| Moderate
Muslims?
By Daniel Pipes
 There
is good news to report: the idea that "militant Islam is the
problem, moderate Islam is the solution" is finding greater
acceptance over time. But there is also bad news, namely growing
confusion over who really is a moderate Muslim. This means that
the ideological side of the war on terror is making some, but only
limited, progress.
The
good news: Anti-Islamist Muslims are finding their voice since 9/11.
Their numbers include distinguished academics such as Azar Nafisi
(Johns Hopkins), Ahmed al-Rahim (formerly of Harvard), Kemal Silay
(Indiana), and Bassam Tibi (Göttingen). Important Islamic figures
like Ahmed Subhy Mansour and Muhammad Hisham Kabbani are speaking
out.
Organizations
are coming into existence. The American Islamic Forum for Democracy,
headed by Zuhdi Jasser, is active in Phoenix, Arizona. The Free
Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism appears to be genuinely anti-Islamist,
despite my initial doubts about its founder, Kamal Nawash.
Internationally,
an important petition posted a month ago by a group of liberal Arabs
calls for a treaty banning religious incitement to violence and
specifically names "sheikhs of death" (such as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
of Al-Jazeera television), demanding that they be tried before an
international court. Over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries
rapidly signed this petition.
With
time, individual Muslims are finding their voice to condemn Islamist
connections to terrorism. Perhaps most outstanding is an article
by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi journalist in London: "It
is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists," he
writes, "but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful,
that almost all terrorists are Muslims. … We cannot clear
our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has
become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented
by Muslim men and women."
Other
analysts have followed al-Rashed’s example. Osama El-Ghazali
Harb writes from Egypt that "Muslim and Arab intellectuals
and opinion leaders must confront and oppose any attempt to excuse
the barbaric acts of these [terrorist] groups on the grounds of
the suffering endured by Muslims." From Virginia, Anouar Boukhars
holds that "Terrorism is a Muslim problem, and refusal to admit
so is indeed troubling."
The
bad news: There are lots of fake-moderates parading about, and they
can be difficult to identify, even for someone like me who devotes
much attention to this topic. The Council on American-Islamic Relations
still wins mainstream support and the Islamic Society of North America
still sometimes hoodwinks the U.S. government. The brand-new Progressive
Muslim Union wins rave reviews for its alleged moderation from gullible
journalists, despite much of its leadership (Salam Al-Marayati,
Sarah Eltantawi, Hussein Ibish, Ali Abunimah) being well-known extremists.
Fortunately,
the authorities kept both Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf Islam out of the
United States, but Khaled Abou El Fadl got through and, worse, received
a presidential appointment.
Even
anti-terrorist rallies are not always what they seem to be. On Nov.
21, several thousand demonstrators, some of them Muslim, marched
under banners proclaiming "Together for Peace and against Terror"
in Cologne, Germany. Marchers shouted "No to terror" and
politicians made feel-good statements. But the Cologne demonstration,
coming soon after the murder of Theo van Gogh on Nov. 2, served
as a clever defense operation. The organizer of the event, the Islamist
Diyanet Isleri Türk-Islam Birligi, used it as a smokescreen
to fend off pressure for real change. Speeches at the demonstration
included no mea culpas or calls for introspection, only apologetics
for jihad and invocations of stale and empty slogans such as "Islam
means peace."
This
complex, confusing record points to several conclusions:
- Islamists
note the urge to find moderate Muslims and are learning how to
fake moderation. Over time, their camouflage will undoubtedly
further improve.
- Figuring
out who’s who is a high priority. It may be obvious that
Osama bin Laden is Islamist and Irshad Manji anti-Islamist, but
plenty of Muslims are in the murky middle. An unresolved debate
has raged for years in Turkey whether the current prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an Islamist or not.
-
The task of identifying true moderates cannot be done through
guesswork and intuition; for proof, note the U.S. government’s
persistent record of supporting Islamists by providing them with
legitimacy, education, and (perhaps even) money. I too have made
my share of mistakes. What’s needed is serious, sustained
research.
Daniel
Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org)
is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction
Publishers).
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