Brooke-Sidney Gavins at the SCOOP reports on the “widespread debate as to whether the terrorists should be considered and referred to as followers of Islam” and the surprising fact that “most of the American coverage of the attack is oblivious to what could potentially be a remarkable transformation in the Muslim world”:

Despite the fact that this movement to disown the Mumbai terrorists is widespread and gaining momentum in the Muslim world, most of the commentators in the U.S. are calling the events an Islamic attack. Michael Rubin, author of the National Review Online’s blog The Corner, typifies the dismissive tone of many of the American journalists who at least acknowledge the debate.

“While it’s fashionable to argue that terrorists in Mumbai do not act out of religion,” Rubin writes, “but are simply misguided, the fact of the matter is that they justify their actions in Islam.”

Rubin and the rest of the American media tend to argue that our focus should be on how terrorists describe their beliefs and not on whether their supposed fellow travelers recognize those beliefs as their own.

Read the full post here. For more on the “political and religious significance of the attacks,” check out Nicole Greenfield’s latest roundup on “The attacks in Mumbai.”