Moderate Islamic Response, Take 2

This encouraging post via Instapundit:

MODERATE MUSLIMS offer this apology for the cartoon wars. Excerpt:

We condemn the shameful actions carried out by a few Arabs and Muslims around the world that have tarnished our image, and presented us as intolerant and close-minded bigots.

Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.

We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit himself) encourages folks to check out the whole link that appears above, but as of this writing, the link is generating an error. One learns to be a bit skeptical these days, but we hope the above is genuine. If so, this is a side of Islam that we simply are not seeing in the West. We'll keep our eye on the link and update here if it becomes functional enough again, and if we can verify a little further who's involved with the post. But Instapundit usually has his facts straight.