This is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali and few others Muslims are begging the community as a whole to understand. That unless they, themselves, fight back and root out the radicals, and stop tolerating them, Islam is finished, because the violent radicals will spread, kill peaceful ones who dare dissent, and then themselves be destroyed by the backlash from those whom they attack. And then nothing will be left of the religion at all.
Except that Ayaan Hirsi Ali isn't Muslim-she's an ex Muslim from somalia who writes for the American Enterprise Institute, not for scholarly purposes or a even literary ones.
There most certainly are Muslims out there struggling for human rights and justice, but you don't notice those (I note that Mina, the martyred founder of RAWA, remains nameless in the United States) because they're actually religious Muslims. Only people who totally reject Islam and call for the countries where most Muslims live to be destroyed (like Hirsi Ali, that is exactly what she says) get any airtime, and we're supposed to buy that this is an effort to "reform Islam"? Please.
To illustrate my point, what are Muslims supposed to think when everyone is holding up Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a reformer, and she says things like this:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122457.htmlReason: Dont you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once its defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. Its very difficult to even talk about peace now. Theyre not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the worlds 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, defeat Islam?
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And theres no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and theyre the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, This is a warning. We wont accept this anymore. There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
Reason: Militarily?
Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you dont do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.