oh okay. my only problem comes when it's assumed that all muslims or middle easterns are reprented by the most extreme. this OP did a good case of talking about ONE person, not an entire religion because of one person's actions.
Of course it's not the entire muslim population or even the majority. That's the sad part. But the terrible fact is that those Al Qaeda and Islamic Front people are all Muslims, and that frightens the West and defames the non-violent Muslims. None of the talk of terrorists in the Middle East condemns the religion per se, but a lot of the religion's more revolting tradiions in Shariah Law with stoning and cutting off hands (Saudis do this too, and that's not an Arab nation terrorizing the West, God knows) comes out anyway.
So that there are physical and psychological casualties on both sides, because even though Al Qaeda and the other terrorist organizations are only a small percentage of Muslim citizens (that includes all countries to make it even smaller than just the mideast), it's nevertheless true that all the leaders of Al Qaeda are Muslims--that's why it can't be handled as cleanly as we'd like, and why unfairness comes into play. Therefore, it's nearly impossible to deal with, because these particular terrorist organizations ARE all Muslim. That's why it was also so idiotic to attack Iraq, which was a much more secular kind of Islam, and Saddam Hussein merely an 'awful violent dictator'--but all of Al Qaeda and its spinoffs are rabid crazed Muslims. (Here and there a token wayward westerner who is living way out on the fringes of his own society will join the movement, but he never has any high leadership position.) I still recommned Lawrence Wright's 'the Looming Tower' for anybody that wants to know the precise history of Al Qaeda. It also has wonderful writing about when terrorists took over the holy shrines in Mecca and the Saudi govt. went in and flushed them out, with some deaths. This 'deconsecrated' the holy shrines in the Islamic literal sense. And Bin Laden's father had been very big with the Saudi princes, as one of the major architects of mosques and other important edifices. Only for his son to turn into the scum of the world--and make Bush the joke he is for not even being able to say he caught the guy that blew up the World Trade Center and even managed to put a plane into the Pentagon while Rumsfeld was in it.
Of course, it's Bush's disastrous policy that has nearly landed the whole world in hell, not to mention barely scratching the surface in dealing with Al Qaeda.