December 28, 2012: One of the biggest problems Islamic terrorist organizations have is their tendency to use excessive violence against Moslems and destroy the popular support that they gain by fighting against corruption and tyrannical governments. That was the pattern recently in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia. Now it’s happening in Pakistan, a nation that has, for over three decades, been very enthusiastic about Islamic radicalism and terrorism.

That support is drying up in Pakistan, all because too many of these Pakistan based Islamic terror organizations are doing things that most Pakistanis do not approve of. It’s one thing to carry out terror attacks in the name of God outside of Pakistan but when this nasty behavior comes back home that support evaporates. The Pakistani Taliban has seen its popularity slipping over the last decade. Two years ago it sank to 50 percent (of Pakistanis approving the Taliban) and then to 20 percent last May. Now it has sunk even lower because a death squad tried to murder a 15 year old Pakistani girl (Malala Yousufzai) last October 9th.  This attack was made because the victim had defied the Taliban policy against sending girls to school.

Two months later Taliban gunmen launched a widespread attack on female health workers who were trying to vaccinate children against polio. This began on December 18th, and nine health workers were killed over the next few days. Just as with the attack on Malala Yousufzai, the murder of nine young Pakistani women working on a vaccination program horrified most Pakistanis. This time senior Moslem clerics were compelled to join together in condemning the Islamic radicals for such barbaric behavior. Clergy speak out against the Taliban at great risk. The Taliban regularly kill, or try to kill, Islamic clergy who criticize Islamic radicalism. But there is some safety in numbers, for this time clerics representing 24,000 Mosques are speaking out. If the Taliban start killing or threatening any of these clerics there would be even more support for destroying the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamic radical groups allied with them.

It’s not just the Moslem clerics who are speaking out. Many former supporters of Islamic radicalism are now openly against these groups. These critics like to point out that these extremist movements have achieved nothing beneficial and have gotten a lot of innocent Moslems killed in the process.