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In any religious faith, there are always people who chose to interpret its teachings in their own style, rather than in accordance with its doctrines. There is nothing peaceful about Islam.

On the other hand a lot of these so-called "peaceful" Muslims are sleepers placed here by terrorist fundamentalist groups as we learend so well on 9-11.

The Evil Isn't Islam
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
July 30, 2002

(snip)
"Here is the rub: It is a mistake to blame Islam (a religion 14 centuries old) for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam (a totalitarian ideology less than a century old). The terrorism of al Qaeda, Hamas, the Iranian government and other Islamists results from the ideas of such contemporary radicals as Osama bin Laden and Ayatollah Khomeini, not from the Koran.

To which you might respond: But bin Laden and Khomeini get their ideas from the Koran. And they are only continuing a pattern of Muslim aggression that is centuries old.

Not exactly. Let's look closer at both points:

* Aggressive Islam: The Koran and other authoritative Islamic scriptures do contain incitements against non-Muslims. The eminent historian Paul Johnson, for example, cites two Koranic verses: "Strongest among men in enmity to the Believers will you find the Jews and Pagans" (Sura 5, verse 85) and "Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. And seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them." (9:5).

* Aggressive Muslims: Fourteen centuries of Islam have witnessed a long history of Muslims engaged in jihad (holy war) to expand the area under Islamic rule, from the early conquests of the caliphs to what Samuel Huntington terms Islam's "bloody borders" today.

Yes, these points are accurate. But they are one side of the story.

* Mild Islam: Like other sacred writings, the Koran can be mined for quotes to support opposing arguments. In this case, Karen Armstrong, a bestselling apologist for Islam, quotes two gentler passages from the Koran: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2:256) and "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another." (49:13).

* Mild Muslims: There have been occasions of Muslim moderation and tolerance, such as those in long-ago Sicily and Spain. And in one telling example, Mark R. Cohen notes that "The Jews of Islam, especially during the formative and classical centuries (up to the 13th century), experienced much less persecution than did the Jews of Christendom."

In other words, Islam's scriptures and history show variation.

At present, admittedly, it is hard to recall the positive side, at a moment when backwardness, resentment, extremism and violence prevail in so much of the Muslim world. But the present is not typical of Islam's long history; indeed, it may be the worst era in that entire history.

Things can get better. But it will not be easy. That requires that Muslims tackle the huge challenge of adapting their faith to the realities of modern life.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/437

Further, the majority of Mosques and Madrasses in the United States are staffed by Wahhbai Muslims,

On this point you are correct.(note who they are angery at)
(snip)
The controversy centers around Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, a Lebanon-born religious leader who has been in the U.S. for the past nine years championing his international Naqshbandi order of Sufism. The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy profile on Kabbani on April 15 stating he has converted hundreds of inner city African Americans to his fold. Other reported supporters include his uncle, the grand mufti of Lebanon, the president of Chechnya, the Sultan of Brunei (one of the wealthiest men in the world), and O.J. Simpson.

To all appearances, the 54-year-old Sheikh Kabbani sees himself as the catalyst for making his brand of Islam the dominant Muslim force in the U.S. However, most American Muslim organizations see dangerous divisiveness in his message. Kabbani gained the enmity of nearly every Muslim group in the U.S. on Jan. 7 when he delivered a speech to a State Department open forum.

In essence, the white-bearded Sufi charged that the “ideology of extremism has been spread to 80 percent of the [American] Muslim population.” He claimed the foremost Muslim student organization was directed by extremists and hinted that alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden was buying nuclear devices from the Russian mafia which could then fall into the hands of radical Muslim students in the U.S.

http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0799/9907021.html

"Here is the rub: It is a mistake to blame Islam (a religion 14 centuries old) for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam (a totalitarian ideology less than a century old). The terrorism of al Qaeda, Hamas, the Iranian government and other Islamists results from the ideas of such contemporary radicals as Osama bin Laden and Ayatollah Khomeini, not from the Koran."

This is disingenuous. Islam became the chief religion throughout a good part of the world through the use of conquest, oppression, and terror. True, Muslims "tolerated" Christians and Jews. This "toleration" meant relegation to a subclass status where the practitioners of those faiths were banned from carrying weapons, required to pay a special tax, prevented from making improvements to their houses of worship or building new ones, forbidden from having public demonstrations of faith, holding office, bring suit against a Muslim, and in other ways so suppressed that over the course of time the majority converted to Islam to escape a role in society that was degrading and oppressive and scarcely better than slavery.

The suicide bombers of the 20th century are not unique. During the existence of the Christian Crusader States in Palestine, there existed an Islamic sect called the Assassins, lead by a shadowy figure called the Old Man of the Mountain. There technique was to employ suicide killers who used poison and poisoned weapons to kill political opponents. (They were usually souped up for the job with the liberal use of Hashish, hence the name Hashashin or Assassin). Not only did they act out against the Christians, but they also committed these acts against fellow Muslims. Christians and Muslims alike found it easier to buy them off with bribes, until an Islamic ruler finally exterminated them.

Islamic military outbursts against the west were more or less constant and only really ceased when western nation states developed modern military establishments and new military technologies. Even then, periodic attacks on western Christian powers continued. Our own nation was terrorized for a time by the raids of Muslim Barbary Corsairs who would sieze American shipping in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, holding their crews and passengers to ransom or selling them as slaves ( of course after the customary employment of Islamic barbarity on their persons). These Islamic states also treated ships of other Christian nations in a similar fashion unless those nations paid them a bribe to prevent such attacks.

It took over 500 years for the Spanish and Portuguese Christians to regain control of Iberia after it was invaded and conquered by Islamic tribesmen. It took several hundred years for the Christian powers to regain control of Sicily and southern Italy, an originally Christian area, which was overrun by Islamic conquerors. The entire Mediterranean basin, from the first outbreak of Islam in the 600-700's until the 1800's, was subject to attack by land and sea from Islamic corsairs seeking loot and slaves, operating out of north Africa and other Islamic seaports. Muslims conquered the Christianized Holy Land, Anatolia, and eventually Constantinople and the southern Balkans, forcibly converting portions of the populations there, oppressing others, and enslaving the remnants. Ever read about the Janissaries?? They were troops composed of young Christian boys who were stolen at an early age from their parents by the Ottoman Turks, converted to Islam and made into a class of slave-soldiers.

Muslims struck west again in the late middle ages in force at least twice - once against the gates of Vienna and a second time into the eastern Mediterranean where they were only arrested at the Battle of Lepanto by an allied Christian fleet.

So this author's effort to portray Islam's aggressive nature as a merely recent phenomenon are blatantly false. Islam is now and has always been, since its very inception, a violent, brutal, aggressive, intolerant creed.

The author's reference to a "mild Islam" is interesting. I have heard of Wahhabis, Sufis, Sunnis, Shiites, etc, but never "Mild Muslims". I believe this is a distinction which exists only in the mind of the author. There may be individual Muslims with a mild personality, but there is nothing mild about Islam as a religious faith.

His reference to the Mild Islam of Iberia and Sicily is equally interesting. He apparently chooses to ignore the fact that both Iberia and Sicily were originally Chrisitan and the population there was forcibly conquered and in many cases forcibly converted to Islam. His statement about the treatment of Jews under Islam being better than under Christian Europe, is unfortunately, true in some instances, but that is perhaps like saying Jews were better off living under Mussolini than Hitler.

"But the present is not typical of Islam's long history; indeed, it may be the worst era in that entire history."

Hardly. The worst was when western civilization and Christiandom was fighting the Muslims at the Battle of Tours, not far from Paris in nortern France, after their invading, pillaging, raiding, raping, and enslaving columns had overrun all of Iberia, southern France, Sicily, Southerm Italy, North Africa, the Holy Land, most of Anatolia and were knocking at the gates of Constantinople. Or perhaps when Islamic naval forces were trying to seize the entire Mediterranean from the east and an Islamic army was encamped at the gates of Vienna.

"Things can get better. But it will not be easy. That requires that Muslims tackle the huge challenge of adapting their faith to the realities of modern life."

Things can always get better. They can also always get worse. Like if a large number of fundamentalist Muslims ever appeared in western Europe and North America. As for Muslims modernizing their religion - I have seen nothing of the sort in the past or present to indicate any significant effort or movement on the part of most Muslims to do so, and I am not optomistic that they will do so in the future. But we can always pray for miracles. In the meantime, we should stay alert and keep our swords sharpened.

"In essence, the white-bearded Sufi charged that the “ideology of extremism has been spread to 80 percent of the [American] Muslim population.”

Sufism, a form of mystical Islam, is perhaps the least violent of all forms of Islam. However, as you point out, his message of non-violence has not been well received by American Muslims, for the most part adherents of Sunni Wahhabism. By the way, the Wahhabists have done a superb job of totally exterminating Sufism in Saudia Arabia, the Wahhabi stronghold and origin point. So even being a Muslim is no protection against Islamic aggression.