

In a recent commentary, he points out that public investment in higher education in America is much larger today (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than it was during the golden age of the 1960s. Spending on higher education has increased at a faster rate than government spending in general.

The rise in tuition isn’t due to funding cuts but actually due to huge increases in public subsidies for higher education. He explains that if “car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.”

As you might expect, a number of educators have criticized his commentary for being too simplistic. To his credit Professor Campos does concede that some of the increased spending is no doubt due to the sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. For that reason, state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen faster than inflation.

He also answers the argument that even though public spending has increased, it should be called a “cut” because of that way funds are allocated. Finally, Professor Campos explains where much of the money goes. Administrative positions on universities have grown 10 times faster than the growth of tenured faculty positions.

Why are college costs so high? It isn’t because public funding was cut. The reality is that it was just the opposite.

You have probably been hearing about the phenomenon of grade inflation for many years. It’s much worse than you might imagine. A recent report tells is all: “Everyone gets an A? College grade inflation spiking.”

To make the point, I posted the graph of college grade distributions nationwide on my Facebook page and on Pinterest. The comments from people who saw the graph are very interesting. From the 1960s, you notice that the percentage of A grades increase while the percentages of B and C grades decrease.

The first rise in an A grade takes place in the 1960s and 1970s. Grade inflation began then during the “Vietnam era.” Professors gave out higher than deserved grades back then to young men so they would be able to keep their student deferment and not be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.

By the end of the 1970s, the A grade inflation dropped for a short period of time. Since then it has steadily increased to the current level today. More than 45 percent of all grades given to college students are an A grade. By comparison, only 15 percent received an A grade back in the 1960s.

The assumption is that with college education becoming more expensive, schools may now feel the need to reward the investment with an A grade. It may not be deserved, but it is expected. This is what many have started to call the “student as consumer era.” Many of these professors go along with the fiction that students are working hard by participating in class and writing impressive papers.

There are many problems with the mindset of “everyone gets a trophy.” Students are rewarded for substandard work with an A grade. And professors no longer are making any distinctions between outstanding students and mediocre students. In the end, college grades are having less and less significance.

You may have noticed that often during a conversation about Islam, someone points out that radical Muslims are but a small percentage of the whole Muslim population. That is true, but there is another percentage that rarely gets mentioned: the percentage of Muslims who want to make Sharia law the official law of a country.

A number of years ago, Pew Research interviewed nearly 40,000 Muslims in 39 countries concerning sharia law. Let’s start with the two countries where American troops have been for more than a decade. They found that 99 percent of Muslims in Afghanistan favor making sharia the official law of their country. The same poll found that 91 percent of Muslims in Iraq also believed sharia should be the official law of their country. It will be hard to bring democratic values to countries where nearly all the citizens believe that sharia law, not a constitution, should be the law of the land.

If you look at the list of other countries you see high percentages: 84 percent in Pakistan, 74 percent in Egypt, and 72 percent in Indonesia. In nearly every country surveyed, you had a substantial majority that believed that sharia law should be the official law of their country.

If you come to the United States, the percentages are different because (1) there are fewer Muslims in America, and (2) many Muslims have been willing to accept American democratic values. But that does not mean that sharia has not been implemented even here on a limited basis.

The Center for Security Policy published a paper awhile back that identified 146 cases of sharia law coming into conflict with American law. Granted these are not major cases but they still illustrate the willingness of Americans (both Muslim and non-Muslim) to accept some aspects of sharia law.

Radical Muslims may only be a small percentage of Muslims, however the percentage of Muslims who accept sharia law is much larger percentage.

Dementia is typically a disease that affects the elderly. But doctors are starting to talk about a new type of cognitive condition affecting younger individuals. They call it “digital dementia.” It results, they say, from the overuse of digital technology, such as smart phones and computers. Brain function deteriorates because of digital overuse.

The left side of the brain is generally associated with rational thought (numbers, and facts). The right side is responsible for creative skills and emotional thought. If the right side is underdeveloped over a long period, dementia develops.

The phenomenon of “digital dementia” was first noticed in South Korea. That should not be surprising, since that country has such a large population of Internet users. It also is one of the most digital nations in the world and a place where Internet addiction was identified as far back as the late 1990s.

They found that heavy users of digital technology are more likely to develop the left side of their brains. This leaves the right side untapped and underdeveloped. This affects attention and memory span, which could lead to early onset of dementia in a percentage of the cases. They also found that children were more at risk than adults were because the brains of children were still developing.

The Korean findings come after a study that was done at UCLA found that young people were increasingly suffering from memory problems. A percentage of young men and women complained that their memory was poor.

These initial studies are one more reason why parents need to monitor the digital world of their children. Digital dementia is just one of many reasons we need to protect children from the digital media storm.

Brian Thomas points out that the eastern two-thirds of the country have little federally owned land. By contrast, the federal government owns most of the land in the western states. Henry Lamb asks why the federal government owns 65 percent of the land west of Denver and only 2 percent of the land east of Denver.

These questions are beginning to be asked by various commentators especially as citizens in western areas of America would like to develop property in their states. Originally the government only needed land to fulfill its basic duties. Land was needed for federal buildings, roads, and parks. The rest of the land was available for private ownership.

When the western regions of America became states, government philosophy was changing. Progressive reformers wanted to expand the size and scope of government. And they were also convinced that the government could do a better job of managing the land than individual private landowners.

Brain Thomas writes about the contempt progressive had for what they called “individualism” and their desire for an expansive government based upon the “living and evolving” Constitution. Add to that an ecological mentality that argues that developing land is bad for the environment, and you have the situation we find today.

Henry Lamb reminds us that the Constitution originally delegated certain powers to the federal government. This would include acquiring land for specific governmental needs (e.g., building post offices). The Tenth Amendment declared that powers not granted to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.

Unfortunately, the states are no longer on an equal footing with the federal government. That is one reason why the federal government owns 98 percent of the land in Alaska and 86 percent of Nevada land. It also illustrates why the federal government is still working to confiscate the private property of ranchers and other private citizens.