[duexjepevef]

It's true that the overwhelming majority of American Muslims aren't extremists; after all, that's related to why they're here at all. It's also true that to varying degrees majorities of most Islamic countries are not violent extremists.

It's also true that most who profess Christianity don't really practice it in their daily lives as its founder intended. In real terms, to do so would force them to refuse military service and renounce most aggressive behavior and turn the other cheek. This is extremely difficult for most people to do, for it entails severe penalties from others and from the government; so most people don't. This makes them not really practitioners of Christianity as envisioned by Jesus Christ.

Similarly, most Muslims try to avoid violence because they don't want to be killed and they don't hate enough to want to kill others. But a strict --or even a casual-- reading of the Koran reveals that such people are not devout practitioners of Islam. Islam is militant, indeed military; its founder was a warrior who personally conquered as much territory as Alexander the Great.

If you take the Koran literally, the extremists are devout and mainstream; those who don't join them are lukewarm and insufficiently devout. That's not me speaking; you'll find it on nearly every page. Can we be surprised at the products of such a religion?

I pray that Muslims would lose their devotion and become slack practitioners, but the momentum seems to be in the other direction.

Islam is squarely mired in the Dark Ages, and freedom from its tenets is the surest path to social and economic progress in a part of the world that sorely needs it. Muslims are held down by their religion. Only by not practicing it --like you, milleniumcab-- is emancipation possible and emergence into the light of some degree of freedom: spiritual, economic, social and political.

As Salman Rushdie has pointed out, Islam is the enemy of the unfortunate inhabitants of the lands it dominates.