The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Of course, like everyone else with a semi-functioning heart and conscience, I'm always saddened by tragedies of any kind. This, of course, includes acts of terror. However, whenever a terrorist act is committed by Muslims, I'm also troubled by many people's insistence that all Muslims worldwide denounce these awful acts. There's a growing chorus among these people, which includes a solid majority of conservatives, but also a growing number of moderates and liberals as well. My questions are, why is this necessary, and why does this seem to only surround people of the Islam faith?  If some Muslims with a public voice want to go on the record and say, "For the record, these people's acts were cowardly, not at all representative of the teachings of Islam, and I (or we) fully denounce these individuals and their actions," then that's fine. But why do a growing number of people deem it as necessary? Just because an extremely small percentage of a certain...