Moderate, Peaceful Islam

At a recent Heritage Foundation panel discussion on Benghazi a Muslim woman, Saba Ahmed, asked why all Muslims are so often portrayed as bad. She was treated to a lengthy rant by panelist Brigitte Gabriel demonizing the 150 to 300 million Muslims she says are radical, comparing them to Nazis and other infamous butchers of the past, and dismissing as irrelevant the many millions more Muslims who are moderate and peaceful. The audience cheered, the video went viral. http://adriennescatholiccorner.blogspot.com/2014/06/someone-asked-brigitte-gabriel-about-so.html Ms. Ahmed responded with an article for the Washington Post to say that far from irrelevant, "[she believes] the radical extremist ideology can only be changed by the tolerant moderate peaceful teachings of Islam if we are to ever win this war." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/06/19/heritage-event-attendee-describes-a-hostile-unfriendly-environment/ I couldn't agree more, but both sides have a point. Like it or not violent radicals are the face of modern Islam to much of the world. That isn't going to change with more dialog or a better understanding of Islam by non Muslims. Like it or not it is obvious to all, even to those too polite to say so, that a great deal of brutality is being carried out in the name of Islam, presumably by many people who believe they are being true to their faith. And to Ms. Ahmed's point, like it or not this war will never be won until the radical ideology is changed. Only moderate, peaceful Muslims can do that. I don't know where Ms. Gabriel gets her numbers, I suspect she exaggerates, but whatever the number of extremist Muslims, it is large and growing. What are we to do? Kill them all? With drones? Certainly we have to defend ourselves and if in so doing even more Muslims are radicalized then so be it. If Muslims find self defense by non Muslims to be offensive, then that is part of the ideology that must be changed. That said, does anyone truly believe there is a military solution to this? Of course the military does have a role, a big one. The only Benghazi culprit apprehended so far was taken in a military operation. With no effective government in Libya that may be the only way any of the others can be brought to Justice. As so much of the Middle East and North Africa slides into chaos that may be true more often than not for the foreseeable future. Any government, effective or not, that tolerates terrorist attacks on foreign interests from within its borders should expect military intervention. But Ms. Ahmed makes another, larger point. We are all in this together, it is "we" who must ultimately win this war. To dismiss her as irrelevant is not only mistaken, it is foolhardy. We can't win this war without her and others like her. That doesn't mean we must agree with everything she says, and I don't, but we should listen. So too should she listen to Ms. Gabriel and the audience cheering her on. Their fears and perceptions can't be dismissed out of hand either. We need each other and we all need to understand one another. Moderate peaceful Muslims have as much at stake in this fight as anybody and there are a lot of them. There is every reason to believe they will ultimately prevail against their more belligerent nominal co-religionists. It would help if the rest of us understood they have a lot of heavy lifting to do, stopped shouting them down, and maybe started asking what we can do to help.