Should Muslims Apologize?

Two articles from Real Clear Politics make for interesting context and contrast this morning.

First, Mansour El-Kikhia writes in the San Antonio Express News that American Muslims have nothing at all to apologize for -- in fact, America should apologize to them for putting them under surveillance since 9/11:

Does anyone think [American Muslims] are pleased to have their movements and telephone conversations monitored or that coercive and Freedom-depriving laws are tailored for them? Does anyone in his or her right mind really believe that being an Arab American or a Muslim is pleasant in America today?

After the London bombings, I, for one, am not moved by his whining.

El-Kikhia goes on to blame the war on us. Our policies. Our mingling in Arab affairs. Our war in Iraq, for which there is no justification. He undercounts are dead and underplays the blind nature of jihad.

A few clicks down, RCP takes us to the Washington Times, and Wilson John writing about Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's inability, or unwillingness, to confront terror in his country.

All the mad Imams he said he would contain proceed uncontained, and listen to what they're uncontained about:

Lashkar leader Hafiz Saeed publicly announced his resignation and the appointment of the new leadership. It was nothing but a ruse, something the security agencies in Pakistan knew. For several months, Mr. Saeed was not arrested and remained free to spew venom about India and the United States. He was subsequently arrested but not charged with terrorist activities; instead, he was charged with violating a maintenance of public order law that has a maximum punishment of three months. Mr. Saeed has since been freed. Today, he openly conducts prayers from a Lahore mosque every Friday. His sermons, published widely in the Urdu press, have been replete with calls for jihad in Kashmir and elsewhere in the world.

Jihad in Kashmir. El-Kikhia is in complete denial. All over the world, his religion is running schools where hatred against anyone who's not exactly them is preached. In Indonesia against Christians, in Pakistan against Muslims, in London agains Londoners.

But El-Kikhia is right about one thing. Islam doesn't owe America an apology. It owes the world an apology.