Oh, and there is one more way.
The bikinis of the "cultural Muslims" are not as revealing as the other other gals' bikinis in the beauty pageant but they are a lot more revealing than the burkhas. :-)
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.
That’s when they were defeated...
I can’t disagree more. I’m beginning to think that the only good muslim is a dead muslim. Sorry folks, but I don’t trust them, any of them!
I read it and almost tossed my breakfast. It's just more blame-the-west-first (read blame-America-first) propaganda. The United States is now doing the job that "moderate" muslims won't do and that is confront the jihadis.
Where are the "moderate" muslims in Iraq? Where are the "moderate" muslims in Pakistan and why aren't they giving up the muslim god bin laden? Why are entire muslim states funding terrorism? Can you name another religion that teaches that strapping dynamite to your children and having them kill innocent non-dhimmis will earn you 77 virgins in heaven?
Oh, and there is one more way.
The bikinis of the "cultural Muslims" are not as revealing as the other other gals' bikinis in the beauty pageant but they are a lot more revealing than the burkhas. :-)
No argument with me there. As long as countries are made up of and run by humans you will always find bizarre laws. As long as they are not strictly enforced, is all that matters in the long run.
So, if Werhner von Braun could have been spirited out of Germany by the OSS in 1942 to work for the Allies, you would have turned him down because he had a "Nazi" label?
Was Jimmy Carter correct to withdraw support for the Shah of Iran because the Shah was a "Muslim" and no "Muslim" should ever be supported?
The only way to suppress radical Islam is by means of other "cultural Muslims" such as Ataturk in Turkey and the Shah in Iran.
You shall recieve ten lashes with a wet noodle for the sacrelege of going against the standard FR mantra!
Shame on thee!
(The fact that you live and work with Muslims on a daily basis will not be permitted in your defense!)
Ahh yes - Daniel Pipes is another “blame America first” propagandist. Congratulations - That’s a first.
And my post did not say anything about Islam itself, did it?
My post spoke of secular Muslims of whom I know many.
My post was clear. Several people chose to misinterpret it.
:-)
Good tag... good movie...
Some of the statements in the article are, in my opinion, blame-America-first. I didn't say Pipes was an ardent baf'er.
Please answer the questions in my previous post. I'd like to get answers to them from a defender of the "religion of peace."
Read 1200 years of history. They, the Muslims, have been at war with us for that long, we just haven’t noticed.
Well, for starters, some of them are risking their lives by ratting out terrorists to the US military. Some in Anbar Province are directly fighting al Qaeda.
Just for starters.
“Well, for starters, some of them are risking their lives by ratting out terrorists to the US military. Some in Anbar Province are directly fighting al Qaeda.
Just for starters.”
Exactly. The foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East is built on the premise of assisting the development of democracy in moderate Muslim states and turning more radical Islamic fundamentalist states into moderate Islamic states. That’s why we are investing billions in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iraq and seeking a “two state solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli problem.
Are there liberal, moderate and conservative views in Christianity and Judaism? Yes there are. Do liberal, moderate and conservative Christians and Jews interpret their holy books differently? Yes they do.
The same is true in Islam.
I dated a religiously liberal Muslim woman from Iran (an American citizen) for a couple of years. She was a Muslim but practiced the faith the same way that millions of Americans “practice” Christianity, on the holidays only.
Do folks really think that Islam is “one size fits all?” Is Halliburton moving its world headquarters to a radical Islamic state in Dubai, United Arab Emirates? Is Paul Wolfowitz dating an Islamic fundamentalist who works at the US State Department? Is our new ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad automatically a Muslim fundamentalist because he practices Islam?
gracias muchas...
You can go to Dubai and excepting the architecture and the native language being spoken, it is fairly easy to imagine you are in a western capital.
Go about 20 to 30 minutes' drive from there to Sharjah and you are in a very Islamic enclave. I received quite a scolding in Arabic from a group of women covered in black from head to toe for walking through an open-air market there in western clothing with a couple of my male co-workers. I wasn't wearing anything skimpy or snug at all...just jeans and a loose sweater. (We all sort of thought it was funny...OK, we thought it was hilarious.)
Bahrain is very bawdy and where the Saudis go for their whoring and drinking needs (when they aren't going to Dubai.) Oman is very western-friendly as is a majority of Jordan. Iraq has had secular rule for years and as a result the atmosphere is secular. (They even had a GAY SECTION, complete with discos and gay bars in Baghdad before the war, for crying out loud. Probably still do, but it's likely sort of underground now.)
Saudi Arabia and Iran are abominations. Very strict and fundamental. Kuwait has a lot of Islamic law, but tends to be pretty moderate overall and is moving more and more towards the center. Here's what surprises a lot of people: Very few countries in the Middle East outlaw alcohol. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Afghanistan are the only ones I can think of.
I'm afraid a lot of Americans tend to think all of the Middle East is like Saudi Arabia.
The truth is, while Islam is the dominant religion, (and I agree that it's a bizarre death cult) a surprising number of people in the region just don't follow it at all.
“You mention Dubai in the UAE. That brings to mind a good example of what we’re saying.
You can go to Dubai and excepting the architecture and the native language being spoken, it is fairly easy to imagine you are in a western capital.
Go about 20 to 30 minutes’ drive from there to Sharjah and you are in a very Islamic enclave. I received quite a scolding in Arabic from a group of women covered in black from head to toe for walking through an open-air market there in western clothing with a couple of my male co-workers. I wasn’t wearing anything skimpy or snug at all...just jeans and a loose sweater. (We all sort of thought it was funny...OK, we thought it was hilarious.)
Bahrain is very bawdy and where the Saudis go for their whoring and drinking needs (when they aren’t going to Dubai.) Oman is very western-friendly as is a majority of Jordan. Iraq has had secular rule for years and as a result the atmosphere is secular. (They even had a GAY SECTION, complete with discos and gay bars in Baghdad before the war, for crying out loud. Probably still do, but it’s likely sort of underground now.)
Saudi Arabia and Iran are abominations. Very strict and fundamental. Kuwait has a lot of Islamic law, but tends to be pretty moderate overall and is moving more and more towards the center. Here’s what surprises a lot of people: Very few countries in the Middle East outlaw alcohol. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Afghanistan are the only ones I can think of.
I’m afraid a lot of Americans tend to think all of the Middle East is like Saudi Arabia.
The truth is, while Islam is the dominant religion, (and I agree that it’s a bizarre death cult) a surprising number of people in the region just don’t follow it at all.”
The radical Islamic fundamentalists say the same thing about the United States as being just like Las Vegas and Hollywood and representative of the hypocrisy in the Christian “death cult” of worshipping a dead rabbi and honoring him by symbolically drinking his blood and eating his flesh.
In a thirty year period of time between 1914 and 1944 the Christians of Europe managed to slaughter better than 100 million of their fellow Christians in the greatest blood bath that the world has ever known, World Wars I and II and they also killed 6 million Jews in the process.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.