Taking real care not to condemn all Muslims for the evil of some of them, I still argue that while there may not be collective responsibility for the evil, there is collective responsibility for fighting against it. Such is the theme of a piece I had yesterday at The American Thinker.

Here’s the nub of my argument:

Even for those who aren’t directly culpable for errors, crimes, or evil, there comes a time when the prevalence of such evil within the ranks of those who claim a common allegiance becomes so serious that other leaders must act quite publicly to marginalize the extremists.

In this light, it is not enough for Muslim clerics to meekly protest that, well, Islam is supposedly a religion of peace and that they themselves aren’t guilty. It is even worse for clerics and other Islamic leaders to spend more time protesting against the “mistreatment,” via “profiling,” of Muslims than they do to squash the evil in their own midst.

What’s necessary now is an open, public, enthusiastic, organized, energetic, emphatic and long-lasting effort by Muslim leaders to eradicate the very idea that their faith, understood correctly, calls for violent jihad or murder.

This follows a piece I had last week at the Center for Individual Freedom which says it is time to reverse the dangerous, willfully ignorant policy of the Obama administration that refuses to recognize Islamism (not Islam, but Islamism) as a threat.

This is not a religion we are fighting; it’s a subhuman ideology. Those who are peaceful adherents of the religion that the hateful ideologues falsely claim should want to do all in their power to clear their religion’s name — and thus should welcome, not condemn, a reversal of Obama’s counterproductive policy.