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September 2, 2010
Re: The WSJ's Search For the Elusive 'Moderate Muslim' (like finding the holy grail)
Topics: Political News and commentariesThe WSJ asked Anwar Ibrahim, Bernard Lewis, Ed Husain, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Tawfik Hamid and Akbar Ahmed to reflect on the nature of, what Robert Spencer describes as, that ever-elusive unicorn, moderate Islam.
And as one might expect - not one of these analysts seem to know, or to even be able to point to it.
Interestingly, back in November 2006, liberal Islam-reformist Irshad Manji defended the Pope's quote of an obscure Christian emperor who linked Islam to violence (readers may recall that no sooner than the Pope utter the words, almost as if on cue, Muslims around the world reacted angrily, some resorting to the very violence that they denied plays any role in their faith). Days later when Manji delivered a television commentary about why, as a faithful Muslim, she didn't believe the Pope needed to apologize, that Muslims resent it when non-Muslims reduce the Quran to its most bloodthirsty passages, so why were Muslims reducing the Pope's speech to a mere few words? The emails she received in response were telling, and they essentially made her point for her. Irshad Manji, a liberal Muslim who advocates reform of Islam, was attacked by so-called "moderate" Muslims essentially because she wasn't "Islamist" enough.
As Manji wrote in the Sunday Times:
Fortunately, more and more Muslims are proclaiming that it’s time for a liberal Islamic reformation. Two groups that powerfully attest to this movement are the Democratic Muslims of Denmark and their off-shoot, the Critical Muslims, both of which emerged from the Danish cartoon wars.Just a thought. While I'm surely no expert on Islam, perhaps the difficulty in defining a "moderate" Muslim is that "moderate" Islam doesn't exist in the first place and that the degree of which a Muslim is moderate depends solely upon the degree that a given Muslim adheres to his or her faith. In other words, the only Muslim that can actually be considered a moderate is a Muslim that has been "reformed" - distanced his or her self from Islam. Put another way, the problem with Islam is Islam itself, and it's not enough for a moderate Muslim to simply proclaim themselves a moderate - they must distance themselves from following Islam's tenets.It's revealing that neither group calls itself the "Moderate Muslims." Their members considered doing so. But in the end, they couldn't agree on what "moderate" means. Maybe that's because it means too little. Suppose more of us aimed to be reform-minded instead
Related: In Search of Moderate Muslims
Posted by Abdul at September 2, 2010 12:00 PM
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