Volume of postings aside, I take second place to no FReeper in unabashedly exposing, confronting and denouncing the Islamist movement. It metaphysically negates core, essential and universal values of Western liberalism (in the sense of what that term used to mean before it was ceded to the left early in this century) that must never be abandoned or compromised.
But because these are indeed universal values in question, they should be embodied in some effective form in any acceptable human society. I refuse to compromise the universality of these ideas, or weaken their practical potency in transforming any region of the globe, by associating them in any way with xenophobia, nativism or bigotry. Unfortunately many FReepers are apparently incapable of such distinctions.
On a more mundane level I am very worried that we are in some ways strengthening Western Islamists by tacitly affirming their campaign to (falsely) portray themselves as representative Muslim spokespeople or leaders. This lie -- that CAIR, AMC and other elements of the Wahhabi Lobby broadly represent Western Muslims -- should be exposed as energetically as the rest of their deceptions. Instead many FReepers, even most FReepers, enthusiastically endorse it.
The media is also at fault here (broadcast more so than print). I see an endless stream of wahhabists (and various fellow travelers) on my television screen every night, uncontestedly ceded the role of Arab or Muslim "representatives," but I virtually never see or even hear of a Khaled El Fadl, or a Khalid Duran (who wrote this article with Daniel Pipes, and assisted Steve Emerson with research for American Jihad), or a Tashbih Sayyed (whose California based Pakistan Today uses the term "homicide bomber," and refers in a news piece to last Tuesday's bus bombing in Jerusalem as "An Act Of Evil Beyond Words"). There are large numbers of genuinely moderate, or otherwise anti-Islamist, Muslims in this country and elsewhere in the West (secularists; modernists; pious traditionalists; Kurds, Sufis and scores of other sects frequently oppressed by Islamists; etc) who are being dangerously ignored by conservatives and by the popular media. Here is a quote from the Pipes/Duran article:
Western institutions and governments should support Muslim moderates. By moderates, we mean individuals and organizations unambiguously committed to democracy, pluralism, and secularism. They explore alternatives to the rigid ritualism of legalist orthodoxy, emphasize ecumenism (fraternal relations with Christians and Jews) and equality of the sexes. Some are religiously committed, others are not. They come disproportionately from minority (e.g., Berber, Kurd, Alevi) Muslim populations.Moderates have strengths in Muslim communities. Turkish teachers in German schools, for example, tend toward staunch secularism; the court decision to ban swimming for Turkish girls upset them considerably. Similarly, professionals prefer a modern-oriented version of Islam.
A strong lobby against the chador and other manifestations of Islamism exist, especially Germany, also in France. It consists of educated first- and second-generation Turkish women who use their influence to curb Islamist activities and to guarantee the freedom of Muslim women.
Moderates have intellectual firepower, for many of their most original thinkers have fled their repressive homelands and taken up residence in the West. In Europe and America, Muslim intellectuals work without the political oppression that reigns in so many Muslim countries; political stability, religious tolerance, cultural pluralism, and freedom of expression permit them to break new ground for the entire world of Islam. The Muslim debate over changing values is discussed more honestly and profoundly in the United States and Western Europe than anywhere else, certainly far more so than in Iran or Sudan. As a result, Kanan Makiya observes, "Europe has replaced Beirut as a haven for quality books in Arabic and on the Middle East."
A galaxy of outstanding Muslim scholars have found at Western universities the opportunity to research and teach denied them at home. Prominent names include Pakistanis Fazlur Rahman in Chicago and Ishtiyaq Ahmed in Stockholm, Algerians Mohamed Arkoun (Paris) and Ali Merad (Lyon), Egyptians Fathi Osman (Los Angeles) and Zaki Badawi (London), the Sudanese Abdallahi Ahmed An-Na'im (Washington), the Yugoslav Smail Balic (Vienna), and the Iranian Sayyid Hossein Nasr (Washington). Some Sufi spiritual masters and their disciples, including the Moroccans Khalid Bentounes (Belgium and France) and Jabrane Sebnat (Sweden and Germany), are decidedly modernist.
The Western public and its media must not lump Islamists and moderate Muslims together. In particular, they need to understand that Islamists constitute a minority of the Muslim populations in their midst. Not to recognize this undermines all those opposed to the Middle Eastern regimes. Although many Iranians fled Iran precisely to get away from the mullahs, Americans wrongly assume that the Iranians living in their midst are associated with the Khomeini regime.
To penalize all Muslims for the antics of a few extremists is deeply unfair. Indeed, this is a form of double jeopardy, whereby the moderates suffer from the outside world which sees them as extremists and the fundamentalists who see them as sell-outs. The powers in the Islamic world spurn them; the West perceives them as just another brand of Islamists; and Islamists attack them relentlessly, calling them Communists and Free Masons. (Their problem recalls the predicament of law-abiding blacks in the United States, punished once by whites, who see them as criminally-inclined, and a second time by black criminals, who prey especially on them.)
Let us fight evil where ever we find it, but let us defend good where ever we find it as well.