Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / Why Islam is disrespected

I have to say, uh, "Ditto." Just Stop It, Muslim World! In Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / Why Islam is disrespected, Jeff Jacoby wrote: "Then there was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced at a Senate hearing that she had a message for 'Muslims in America and throughout the world.' And what was that message? That decent people do not resort to murder just because someone has offended their religious sensibilities? That the primitive bloodlust raging in Afghanistan and Pakistan was evidence of the Muslim world's dysfunctional political culture?
No: Her message was that 'disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States.'
Granted, Rice spoke while the rioting was still taking place and her goal was to reduce the anti-American fever. But what 'Muslims in America and throughout the world' most need to hear is not pandering sweet-talk. What they need is a blunt reminder that the real desecration of Islam is not what some interrogator in Guantanamo might have done to the Koran. It is what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and schoolbuses in Israel and an 'insurgency' in Iraq that slaughters Muslims as they pray and vote and line up for work. It is Hamas and Al Qaeda and sermons filled with infidel-hatred and exhortations to 'martyrdom.'
But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to 'converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism' -- and having only 50 people show up.
Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day." [emphasis mine]
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.