And what do the horrors found inside the Red Mosque after the final assault say about the animus of Muslim extremism? What kind of animus drives such evil and blind hate in such a distorted reality as to love death and hate life?

The windowless room inside the girls' madrassa was charred, transformed from a seat of religious learning to an inferno by the suicide bomber who detonated his charge as the Pakistani commandos stormed the Red Mosque compound.

Five of the people who were sheltering inside the room were so badly burnt by the explosion that it was impossible to tell their gender or age. Yet the officer who led journalists into the site of the week-long siege said that his men had found a severed head, presumed to be that of the suicide bomber, on the floor.

In the next room, swarms of flies buzzed over the stained floor and the chunks of broken masonry where militants had built a bunker. Walls that had been painted with Islamic verses were riddled with bullet holes, evidence of a vicious 35-hour assault in which commandos fought from room to room against 70 heavily armed militants. "The resistance was beyond our expectation," said the commander who led the siege.

Inside the madrassa, an inscription on a blackboard read: "O God give us a martyr's death." Another inscription, in what had been one of the biggest religious seminaries in Pakistan, read: "Even if you are alone and your enemies are in their hundreds, do not see your weakness but have faith in the Almighty."

However, as important as it is for Muslims and leaders of Muslim nations to finally be questioning "the kind of Islam these people represent," and for them to be alarmed that Muslim extemists cloak their teachings in the name of Islam, the key question is yet to be asked: What is in the nature of Islam and the animus of its followers that makes a human being susceptible to such a distorted view of reality as to worship death and have a willingness to resort to even the most evil deeds imaginable (as in "baking" little boys and serving them to their parents for lunch) in the pursuit of goals that appears as though they have absolutely nothing to do with territory or treasure, but rather for the sake of killing and fighting and power over those that do not believe in their sick ideology?

In other words, the real issue, made so vividly clear in the horrors found inside the Red Mosque after the assault, boils down to two things: What is it about Islam that provides a template that can be so conscrued as to justify murder, suicide, and unimaginable cuelty against fellow human beings, and what lies in the animus of its followers that makes them so susceptible to being brainwashed into following the teachings of Muslim extremists.

Until such time that these questions are addressed and answered, the world has no option but to fight Muslim extremism in every manner possible, in every corner of the world, with unrelenting force. Up to now, the key obstacle to real success in defeating Muslim extremists has been Muslims themselves. They have remained silent, hidden from plain site by choice, essentially in denial of the threat of Muslim extremism - the jihadists, even to some degree or another, somewhat in support of the extremists in the course of what they felt was supporting the ummah.

With Musharraf now finally coming out so strongly against Muslim extremists, and the horrors of the Red Mosque now made clear to the Muslim world, we can only hope that it is a beginning of more Muslims recognizing what Islamism is doing to their faith - and help stop it.

Read more about the horrors at Inside the Red Mosque: charred bodies and a call to seek a martyr's death...

Cross posted from Hyscience