Peaceful Muslims Need to Make Some Changes

The following letter lays bare a crucial issue facing the civilized West in its battle to defeat Islamofascist terrorism, which, as of today’s date, had carried out 3078 murderous terrorist acts around the world since 9/11. That issue is: are Muslims in general supportive of these acts, given the cheering we witnessed on September 11, 2001 and given the many calls to violence against infidels in their Koran – or are Muslims in general a peaceful people who abhor these barbarisms?

"Jihad Watch", October 13, 2005
“The United States Wednesday made public a letter from a senior al-Qaida figure to the group's chief operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that, among other things, questions his tactic of attacking Iraqi Shiite mosques. The State Department said the letter reveals al-Qaida as a confederacy of evil, and a perverter of Islam....
It says ordinary Muslims find tape footage of the al-Zarkawi group's slaughter of hostages in Iraq unpalatable, and also says they cannot accept its bomb attacks on Iraqi Shiite mosques, remarking that public aversion to the tactic will continue.
The letter further says that more than half the battle is taking place in the media, and that it is a race for the hearts and minds of the Islamic world.

At a news briefing, State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said the letter shows the media-savvy of al-Qaida, but also clearly reveals the evil nature of the enemy being faced in Iraq:
"This isn't a question of hearts and minds, it's a question of bodies and gore, quite frankly. Meaning that this is a network and this is a confederacy of evil that will stop at nothing to advance its radical agenda. And that agenda was made very clear: it's a caliphate that will start in Iraq and move to take over Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and practice the kind of abuse and intolerance and perfidy that we saw under the Taleban in Afghanistan, which was in cahoots with these guys," Mr. Ereli says.

Mr. Ereli said the best evidence of what al-Qaida and its allies are all about is their own writing.
He said the United States released the letter so that those claiming to be speaking in the name of Islam can be seen by Muslims for what they are, in his words, perverters of that religion.” "Jihad Watch"

My opinion is that overwhelmingly the general Muslim population around the world and here in the U.S.A. deplores the violence and yearns for peace, modernity and freedom. The things we see that disturb us can be likened to the general population cheering for the gangsters during the 1920’s; they didn’t really support crime and violence, they just take their heroes where they can find them. Every survey I have seen bears this out, and our situation in fighting this war would be 100 times worse if the general Muslim population supported terrorists.

There is no question, however, that the Koran contains hundreds of references to the killing of infidels, and that the actions of CAIR, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, are reprehensible and unfathomable, given the circumstances. This organization has defended terrorists and tried in every way to subvert activities aimed at stopping terrorist acts. For these and other reasons, the FBI's former chief of counterterrorism, Steven Pomerantz, concludes that "CAIR, its leaders and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." The millions of peaceful Muslims here and abroad clearly have to do much more to change this situation.