Posted on 05/15/2007 6:37:58 AM PDT by nuconvert
Yes, there is a moderate Islam - let's support it
Daniel Pipes
THE JERUSALEM POST
Apr. 17, 2007
'What moderate Muslims?" is the near-inevitable retort to my stating that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution.
Where are the anti-Islamists' demonstrations against terror, their combating of Islamists, their reassessments of Islamic law? I am asked.
Moderate Muslims do exist, I reply. Admittedly, they do not constitute a movement but represent mere wisps in the face of the Islamist onslaught. This means, I argue, that the US 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 H. Schwartz and Peter Sickle grapple intelligently with the innovative issue of helping moderate Muslims grow and prosper.
They start with the argument that "structural reasons play a large part" in the rise of radical and dogmatic interpretations of Islam in recent years - one of those reasons being the Saudi government's generous funding over the last three decades for the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam. Saudi efforts have promoted "the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world," permitting the Islamists to develop powerful intellectual, political and other networks. "This asymmetry in organization and resources explains why radicals, a small minority in almost all Muslim countries, have influence disproportionate to their numbers."
The study posits a key role for Western countries here: "Moderates will not be able to successfully challenge radicals until the playing field is leveled, which the West can help accomplish by promoting the creation of moderate Muslim networks."
DOES THIS sound familiar? It resembles the late 1940s, when Soviet-backed organizations threatened Europe. The four authors provide a helpful potted history of American network-building in the early Cold War years, in part to show that such an effort can succeed against a totalitarian enemy, in part to glean ideas for use at present. (One example: "a left hook to the Kremlin is the best blow," implying that Muslims can most effectively batter Islamism.)
Reviewing American efforts to fight Islamism, the authors find these lacking, at least with regard to strengthening moderates. Washington, they find, "does not have a consistent view on who the moderates are, where the opportunities for building networks among them lie, and how best to build the networks."
They are only too right. The US government has a disastrously poor record in this regard, with an embarrassing history of twin delusions: either thinking Islamists are moderates, or hoping to win them over. Such government figures as FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, State Department undersecretary Karen Hughes, and National Endowment for Democracy head Carl Gershman wrong-headedly insist on consorting with the enemy.
Instead, the RAND study promotes four partners: secularists, liberal Muslims, moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis. It particularly emphasizes the "emerging transnational network of laicist and secularist individuals, groups, and movements," and correctly urges cooperation with these neglected friends.
In contrast, the study proposes de-emphasizing the Middle East, and particularly the Arab world. Because this area "offers less fertile ground for moderate network and institution building than other regions of the Muslim world," it wants Western governments to focus on Muslims in Southeast Asia, the Balkans and in the Western diaspora, and to help make available their ideas in Arabic.
This novel stratagem defies a centuries'-old pattern of influence emanating from the Middle East, but it is well worth a try.
EVEN THE generally hard-headed RAND study sometimes lets down its guard. Dismayingly, the quartet refrains from condemning Washington for dialoguing with lawful Islamists even as it cautiously endorses European governments treating some Islamists as partners. It mistakenly characterizes the US-based "Progressive Muslim Union" as promoting secular Islam, when it is really another Islamist organization, but with a hip tone. (No other Islamists dared host a feature called "Sex and the Umma.")
Building Moderate Muslim Networks is not the final word on its subject but it marks a major step toward the systematic reconfiguring of how to implement Washington's policy to combat Islamism. The study's meaty contents, clear analysis and bold recommendations usefully move the debate forward, offering precisely the in-depth strategizing Westerners urgently need.
You can call them moderate muslims... I'll call them weak muslims.
But even those twelve seem to be afraid to speak out because their less moderate brothers and sisters are so inclined to kill anyone who does.
Yes, but in the thousand years it will take for Muslims to become civilized we, unfortunately, will all be dead or forcibly converted.
All I see is an X icon.
My point is: work with the former, but it would be a fatal mistake to believe the latter exists.
Funny, I never heard of this law and I lived in Turkey for a year. I guess all the other Christian teachers and I that worked in a school in Istanbul were breaking the law. Thank Allah they never caught us. I'd hate to have been thrown in a Turkish prison.
It goes so much deeper than the Koran. It's an issue of being civilized people or not. Being savages or not. Bombers are savages whether they are Eric Rudolph, or Osama Bin-Laden. We need to stop looking at this black and white world where Islam = bad and Christian = good. It's not that simple.
Right, so let’s identify, locate, and destroy the ones who are savages. Anytime you generalize it’s wrong. How would you feel if everyone thought all Christians were abortion bombers? A murderer is a murderer whether they are islamic, Christian, Hindu, or Pagan. A barbarian is a barbarian no matter what. Those are the people we need to kill.
The way oakcon did in Post 57.
In realpolitik, you support the "cultural Muslims", like the Shah of Iran, in making sure that the religious nutjobs are kept in their place.
What happened when Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran, our staunch "cultural Muslim" ally in the region?
The nutjob religious Muslims filled the power vacuum and we now have the mess we have in Iran.
The are over 1 Billion Muslims in the World. Since we are not going to kill them all, we might at least try to shape they way they think by supporting secularist cultural Muslims and hopefully, someday, making them as "Muslim" as Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy are "Catholic".
Read the article?
Good Heavens!
Of course not. People are going to think what they want. We can think different things. That doesn’t change my thoughts beliefs or convictions. No reason it should.
Another post that’s sure to bring out Free Republic’s very own Keyboard Commandos.
Hey folks, think we’re at war with Islam? Looking to kill yourself a whole lot of Muslims? There are plenty over in Iraq. What are you waiting for?
If, after World War Two, we had turned our backs on all those who had a "Nazi" label on them, we would have ended up in a world of hurt in the 1950's and 60's.
The Koran says who are real Muslims or not. I can read. And i can hear the clerics who say the same things.
Are you unable to argue against the facts I have stated. Facts that Muslims proclaim (not me)?
You are more willing to judge my beliefs because I believe that it is immoral to murder people who do not follow Mohamed?
Do you believe that a people who worship, WORSHIP a ruthless, pillaging, murderer, pedophile tyrant like Mohamed are just as moral as Mother Theresa, who held to her faith as closely as Al Qaida holds to theirs?
Martin Luther King believed in his King Jesus as strongly as Usama bin Laden believed in his King Mohamed. They are moral equals?
There is no moral equivalence. none. Only cowards who do not wish to take a stand would try to make it so.
All men are born equal in the eys of the Lord. But not all men behave equal.
I do not judge, that is for the Lord. But I do witness the evil in others and my duty is to recognize it, defend against it, and help them see the error in their ways through love, charity and by sharing the Word of the ulitmate man of peace.
You see if I do not share the Word of God with Muslims, and other non-Christians, if I do not share my wealth gladly with them, if i do not show them love, then I will suffer eternal damnation. On the other hand Muslims believe they must kill evangelical Christians (all who oppose the spread of Muslim religion) or suffer eternal damnation.
What is your duty? Do you not see a difference?
I think your freeper name says it all about you.
"In particular, the Ankara government is still prone to crack down on ethnic and religious minorities when perceived as a threat to nationalist identity. A sign of the government's suspicion: non-Muslim clergy are still forbidden from training there.
Many Greek and Armenian Christians in Turkey suffer the double ignominy of religious and ethnic marginalization. Though the government is officially secular and many Turks are only nominally Muslim, conversion to Christianity is considered a betrayal of heritage and homeland. Persecution stemming from this perspective has stunted church growth and crippled the small Christian community."
Thank you for your totally un-biased perspective "wannabeTurk" but I think I'll stick to my sources.
Something tells me this law doesn’t really exist. For crying out loud, the U.S. has two large bases in Turkey, they have large cruise ships filled with Western tourists coming in all the time into port in Istanbul. In some Mediterranean resorts you can find topless beaches and in the Taksim neighborhood of Istanbul, transvestites rule the area after dark. This isn’t Saudia Arabia or Iran. Turkey is a modern secular state. It’s got a few quirks and the far east of Turkey is more religious, but it is not radical in ANY sense of the word.
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