{"id":5876,"date":"2011-05-07T23:00:46","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T23:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2011-05-07T23:00:46","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T23:00:46","slug":"moderate-muslims-part-of-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/moderate-muslims-part-of-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"“Moderate” Muslims: Part of the Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cross-posted over at the Corner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

While President Obama\u2019s comment that bin Laden was \u201cnot a Muslim leader\u201d may have made good sense as propaganda, as a statement of fact it was nonsense.<\/p>\n

Writing <\/a>in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Irshad Manji reacts to the president\u2019s assertion: <\/p>\n

Bin Laden and his followers represent a real interpretation of Islam that begs to be challenged relentlessly and visibly. Why does this happen so rarely? \u201cModerate\u201d Muslims are part of the problem. As Martin Luther King Jr. taught many white Americans, in times of moral crisis, moderation cements the status quo. Today, what Islam needs is not more \u201cmoderates\u201d but more self-conscious \u201creformists.\u201d It is reformists who will bring to my faith the debate, dissent and reinterpretation that have carried Judaism and Christianity into the modern world. Sounding the call for reform is no way to win a popularity contest in the Muslim community. After the 2005 London transit bombings, I delivered a radio commentary disagreeing with Feisal Abdul Rauf, the moderate American imam who later fronted the campaign for an Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero. He had issued a statement about the London terror strikes, assuring journalists that according to the Quran, \u201cWhoever kills a human being\u2026it is as if he has killed all humankind.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNot quite,\u201d I explained with regret. \u201cThe full verse reads, \u2018Whoever kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all humankind\u201d (my emphasis). For the British jihadis, I went on, \u201cvillainy in the land\u201d describes the boot prints of U.S. soldiers in Iraqi soil. This otherwise humane Quranic passage gives aspiring holy warriors a loophole to exploit. I closed by suggesting that moderate Muslims join moderate Jews and Christians in admitting to the nasty side of all our scriptures. The following week, a Muslim acquaintance emailed me. Peeved that I would \u201cgo after moderate Muslims,\u201d she curtly counseled me to \u201cwash laundry in the backyard\u201d\u2014that is, to discuss our internal affairs privately. But what takes place among Muslims affects countless lives outside the fold, so our business is everyone\u2019s business. When it is \u201cmoderates,\u201d not extremists, who treat you as a traitor for advocating liberal democratic values, something has corrupted the moderates themselves.<\/p>\n

That something is identity politics. Even in the seemingly tolerant Muslim communities of America, the politics of identity stands in the way of reinterpretation and reform<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. <\/p>\n

Not for the first time. Not for the last. <\/p>\n

Read the whole thing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted over at the Corner: While President Obama\u2019s comment that bin Laden was \u201cnot a Muslim leader\u201d may have made good sense as propaganda, as a statement of fact it was nonsense. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Irshad Manji … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[711],"tags":[363,774,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5879,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions\/5879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}