[Overpaid Slacker]

A piece in London’s Sunday Telegraph traces the bizarre contours of Islamic extremism. Amid Baghdad’s 122-degree temperatures, Sunni fundamentalists have declared a war on ice.

Because the Prophet Mohammed had no ice cubes, neither should today’s Iraqis, Sunni totalitarians declared as they threatened ice merchants with death. Al-Dora ice dealer Akram al-Zidawi, 19, shrugged off these warnings.

“Two weeks ago he came back home saying he had been threatened by terrorists,” al-Zidawi’s brother, Gassan, told the Telegraph. “My mother begged him to quit the job, but he laughed. He thought it was impossible they would kill him. But they came back two days later and shot him dead, along with three other ice sellers nearby.”

Falafel dealers also have enraged Islamists.

“They came telling us, ‘You have 14 days to end this job.’ I asked them what was the problem,’’ Abu Zeinab, 32, said on June 3 as he permanently shuttered his al-Dora stand.

“I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Mohammed the Prophet’s time, so we shouldn’t have them either. I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed’s time either, but I wanted to keep my life.’’