Radical Islamic insurgents comprise only a tiny fraction of the Muslim world, but their religious fanaticism and its accompanying violence will likely continue to grow unless American Muslims can help infiltrate such groups.

Donna Lee Bowen, a professor of political science and chair of the Middle East Studies program at Brigham Young University, said too many Americans fail to distinguish radical Muslims from the vast majority of believers, who are deeply troubled by the perversion of their faith.

When the distinction isn't made, America is losing its best opportunity to effectively fight the insurgency, she said.

Speaking to a packed house Thursday at the Pardoe Theater at Brigham Young University during the school's annual Education Week, Bowen said estimates of the number of radical insurgents range from 2,000 to 100,000. There are more than 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide.

Yet the number of insurgents seems overwhelming because media attention continually publicizes their atrocities, which spurs renewed vigor for more attacks.

Because the faith relies on local leadership of individual mosques and political organizations, there is no religious "hierarchy" to speak for the whole of Islam. People often ask her why Muslim leaders don't speak out about continuing terrorism committed in the name of their faith.

"I've gathered 31 pages of statements by many Muslim leaders condemning the violence," since 9/11, she said. "But most of these people aren't considered newsworthy. You have to know which Internet sites to go to in order to read them."

Because there is no central religious authority, "there is no one to de-legitimize the radical stands" taken by a minority of Muslim leaders and political groups.

Every faith has its radicals who try to use their faith to justify violence, she said, noting the clashes making headlines this week between Jewish extremists and Israeli soldiers trying to remove them from Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip.

Hindu fundamentalists in India burn mosques and ransack neighborhoods, and fundamentalist Christians foment religious standoffs and suicide in places like Waco, Texas. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have seen violence justified in the name of their faith by the likes of the Lafferty brothers and Mark Hofmann, who murdered people using a religious pretext.

That kind of self-righteousness is manifest on a large scale by Osama bin Laden, whose declaration that anyone — including fellow Muslims — who doesn't "believe the way they should" isn't worthy to live.

"Ironically, these radicals see other Muslims as the greatest threat," despite their well-publicized hatred for the West. American democracy is not a tolerable form of government to them, she said, because it focuses on the rights of individuals, rather than on control by the religious elite.

Muslim Americans who understand democracy, many of whom have a long history in the United States, have the language skills, cultural understanding, ethnic origin and political savvy to infiltrate radical insurgencies.

A Muslim friend of hers trained as an engineer and certified public accountant was so incensed by 9/11 that "he got on the Internet and applied with the FBI," to fight against terrorism. He now works with the agency on such issues.

"These are the people we need, and if we tarnish all of them with the same broad brush we use against bin Laden, we've lost our major resource" in the war on terror, she said.

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