EDITORIAL - In the wake of Virginia Tech, and with all the bomb threats, warnings and scare stories associated with today’s Columbine anniversary, Americans are apparently supposed to feel guilty and abashed about our “sick society.”

In this context, some perspective might prove useful – including a brief glance at two news stories from today that define social dysfunction far more powerfully than any recent developments in the United States.

In the Philippines, Associated Press reported that the Islamic militants of the utterly charming Abu Sayaf Group delivered the severed heads of seven recent kidnap victims to an army base. “The men – six road project workers and a dried fish factory worker – were kidnapped at gunpoint in two separate incidents Monday near the town of Parang on Jolo Island…. Maj. Gen. Ruben Rafael, commander of military forces on Jolo, said a group of civilians was ordered to take the heads to Parang by Abu Sayaf commander Albader Parad.”

This latest development didn’t arise out of the vile psychosis of a seething individual, but reflected a long-term insurgency and radical Islamist agenda of a lavishly brutal group that’s been fighting the government (and ordinary human decency) for decades.

Meanwhile, in another update involving “The Religion of Peace,” Iran’s Supreme Court considered the case of one Alik Maleki who, with the help of accomplices, “drowned Reza Nejadmalayeri and his fiancée, Shohreh Nikpour, in 2002 in the belief they had broken rules against contact between unmarried men and women…A local court issued death sentences against six Islamic vigilantes, including Maleki, in 2003 for filling three men and two women they believed promoted ‘moral corruption.’ The vigilantes, who support Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stoned one victim to death and tied up four others before throwing them into a swimming pool, where they drowned.”

In a predictable act of mercy, the Supreme Court over-turned the death sentences of these deeply religious enthusiasts.

Whatever one may say about the twisted souls of Cho Seung Hui and those who initiate bomb threats across the country, they aren’t supported by governmental or religious authorities of any kind, nor do they comprise some well-organized, identifiable geurilla movement.

Before we worry too much about the sickness in our own society we ought to consider the appalling cruelty and barbarism that’s become endemic (and often religiously sanctioned) in much of the Islamic world.