Fighting for the Soul of Islam
8 April US News and World Report - Fighting for the Soul of Islam by Jay Tolson.
Quote:
Americans have heard it repeatedly since September 11: The acts of terrorism inflicted on our shore were the murderous consequences of an ongoing struggle within Islam. At its most dramatic extremes, that conflict pits radical jihadists against moderate Muslims. But a quieter front in the struggle is probably of greater import. It involves the millions of Muslims who are being wooed by the proselytizers of a puritanical, and often highly politicized, strain of the faith. This volatile blend of Saudi Wahhabi Islam and political Islam-dubbed Islamism by one of its early-20th-century founders-is the assembly line of future jihadists, some experts hold, and its agents are busy indoctrinating young Muslims from Lahore to Los Angeles.
The outcome of this clash will bear directly on the course of the war on terrorism by answering the most fundamental question: Is mainstream Islam compatible with democracy and basic rights and freedoms established by international law?
While the stakes of this struggle are enormously high, American and European efforts to make sense of it have so far proved to be inadequate. A new Rand report, only the most recent such critique, charges that the U.S. government-almost six years after 9/11-still lacks a "consistent view on who the moderates are, where the opportunities for building networks among them lie, and how best to build the networks."...
Rand Report - Building Moderate Muslim Networks by Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz and Peter Sickle.
Quote:
Radical and dogmatic interpretations of Islam have gained ground in recent years in many Muslim societies via extensive Islamist networks spanning the Muslim world and the Muslim diaspora communities of North America and Europe. Although a majority throughout the Muslim world, moderates have not developed similar networks to amplify their message and to provide protection from violence and intimidation. With considerable experience fostering networks of people committed to free and democratic ideas during the Cold War, the United States has a critical role to play in leveling the playing field for Muslim moderates. The authors derive lessons from the U.S. and allied Cold War network-building experience, determine their applicability to the current situation in the Muslim world, assess the effectiveness of U.S. government programs of engagement with the Muslim world, and develop a “road map” to foster the construction of moderate Muslim networks...
The Constitution and Al Qu'ran
Our dialouge typifies the cultural incongruence that is manifesinting in spilled blood all over the planet. To quote from the Sufi Poet Rumi:
"Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?"
We both are probably not quite what and who we appear to be here and I think we can both agree that it is a good day to die, so there can then be peace too, somehow, but if I and my kind are bound only by honor and blood to the Laws of our nation and the men of AQ by honor and blood are bound only to Allah, who is to mediate and who can convince us of their worthiness to be heard and heeded? The merchants? The women? The children? The Poets? The Priests and Imams? The wretched politicians? ...?
Fitnah and Sleeping Giants
This old hillbilly only knows that the giant that went back to sleep on 9/2/45 has been kicked awake again.
"The one You kill,
Lord,
Does not smell of blood,
And the one You burn
Does not reek of smoke.
He You burn laughs as he burns
And the one You kill,
As You kill him,
Cries out in ecstasy."
(Sheikh Ansari)
That's a two-way street, hoss. The principle ideological failure of the jihadist is in fully comprhending our history, that death at the personal level often becomes secondary, even irrelevant, to completing the mission, where duty and honor supplant Divine Will.
To Capitulate Or To Catapult......
Personally, I have never had a problem with the notion of waging war on terrorism. It hasn't been too long ago that we killed a terrorist named Timothy McVeigh and locked up his accomplice for life. Another guy by the name of David Koresh, whom I personally regarded as a terrorist, was burned up along with all of his followers. I regard spousal abuse as terrorism and street gangs that roam the streets and cause citizens to be fearful and stay in their homes at night are in my opinion terrorists. We deal with it in the name of the State, not the in the name of God. We wage war on people who burn crosses on Black people's lawns by incarcerating them. When Officials directly insert religious values into the discharge of their duties, they get removed from office rather quickly. War per se is not about just killing. We in the West already support any and all manner of religions that defer their power to the power of the State and are willing to keep themselves separate from the State in matters of commerce, war, governance and Law and remain subservient. Any religion that will act accordingly is moderate and not a threat to the collective will of the people (the State) and may function freely in its distinct and unique interpretation of the Divine.
Most in the West do not demonize any religion. We pretty much tend to ignore them, unless we are direct participants of a given religion. I resent the pacifism of the Amish and Quakers as much as I resent the idea that Quranic law should be applied in Muslim divorce cases in America. The Judaic and Islamic ban on eating pork is absurd in my opinion because canine teeth evolved for the purpose of eating anything we can kill. One could say that when I eat bacon, I am demonizing Jews and Muslims. That is hardly the case.
I think for the West to be seen as not demonizing Islam would require us to capitulate to a certain extent to Divine Will, as understood by Islam. That in turn would require us to catapult basic tenets of the Constitution out of our lives.
A Jew For Me, A Jew For You: The Real Price of Mutuality
"Supporting Muslims to the hilt in a culturally sensitive manner" would require reciprocity on the part of our new partners, the moderate Islamic entities, namely in expecting the new partners to treat our allies as we ourselves would be treated in the new partnership. That would involve acknowledging Israel's right to exist for starters, to boldly go where few Islamic entities have gone before. Are you sure you want to turn that kind of a new page in human history? Rather, I should ask, are you capable of this? Prepare your camp then to shake hands with little Israel so that we may all proceed to trample the graves of the Salafists togather as one.