Too late

JOHN KIFNER develops the AP report that I mentioned below. He says that

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched satellite television station Al Arabiya....like several other commentators, singled out Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a senior Egyptian cleric living in Qatar who broadcasts an influential program on Al Jazeera television and who has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for the killing of American and foreign "occupiers" in Iraq, military and civilian.

"Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheik allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians," he wrote. "How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?"

And he mentions several others. It's too late, though. Even if, as I imagine, most Muslims are not in favor of terrorism, and even if they listen to these commentators, the terrorists are too radicalized, and will only stop when they've killed themselves off or grown out of it.