Leftist university professor Michael Boyle of La Salle University took to the pages of the New York Times to condemn all of us who refer to ISIS as “evil” or a “cancer.”

And unsurprisingly, the New York Times happily printed the drivel, under the headline: “The Problem With ‘Evil.’”

The professor claims that such terminology is a “disturbing return of the moralistic language once used to describe Al Qaeda,” and using such language is a “moral hazard.”

Instead he refers to ISIS as “a successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table.”

With complete moral clarity, I can say he’s wrong.

To reject value judgments – that a jihadist army that beheads journalists and is waging genocide against Christians is evil – is to ignore reality.

He states that we are turning this into a religious war by use of such terminology, that it somehow advances their cause by helping portray jihadists “as engaged in a war against the Christian West.”

But they are.  No one accused ISIS of genocide before they started indiscriminately slaughtering Christians after first demanding they “convert or die.”

To bury our heads in the sand and ignore the aim of our enemy is to ignore reality.  How can you defeat an enemy if you refuse to recognize its aims, if you ignore and snobbishly deny its atrocities?

ISIS doesn’t want a “seat at th[e] table.”  It wants to dominate the table.  ISIS, by its own words and actions, is establishing a radical Islamic Caliphate.

It wants Christians and Jews eradicated.  It beheads children.  It sells women as sex slaves.

If that’s not “evil,” then there is no evil.

And therein lies the root of the professor’s willful misperception of the world.

No matter how much liberal academia wants to ignore reality, the Truth is evil exists.

It not only exists, but it is advancing.

If we ignore it, it will not go away.  If we ignore it, we do so at our own peril.

So Professor Boyle, let me be clear: “moral clarity” is not just “comforting,” as you call it, it is the only way to address the reality with which we are faced.

ISIS is evil.  Its tactics are evil.  Its goal is evil.  It is a cancer that must be destroyed.

If you agree that ISIS is evil, that it must be stopped, and that Christians should be defended from genocide, join nearly 250,000 in signing our petition at BeHeardProject.com.

Matthew Clark is Associate Counsel for Government Affairs and Media Advocacy with the ACLJ. A lifelong citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he lives with his wife and three boys in Northern Virginia. Follow Matthew Clark: @_MatthewClark.