Quote Originally Posted by Starter View Post
I have no idea how many Muslims are members of or read this board. But I'll just throw this out for consideration. So long as the large majority of Muslims fail to take an active, vocal and public stand against the terrorist activities of the very few, the long term consequences could be grave for Islam. The large and continuing number of bombings and public assaults on civilians, where ever they may occur, will begin to be seen as a war against all other religions with tacit permission from the silent majority of Muslims. Sooner or later a tipping point in world opinion will be reached where the rest of the world will have had enough and Islam and it's adherents will begin to be seen as an outlaw religion. When that happens it would not be a good idea to practice Islam in public in most countries. If you want to have a place in the world you have to work at cleaning up your own house.
Luckily most people do not have such a simplistic outlook on life.

While the terrorists may proclaim to act for the whole religion its clear that the vast majority do not agree with their views. If they did, we'd be at war with 1.6 billion people. We clearly are not.

However your point about Muslims having to take responsibility for the actions of a minority of terrorists within their ranks is actually ironically precisely the same thinking process the terrorists have. You do realise that you are viewed as fair game by these extremists because as an American civilian you are responsible for voting for and funding governments that kill civilians (whether accidental or deliberate is not of interest to them) across the Muslim world? Your failure to oppose these actions means that according to their logic you are as legitimate a target as an American soldier. This is the exact logic they use to justify mass killings of civilians everywhere.

Of course your link to the actions of your government is stronger than the average Muslim living somewhere in the Middle East or Asia who has no control over groups like ISIS, you have a vote and pay taxes to the government they oppose.