The Taliban never had much support amongst Pakistanis to begin with, but that's largely an ethnic thing (Taliban largely represents the Pashto, a group mostly in Afghanistan, while the "core" Pakistani ethnicities are Punjabi or Rajputani), but it is true that much of the Muslim world does not support the views of the extremists. At most, they sympathize with the extremists simply because they are willing to take action against "oppression" (like Israel, or the machinations of Western corporations, or domestic dictators/corrupt monarchies), but they do not agree with the extent of the extremism.
You can see a lot of it in Mali, where the Extremists are threatening to take over, but the average citizen of Mali simply doesn't agree with them, even if the average Malinese (?) is a Muslim. For one, radical Islam frowns upon music, while Mali is known for its love of music.
It was the Bush Administration's black-and-white "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" policy that really helped the Muslim Extremists, because you're going to side with the freedom fighters, even if they are dangerous and crazy, against the foreign invading Israel-backers, if those were your only choices. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who are Islamic and not entirely compatible with Western notions of liberalism (lowercase-l liberalism) are still not going to be "let's blow up these ancient Buddha statues" kind of extremists on the whole.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
