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Your Honey Or Your Lyin Eyes?: The myth of a vibrant moderate Islam
Little wonder that the moderate, influential Muslim Council of Britain refers to Qaradawi as "a voice of reason, understanding and wisdom." Indeed, with moderates like these abounding, how surprised should we be to find Secretary Rice herself while very publicly hosting an Iftaar dinner to mark the end of the "holy month" of Ramadan bestowing a federal promotion on the Muslim Umma, whose creed, she announced, is now the "religion of love" as well as the firmly entrenched "religion of peace." (The ACLU was evidently unavailable for comment.) "We in America," Rice effused, "know the benevolence that is at the heart of Islam."A MIRAGE At least we say we do. And we repeat it with all the sincerest, heel-clicking fervor of Dorothy's chanting "There's no place like home" while she hopes against hope that all will be well when she opens her eyes. We all want to believe there is a vibrant "moderate Islam." Not just the State Department, the CIA, the Bush administration, the European Union, and the West, but all people of good will. Nonetheless, the contemporary vision of "moderate Islam" as a meaningful force for good is a mirage. Certainly there are moderate Muslim individuals. Large pockets of them, there and there, who have assimilated to the modern world and want only to live in ecumenical peace. But many of the people we call "moderates" are flat-out phonies, the bag-men who rise on the shoulders of the leg-breakers. The authentic moderates, meanwhile, tarry in muted resistance to the domineering strain of their faith. The strain we like to tell ourselves is a mere fringe. The strain that has just managed, yet again, to unleash untold thousands (not handfuls of militants, but transcontinental thousands) to maraud over a trifling affront. The moderates must carry on by pretending, much like the State Department pretends, that the commands of their scriptures toward brutality, beheading, conquest, death to unbelievers, eternal damnation to apostates, the subjugation of women, the dehumanizing of non-Muslims, and so on either do not exist or have somehow been superseded (even though the Koran is said to reflect the words of Allah Himself, and even though much in it of a threatening nature actually comes later in time than the passages bespeaking moderation and tolerance). RTWT Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-02-15 |
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