Originally Posted by
Darkmatters
So what you're saying is NAMALT (not all Muslims are like that).
This is the common war cry for all movements that consist of a radical element leading a much broader moderate element. Unfortunately it's the radicals who lead the movement politically, and the entire weight of the overall movement itself is used for statistical purposes - so when the radical leaders want to skew numbers they easily can, by showing how many there are in total and suggesting that all of them are behind the more radical agenda. Just the other day I heard some Christian throw out numbers like this, suggesting that 2/3s of the US population must hate gays, since after all 2/3s of the population are Christian, right? And unfortunately it's usually these massive numbers that lend weight to the political force of a movement. In other words, the moderates tend to get counted as radicals and are used as pieces in the game to gain political power.