If the Democrat Party does not remove the growing shame of the rise of Islamists within it, it will become a victim of it. And so will we all.

There is a term associated with radical Islam that’s so disturbing and contradictory in every way that most decent people recoil from even hearing it: “honor killing.” The term is as paradoxical as the practice is evil.

It describes the murder of a woman by her own relatives who believe that she has brought shame upon her family by violating cultural or Islamic religious “values.” It is a barbaric practice, utterly incompatible with human dignity, individual liberty, and the rule of law. At least 5,000 and as many as 20,000 or more women worldwide are killed by their own relatives annually. This includes dozens in the United States, where there are at least legal consequences.

Let me be absolutely clear: I oppose “honor killings” without reservation. I do not support, suggest, encourage, or endorse political or religious violence, murder, threats, or physical harm against anyone. Nothing in this article should be interpreted as a call for violence against anyone. It is a metaphor, albeit a frightful one. I abhor and reject such violence, or the implication that in any way I advocate for that.

But the Democrat Party is facing a crisis that demands a different kind of reckoning from within, an ideological one related to something that should be shameful within its own ranks, and which can only be corrected from within.

As an increasing number of candidates associated with Islamist political movements and ideologies are winning Democrat primaries and general elections, party leaders must ask themselves a question they have avoided for far too long: How much extremism can a political party absorb before it no longer recognizes itself?

The Democrat Party does not need literal “honor killings.” It needs a forceful, peaceful, and democratic purging of ideas that have infiltrated, distorted, and tarnished a party that once proudly defined itself through civil rights, pluralism, religious freedom, and protection of........

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