>And to the salafist, any area that is not under Sha'ria is "occupied territory". That is exactly the point. Any kind of extremist thinking - especially the kind that has God whispering in your ear telling you whatever you do is justified - can lead to attrocity. I am sure in this we can agree <s>

On that part we sure do :)

However (unfortunately) I find lot of this kind of thinking in the western heimisphere as well. Perhaps it is in human nature; Everybody kind of tries to monoplise righteosness. We are correct and everybody else need to 'convert' and comply with it;
Talking about western preaching of democracy; It kind of sucks on organised religion business!
Putin can't be possibly democrat because of ... (What?) ; Chavez sucks; He is leftist, marxist, Cuba#2 etc. However we are all righteous and everybody needs to be 'baptised by us' to become true democracy.

US went one step ahead in this crusade; ('whatever you do is justified') and even took a sword to promote this kind of 'righteosnes' and it directly (as you correcty stated) 'lead to attrocity' (Afganistan, Iran)

I totally agree with You that Islam is in desperate deep need of some soul searching, modernising and pacifying; but I have to say - so do we!
Muslims cannot spend entire 21 century trying to go back in 6st; whereas
it is obviosely not very productive for US/West to waist entire decade
(& trillions of bucks & 100sOfK in 'colateral damage') to square entire world back to where - a Cold War!? (And not so cold at that!)

We all need *change*, because what is happening is simply no good!
And real one at that. (Remind me again who won that dem's nomination ? ;)) )

Peace Bro' :)