Peace and the Islamic State

This week I was watching Fox New and a discussion of Islam came up, it seemed like it was going to be a normal discussion but my opinion quickly changed. There were three pundits total in the discussion and they were discussing the incident in Oklahoma. A man who recently converted into Islam in Oklahoma is “suspected” of beheading a woman. The three panelist on their consisted of a normal conservative Fox News pundit who was positioned in the middle and on the left of her was another woman and on the right of the Fox News pundit was a man. Instead of focusing on the murder in Oklahoma they were actually focusing on a statement made by the Islamic civil rights and advocacy organization called CAIR. CAIR made a statement which basically denounced extremist groups like ISIS and extremist Muslims like the one in Oklahoma. What the main controversial statement however was the assertion that these forms of extremism are not all a representation of Islam and these groups simply are not Muslims at all. CAIR also went on to explain that Islam is a peaceful religion all in and all does not condone violence. The female pundit on the far left was in total disagreement with this statement she believed stated that Islam is a violent religion. She acknowledged that some groups are more extreme than others but in the core of it all Islam is violent. She also went on to mention the beheading that were performed by the prophet Muhammad. The man who was a Muslim and was on the far right did not share on beliefs but rather agreed with CAIR. I personally was not sure how far his consent with the statement went. He stated that these extreme groups should not in any way be a way representation of Muslims because just like any religion you have extremist. He went on to say that Islam was peaceful, my confusion was rather he believed they were still Muslims. The Fox News pundit based on her response felt that he was agreeing with CAIR and did not see them as Muslims. She then aggressively asked him how you can deny extremist groups as Muslims if they claim they are the same as you. She was not nearly aggressive as the pundit on the far left but she also seemed aggressive. Flipping through the other news channels that night there were a lot of Middle East stories and thus Muslim involvement. Every story I saw involved some type of violence or a negative story. Although none of the other reporting I heard discussed a direct ideological attack on Islam, I was worried about the image the media puts out. I totally believe that news needs to be reported, but the Fox News piece may have been too extreme. Do you believe that Fox News should restrict conversations such as the one they had, or is it a discussion that needs to be had?