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Bolstering Moderate Muslims
DanielPipes.org ^ | 4/17/07 | Daniel Pipes

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1819926/posts
Posted on 04/19/2007 7:43:29 AM CDT by Valin

When I suggest that radical Muslims are the problem and that moderate Muslims are the solution, the nearly inevitable retort from most people is: “What moderate Muslims?”

“Where are the anti-Islamists’ demonstrations against terror?” they ask me. “What are they doing to combat Islamists? What have they done to reassess Islamic law?”

My response: Moderate Muslims do exist. But, of course, they constitute a very small movement when compared to the Islamist onslaught. This means that the American government and other powerful institutions should give priority to locating, meeting with, funding, forwarding, empowering, and celebrating those brave Muslims who, at personal risk, stand up and confront the totalitarians.

A just-published study from the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, methodically takes up and thinks through this concept. Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell Schwartz, and Peter Sickle grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate Muslims to grow and prosper.

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Road Map for Moderate Network Building in the Muslim World (long read)
RAND Corp. ^ | Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz, Peter Sickle

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1818382/posts
Posted on 04/16/2007 6:09:23 PM CDT by Valin

Identifying Key Partners and Audiences

A critical part of U.S. network-building efforts, as well as in its broader public diplomacy and strategic communications policy, is identifying key partners and audiences. Difficulties in distinguishing potential allies from adversaries present a major problem to Western governments and organizations attempting to organize support for moderate Muslims. Work done by the RAND Corporation—in Cheryl Benard’s Civil Democratic Islam and Angel Rabasa et al., The Muslim World After 9/11—has begun to lay the framework for identifying ideological tendencies in the Muslim world,1 which is necessary in order to identify the sectors with which the United States and its allies can be most e.ective in promoting democracy and stability to counter the in.uence of extremist and violent groups.
Around the world Muslims differ substantially not only in their religious views, but also in their political and social orientation, including their conceptions of government; their views on the primacy of shari’a (Islamic law) versus other sources of law; their views on human rights, especially the rights of women and religious minorities; and whether they support, justify, or tolerate violence perpetrated in advancement of a political or religious agenda. We refer to these as “marker issues,” and the position of groups or individuals on them allows for a more precise classifcation of these groups in terms of their a.nity for democracy and pluralism.

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