Point not proven

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=052207B Found this on Instapundit.

'"Muslim silence" in the face of terrorism has become a predictable cliché in Western discourse. It is now widely believed by non-Muslims throughout the West that no representative of the faith of Muhammad will denounce violence against Jews, Christians, Hindus and others, even though non-fundamentalist Muslims are by far the most numerous victims of terrorism. The very existence of a moderate, pluralist Islam is so widely doubted in the West that it often appears there is no alternative to a war of extremes between those of ill-will on both sides of the cultural and religious divide.'

Anything which encompasses 1.2 billion people is going to have to be dealt with in generalities. Discussing the response of Moslems to violence perpetrated by other Moslems is always going to do a disservice to some moderate followers of that religion. Saying that, from the very beginning of Moslem violence in Britain, the response of the bombers co-religionists was characterised by denial, rationalisation, lying and a strong whiff of 'its your own fault'. I speak from personal experience, discussing these events with work colleagues who are Moslems, as well as TV and print reports.

Because of the imprint that Arab culture has made on Islam, characteristics of that culture are also characteristics of Moslems the world over to varying degrees. The visceral hatred of people who don't agree with you, the feeling that if you don't dominate others you are living in humiliation, the refusal to think about or admit to things that put you in a bad light, the feeling that you are the sole possessor of ultimate truth- all of these things feed into the insubstantial and half-hearted response of Moslems to violence emanating from their ranks. All are part of Arab culture. To the extent that they have carried across to populations in Britain, America, Indonesia, the Phillipines and many other countries, they present a permanent and unfortunate obstacle to societal harmony. Because of these latent and actual baggages, Islam is everybodies neighbor from hell.

Is it possible to exorcise those features of Arab culture from Islam? Highly unlikely, I'd say. 1400 years after Islam was founded, it still has most of its original characteristics. And if you were to detect a major trend in Islam, it would not be any kind of 'reform', but the replacement of diverse Islams around the globe with the toxic, abrasive and militant Wahhabism. So rather than seeing light on the horizon, the prospect for the immediate future darkens. The author of the above piece uses as proof of moderate Moslems peaceful intent a declaration of the Albanian Mosques of America- its going to take a little bit more than that to persuade the 6 billion of us who aren't Moslems that Islam is taking care of business and rooting out the Wahhabist jihad-mongers.