We need to stop spreading bin-Laden's distortions for him. Bin-Laden would have everyone believe that true Islam involves making war on the West (mostly not for conquest, but as a means to purifying Islamic areas, but that's beside the point). The Western media generally portrays any Muslims who don't buy into that as half-way Muslims. Moderate, as if they're only moderately rather than fully Muslim. In the real world, though, most Muslims don't buy it. There is fear of the West, along with both unfounded and well-founded resentment against Western governments common in much of the Muslim world. Still, most Muslims see the idea of such a war not only as wrong, but unholy—a perversion of Islam.
So why are we helping bin-Laden? Why do we tell the average Muslim that he's wishy-washy because he doesn't support terrorism? Here's why: just as there are a minority of Muslims who do support a war against the West, there are a minority of Christians and Jews who support a war against all Islam. This minority has captured the vocabulary of the news. And they, like bin-Laden, are using an ancient principle of political science.
To those who want conflict, who believe that this conflict is inevitable, that their side must win, that they're 'on a mission from God', it's the opponents of war in both potential war-parties who must be defeated first. Only when outrage and fear on both sides have reached a fever can the zealots marshal the resources of a reluctant population to make war on the whole of the other group.
That was the purpose of the 9/11 attacks: to goad the US into a war that bin-Laden thought would be our undoing. But the notion goes back at least to the Romans and ancient Chinese, and probably further. It was applied within the last few decades in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, among other places. (Finding and helping to implement constitutional structures that by their nature work against this mechanism has been central to Cass Sunstein's career, which is part of why Glen Greenwald's vilification of Sunstein has been so annoying.)
So how do we short-circuit this intentional polarization? By not using bin-Laden's and Gingrich's terms, I suppose. We need a more accurate name for the movement that bin-Laden represents. It is not "Islamist" as most practitioners of Islam would recognize it. But I don't know what English word would resonate (both in English and preferably also in translation to Arabic and other languages) as the hateful, backward-thinking, irreligious movement that al-Qaida is a part of. We can start, though. by referring to ordinary Muslims as Muslims, not as moderate Muslims, and be ready to respond when anyone takes that to imply they support terrorism.