[7thson]

If a Muslim community is made up mostly of moderates, who come lunatic leaders continue to spew at their mosques?

[pollyannaish]

It is NOT mostly made up of moderates...that is the problem at this juncture. The extremists have gotten the upper hand.

However, just because moderating forces are not the majority, or the face of Islam currently, it doesn't mean they aren't there...or that there are only three of them in the entire world.

There are millions of them in a Muslim population of billions. And those millions are the ones we need to support. Reformation can not be imposed from the outside in. It must be accomplished through internal struggle. Meanwhile, our job is to do whatever we can politically to help these internal reformers do their jobs and avoid being killed in the process. This is a monumental struggle we have been all too happy to ignore for the past 35ish years...until it began to affect us. Now it can no longer be ignored and to simply write of billions of people in the world because of their religion only ensures that the struggle will be longer. We must find allies within the Muslim community.

I wish I could communicate this more clearly, because this is the ESSENTIAL element to winning the overall war on terror.