These declarations and fatwas are still a good sign, because they don't include the usual caveat at the end "And we also condemn the loss of innocent life anywhere in the world, including Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq.. etc".

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with condemning innocent deaths in these other places - in fact we should issue statements to that effect when something tragic happens in other parts of the world - but they don't have to be done in the same breath as when you're talking about the terrorism issue. It tempers the condemnation and the blame.

However, I don't see which specific organization they can blame at this particular point with respect to the London or the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings. It's not yet clear which 'organization' the bombers belonged to, and any names we've been hearing are obscure groups. To name them specifically might be granting them more significance than they have.

Well said, I agree it's a step forward.

I was at a talk by a few Muslim Canadians, organized by a Muslim sect, after 9/11. By the organizer's admittion they were a bit hard-edged, not being their first choices for the talk, but even so it was surprising how defensive they were. They were all Pakistani I believe, and all they could do was sputter against the US and act as if they were being put on trial. Later on I was talking to a few other (non-Muslim) attendees, and said "why do they act as if they're being blamed, they haven't done anything", meaning the speakers, and was uniformly misunderstood to be referring to US, which prompted the usual 'the US has been screwing with the area for decades'. Not untrue, but it really felt like at least *some* attention should have been payed to, say, the terrorists.