"But we must ask a question only Muslims can answer: What is going on in your community that a critical number of your youth believes that every American military action in the Middle East is intolerable and justifies a violent response, and everything Muslim extremists do to other Muslims is ignorable and calls for mostly silence?"
- Thomas Friedman, "Judgment not included", New York Times, 2013-04-27
But violence against others is not a Muslim "franchise". People of all kinds of religious persuasions have turned to violence to promote certain distorted ends.
Christians practiced violence. The Roman Catholic Church burned people at the stake for supposedly not conforming to the prescribed beliefs. Torquemada of Spain had many torture devices to get people to admit to being Jewish. Hitler was never ex-communicated from the Catholic Church. Catholic Irish who planted bombs were considered heroes by many. Michael Servetus was "burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the Protestant Geneva governing council."
Jews have been killing more Arabs than Arabs have been killing Jews: since 2000, 6617 Palestinians vs 1,097 Israelis (including 1,447 vs 129 children). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Cost_of_conflict
Buddhists, supposedly a peaceful group, are attacking Muslims in Burma (Myanmar). The recent riots of Buddhists against Muslims is only a part of centuries-long list of anti-Muslim events.
And all these perpetrators of violence seem to forget that a tenet of their religions is "to do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
