The meek shall inherit the earth and psychiatrists shall inherit their wealth.

Those who constantly remember that the future is in the hands of God, accepting what comes, are not violent or angry. There are of course others who only say 'Inshallah' out of habit and culture without in fact reflecting on what it means.

The arrogant West believes that self-created humans are masters of their own destiny - and so are the Muslim clerics who call for political action. Religious leaders are meant to remind their flock to surrender to God and do their duty without expectations, yet these are ambitious and wish to change the world just like their Western atheist counterparts. A true Muslim should not follow these clerics.

Yuyutsu ... you assert that those who constantly remember that the future is in the hands of God, accepting what comes, are not violent or angry. This suggests some kind of supreme being which controls the destiny of mankind.
Every person is entirely responsible for his own thoughts, words, and actions, and cannot pass that responsibilty over to some nebulous overseer.

Definitely, Ponder:

Every person is entirely responsible for his own thoughts, words, and actions which they sow - but only God is responsible for the results of those thoughts, words and actions which they reap.

It seems to me that Islam is going through a similar process to Christianity in the Middle Ages, think of the Catholic/Protestant wars, The Inquisition, and all the other religious terror and social rendering of those times.
There are no ready answers to this process, all we can do is hope they achieve a similar outcome, the separation of religion from political power, a focus on the good in people, love and acceptance etc etc, unlikely as that may seem at the moment.
You can't even blame the ordinary Muslim, they live with even more fear of the Fundamentalists than non-Muslims do, and they are being forced into ordinary human clannish behaviour by the rancour and prejudice created by the actions of the Fundamentalists.
Basically, we are all suffering from being born into a period covered by that ancient Chinese curse...
May you live in "interesting" times.
And I suspect that times are going to get far more "interesting" before they settle down, after all, it took Christianity several centuries, and nowadays the numbers involved are far larger, the weapons more effective and vulnerability more pronounced.There's nothing the West can do to assist this change, any outside pressure inevitably causes a defensive "enemy without" reaction, that's only human nature at work.
All we can realistically do is keep our heads down, lock the doors and hold onto the kids, and pray.

A very learned informative article, and hard to disagree with on any grounds!
Thanks Tanveer.
Rhrosty.

Yuyutsu, you say “A true Muslim should not follow these clerics” but that is immaterial – an Imam may be moderate or radical, blind or gay, white or subcontinent, Lebanese or Australian, but he is just a cleric. The problem is Islam. The fact is that a Muslim – whether true, religious, moderate or unmosqued -- by definition believes the Quran and follows Mohammad.

In case you haven’t read the Quran, it teaches hate, discrimination, slander and yes, calls to violence against non-Muslims. Anybody from Mars, or anywhere else, upon reading the Quran, would believe that infidels are really bad people. The same is true of islam’s prophet, a man consider to be a noble example. Well, this noble example did many, many evil things to his neighbors, according to all Islamic writings, including but not limited to murder, plunder, torture, rape and enslavement of men women and children. Some example…

The problem is not lack of integration, identity, personality, anti-social behavior, bad parenting, large families, lack of education or notions of blame and guilt. The problem is an ideology that divides the world into two camps: us and them. The problem is a religion that has lots of rules and rituals but little morality. Actually, morality is for non-Muslims, since faith (belief) is the sole requirement to get to Islam’s paradise with the wine, houri (or grapes) and little boys. There is none of that silly “repent, confess your sins and sin no more” attitude of the Judeo-Chhristian tradition – say the shahada and you are good to go.

All this fuss over a few beheadings. Didn’t we have a little Muslim kid holding up a sign urging this, predicting this, in a public park in Sidney, a year ago? Don’t infidels know what “strike their necks” means? It is not like Allah is telling Muslims to send flowers

Radical Muslims kill, moderates make excuses and blame others. The future will not be nice.