On the other hand...

There are plenty of forthrightly good guys in the American Muslim community--they just don't get the coverage.

In fact, some members of the American media are all too happy to suppress moderate Muslim viewpoints.

Just something to keep in mind. I've been trying to add some balance to my reading about Islam lately, as a perspective check.

Oh, and an ironic note about the Bektashi Muslims mentioned in the first article: Bektashi was very popular with the Ottoman Sultan's elite Janissary corps. In that Victory of the West book I'm reading (among about 100 other things at the moment), Capponi says that this was the result of the fact that the Janissaries came from Christian backgrounds, and Bektashi borrowed from Christianity. It also appears that these syncretic borrowings helped ease the conversion of the Christians still living in Turkish Anatolia after the 12th Century. Here endeth the lesson.