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| The Alliance |
| Thatcher criticism angers Muslim leaders |
| 2001-10-05 |
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has angered Muslim leaders in Britain by criticizing them for not speaking out louder against the Sept. 11 attacks. Scholars of Islam in the United States, where Muslim leaders from a broad spectrum of Islamic organizations by and large have spoken with one voice in condemning the attacks, disagree on whether Thatcher's criticism is founded. "They must say that it was disgraceful," Thatcher told the Times of London in an interview published Thursday. "I have not heard enough from Muslim priests." Thatcher has a basic misunderstanding of how the Muslim world operates, evidenced even in her choice of the word "priest" to describe Muslim teachers, said Abdullahi An-Naim, an Emory University professor of law who specializes in Islamic law and international relations. "We have to think of an extremely diversified and decentralized Islam," said An-Naim, a native of Sudan who is Muslim. "There is nothing like the Catholic Church or even a clergy idea." Thatcher and many other Western commentators "are projecting a vision of how Islam is organized. The notion of clergy as a spokesperson on behalf of their communities is a Western Christian idea that doesn't pertain to the Islamic world." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |