On October 12th The New York Times ran an article “Silence and Suicide” by Thomas L. Friedman.

Although I have taken issue with Friedman in the past, in this case his article raised at least one very important point. 

In referring to the bombing of the Husseiniyat Ibn al-Nama mosque (a Shia mosque) in Iraq on the first day of Ramadan (which killed 25 and injured 87) , Friedman utters a lament that could be made by a Muslim: 

“This attack, which got scant attention, deserved much, much more because it’s the essence of the terrorism problem we now face. When a Sunni Muslim jihadist blows up a Shiite mosque - a mosque - during Ramadan - Ramadan - and virtually no one in the Sunni world utters a word of condemnation, it means there is no controlling moral authority in the Sunni Muslim community anymore.  When Sunni Muslim insurgents have no respect for the sanctity of Muslim lives, Muslim houses of worship or Muslim holy days - and no one from their own wider Sunni community really moves to restrain or censure them - then there are no boundaries anymore. No one is safe. Anything goes, against anyone, anywhere. If the Sunni Muslim world does not act to halt this genocidal ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Shiites of Iraq, which this week included a teacher’s being dragged from a classroom and shot in front of his students, the Sunni world will eventually be consumed by this very violence. A civilization that tolerates suicide bombing is itself committing suicide.”

He still fails to distinguish between Islam and extremists, and still seems to believe that the only source of terrorism is extremist Islam and that only the Muslims are capable of putting a stop to terrorism.