Quite a few of the blogs I read regularly have questioned why there is no grand hue and cry from the muslim community against the actions of al-Quaeda, Hammas, and other hardline fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups. I mself was curious about it and asked one of my muslim coworkers. She said that the average muslim is as horrified as everybody else at what these people do in the name of their religion but the majority of Islamic organizations are not run by average muslims. She compared it to the Catholic priest/pedophile thing. Catholic churches and organizations tied to the Catholic church were not the voices heard screaming about these abuses. That is simply because they take their lead from Rome. In a similar fashion the Islamic mosques and organizations here are tied very closely with sources in the Middle East. Many are directly dependent upon funding from those sources or were started by those sources or simply take their cues from those sources.

I countered that you heard plenty of Catholics quoted with their opinions on pedophile priests. She counter-countered that the same happens when moderate muslims are quoted. The problem is that they generally aren't approached and the ones that try to get heard just aren't. Single voices aren't heard and the organizations that could be heard aren't talking.

The answer seems pretty clear-cut to me. Get those single voices grouped up so they can tell the groups that are supposed to be speaking for them what they want them to say. To that end I've started up a petition to help. Muslims Against Terrorism is pretty simple. It defines terrorism, rejects it, rejects people who support it and rejects fundamentalist proponents of it. It asks that Islamic groups do likewise.

Please do me a favor (maybe do all of us a favor) and spread the word. Either link to this post or link to the petition itself at http://www.petitiononline.com/islxterr/petition.html and let people know it's out there.