A Question About Reward for Suicide Bombing

Fareed Zakaria is the international editor for Newsweek magazine and narrator of the new documentary Terror in Mumbai.  He was interviewed by Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, November 14th.  What interested me most about the interview was one of the exchanges between the host and his guest:

SIMON: Fareed, obviously we continue in the United States to deal with the effects of - investigation, obviously, into what happened at Fort Hood and just the anxieties of our time. And I want to try to be certainly scholarly, clinical, and detached, but I feel this documentary, what happened in Mumbai introduces a fair question. In the world today, are there number of religious extremists, who may happen to be Muslim, who are bent on suicidal violence because they believe theyll be rewarded for it?

Mr. ZAKARIA: I think the answer to your question is yes. And it is all the more incumbent, therefore, on religious authorities, of leaders within these communities of Islam, of Muslims, to really come out and unequivocally make the case that this stuff is not just bad, but deeply un-Islamic, pernicious, violates, you know - now, for the most part, people in the United States have done that. But it hasn't happened in, say, Pakistan, and until there is ambivalence on those issues, you wont have the kind of united front that will exorcise these demons.

Kudos to liberal NPR to ask so "offensive" a question!  And to believe that they would allow any hint from a guest that some Muslims believe suicide bombings are actually part of their deeply held religious beliefs and not just their politico-socio-economic position!

Would we be able to replace the word "Muslim" in Scott Simon's question with any other religious affiliation like "Jewish?"  If the answer is no, Simon should not have used the phrase "...religious extremists, who happen to be Muslim...".  And another thing is clear to me: The religious belief  that God will reward an individual for suicide and killing in the modern era is exclusively a Muslim idea.

What is more disturbing is Zakaria's comment that non-violent Muslims and their leaders are not speaking out against the attacks along with the rest of the world.  What does this say about these non-violent Muslims?