Diana West has a piece over at the Washington Times about Bush's Islamic cheerleading.

Thanks to, among other things, the separation of church and state, it's not in the president's job description to be an Islamic scholar; but neither is it incumbent upon him to take up the pompom for old Islam. This seems particularly clear now that Mr. Bush has decided to weigh in on the blunt critiques of Islam offered by several conservative Christian leaders who have voiced their reactions (negative) to the violence at the core of Islam's unreconstructed traditions of jihad. Islam is violent, said one. Islam is evil, said another; and besides, said another, Mohammed was a pedophile. Historic truths or baseless slanders? If the president has his way, we'll never know. Such remarks "do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans," Mr. Bush noted pointedly last week. "Ours is a country based upon tolerance . . . and we welcome people of all faiths in America. And we're not going to let the war on terror or terrorists cause us to change our values."

While I do think it needs to be pointed out that not all of Islam is evil, or warlike or whatever, I worry that that President's nonstop support of general Islam is leading to the glossing over of serious issues about Islam that need to be addressed. What gets lost is that even if the terrorists and rioters aren't mainstream Islam they're still a version of Islam, and there's definitely something very unpeaceful about what they believe.

When people of your same faith can form a mob and kill 50 people just because the Miss World pageant is going on then I think it's time to take a serious look at your faith as a whole and think about what you and those who share your view can do to bring the radicals into the mainstream fold.

It would be nice to see some mainstream Islamic missionaries head over to Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East to counter the radical leaders. Assuming Islam really doesn't endorse the xenophobia and discrimination practiced so widely in the third world countries then the more enlightened members of Islam need to step up and bring their wayward brethren back into the fold.