"WE LOVE DEATH"

Followers of Muhammed...with an infinite capacity for hate, a total absence of conscience and a seemingly voracious appetite for human extermination.

Oh, how proud their mothers must be.

A huge car bomb destroyed the five-story Mount Lebanon hotel in central Baghdad on Wednesday evening. The explosion reduced an apartment block across the road to a tangle of steel, masonry and shattered furniture, and left an inferno of blazing cars and buildings that lit the night sky for hours. At least 27 people were killed and 41 wounded...

At least some of the casualties appeared to be foreigners, most from neighboring Arab countries.

The bombing was among the worst atrocities to be carried out in Iraq during the U.S. occupation...

With no statement claiming responsibility for the blast, the terrorists' motives were unknown.

Notice something please. It remains unclear why this hotel was selected as a target. And if one can't identify the tactical, operational or strategic advantage of a target, but attacks it anyway, then one wages war for the sake of killing...with no meaningful goal. Just killing for killing's sake.

More and more this seems to be the public face of Islam. I say that for though I scour news and opinion stories around the world daily I find there to be almost no Muslim condemnation of these acts committed in the name of Allah.

However, there is the rare exception. In my mind, if Islam wishes to salvage its name and reputation, we must see more, much more of this...no more can this be an "unusual stance":

Taking an unusual stance, a columnist for the Saudi English-language Arab News criticized Arabs for blaming the U.S. for recent terror attacks in Iraq.

Muhammad Al-Rasheed chastised Shia clerics in a column last Wednesday for blaming the U.S. for the recent attacks against Shia in Karbala and Baghdad, reported the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Arabs tend to "blame others and shun the facts," he said, pointing out prominent clerics, including some in Lebanon, have pinned responsibility on the U.S.

"Mind you, this America is the [same one] the Shia are now talking to so they can finally govern themselves for the first time in 1,400 years," al-Rasheed said.

"If I were a Shia and from Iraq, I'd pray to the Almighty that America remained in Iraq until the country was stable and on its feet again," he continued. "Otherwise, the Karbala massacre will be just a trailer for the full version of an unbelievable horror show." ...

Al-Rasheed challenged the clerics to "name names and point fingers in the right direction."

"We are sick and tired of this kind of behavior," he said. "We honestly have had enough of it and cannot blame the world for looking at us and wondering if we retain any shred of humanity. The creed that sanctions blowing up worshipers in mosques (or any other religious venue for that matter, including office buildings since Islam says that work is worship) should be declared the public enemy of humanity. The U.N. should vote on that publicly and let us count the votes and identify those who vote against the motion."

Al-Rasheed called the terrorists who carried out the attacks more barbarous than ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"The perpetrators have an agenda more vicious than anything Saddam could have dreamed up," al-Rasheed said. "Saddam killed and maimed to maintain his rule by brute force. These people kill and maim to turn people against each other and to satisfy a bloodlust based on elitism in theological terms. In other words, they want to win in this world and go to heaven in the next. I don't think Saddam was that optimistic; otherwise, the Americans would not have found him alive in a hole."

Al-Rasheed said, "Just when we seem to have moved a step forward, something happens to make us take 10 steps back," said. "Sacrificial blood in Karbala and Baghdad is nothing new but the latest atrocity on the most sacred day for the Shia was a criminal act of monstrous proportions. The carnage and the spectacle were on a scale not seen since the last sacking of Karbala over a century ago."