Very good point, unassailable in itself.
I'd feel better about it if I'd been reading a sea of essays like this emanating from Islamic scholars starting a year ago. I'd feel better if he cited all the passages to which he alludes. I'd feel better if every spokesman for Islam or Arabs who I see in the media were not primarily concerned with whining and complaining about how unfairly "his people" are being treated — rather than twisting himself in a pretzel to assure all that he unconditionally and in the harshest terms condemns the murderers and all who then enabled and now praise them.
The contrast between the behavior of public Moslems as a whole over the last year, and how public Christianoids as a whole certainly would have behaved had such an act been committed by professed Christians — no matter how crazed and heretical — has been made often enough that I won't repeat it.
But it is as valid a point as yours.
So I guess I have to say that your truly sage dictum, one person does not define a complete religion, cuts two ways. Your lone essayist doesn't define Islam, either — particularly given the very loud, very public, and fairly univocal behavior of Moslems over the last year.
Dan
I think if you searched for it, as I have done, you will find a lot of articles such ss this one. If you rely on the major media to feed these type of articles to you then you will never see them. An article such as this would not be picked up by the major media because it is not sensational enough.