In the Sunday L.A. Times, Dennis Prager has five questions for Muslims.

1) Why are you so quiet? Since the first Israelis were targeted for death by Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up in the name of your religion and Palestinian nationalism, I have been praying to see Muslim demonstrations against these atrocities. Last week's protests in Jordan against the bombings, while welcome, were a rarity. What I have seen more often is mainstream Muslim spokesmen implicitly defending this terror on the grounds that Israel occupies Palestinian lands.....

(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian? If Israeli occupation is the reason for Muslim terror in Israel, why do no Christian Palestinians engage in terror? They are just as nationalistic and just as occupied as Muslim Palestinians.

(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?According to Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy, of the world's 47 Muslim countries, only Mali is free. Sixty percent are not free, and 38% are partly free. Muslim-majority states account for a majority of the world's "not free" states. And of the 10 "worst of the worst," seven are Islamic states. Why is this?

(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam? Young girls in Indonesia were recently beheaded by Muslim murderers. Last year, Muslims — in the name of Islam — murdered hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia. While reciting Muslim prayers, Islamic terrorists take foreigners working to make Iraq free and slaughter them. Muslim daughters are murdered by their own families in the thousands in "honor killings." And the Muslim government in Iran has publicly called for the extermination of Israel.

(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions...? No church or synagogue is allowed in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban destroyed some of the greatest sculptures of the ancient world because they were Buddhist. Sudan's Islamic regime has murdered great numbers of Christians.

Instead of confronting these problems, too many of you deny them. Muslims call my radio show to tell me that even speaking of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is wrong. After all, they argue, Timothy McVeigh is never labeled a "Christian terrorist." As if McVeigh committed his terror as a churchgoing Christian and in the name of Christ, and as if there were Christian-based terror groups around the world.

....Hundreds of millions of non-Muslims want honest answers to these questions, even if the only answer you offer is, "Yes, we have real problems in Islam." Such an acknowledgment is infinitely better — for you and for the world — than dismissing us as anti-Muslim. We await your response.

The hideous Indonesian beheadings, and the Jordanian hotel bombings - now claimed by the group al Qaeda in Iraq - are the most recent signposts of a faith desecrated by extremists. At the root of their problem is a ridiculous goal: a nation-by-nation drive to world domination. The scary part is that so many are willing to die for it, taking innocents with them, and upping the suspicions of non-Muslims toward sane, sober, peaceful Muslims who sadly close ranks in quietude when the going gets rough. The Western media plays along perfectly, dutifully reporting the beheadings, suicide bombings and atrocities in the name of Islam, but holding nobody or nothing accountable.

Accountability is instead only for U.S. military prison guards and Western police, who may have done something to irritate misunderstood, put-upon Muslims. Our liberal-educated media elites are scared of our nation's own shadow, and devote their careers to offloading their guilt and discomfort about living and thriving in the belly of the unipolar beast. Sept. 11 spurred the conservative blogosphere into higher gear, but that energy is sustained in part by the ongoing bias of the MSM in framing the war on terrorists as predominantly an affront to the human rights of the criminals.

Whether the topic is the rioting youth of France, or a garden-variety teenage killer of four in suburban Seattle, the slant is so often the rights (and quite revealingly) the psyches of the perpetrators. The victims? They're just roadkill.

TECHNORATI TAGS: DENNIS PRAGER, MUSLIMS, INDONESIA, JORDAN, FRANCE

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

John Cunningham: Hi Matt, I thought you had an excellent blog in general. A comment on the Dennis Prager article, which raises some good points. Prager does not go into the question of how many Muslims are current or potential terrorists. If only 1% or 3% of Muslims are potential terrorists, we are talking 10 to 30 million people. That, I submit, is a pretty huge mass. Further, the record shows that a secular, assimilated Muslim can turn into a terrorist at any time--look at several of the London suicide bombers from July 7 this year. Thus, it seems to me that the problem with Islam is far more severe than the media or many people think.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 13, 2005 10:24 AM