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Moderate
Voices of Islam
“
"You will sooner or later pay for your pack of lies," read
one threatening message last week to the author of The
Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change.
In that
book, just released in Canada, Irshad Manji, 34, explores
such usually taboo themes as anti-Semitism, slavery and the
inferior treatment of women with what she calls an "utmost
honesty."
"Grow up!" she scolds Muslims. "And take responsibility for
our role in what ails Islam."
Although
a TV journalist and personality, Manji - a practicing Muslim
- brings real insight to her subject. "I appreciate that
every faith has its share of literalists. Christians have
their Evangelicals. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For God's
sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists. But what this
book hammers home is that only in Islam is literalism
mainstream."
For her
efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant,"
"a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of
both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims.
This
outpouring of hostility prompted Manji to hire a guard and
install bullet proof glass in her house. The Toronto police
acknowledge "a very high level of awareness" about her
security.
Manji's
predicament is unfortunately all too typical of what
courageous, moderate, modern Muslims face when they speak
out against the scourge of militant Islam. Her experience
echoes the threats against the lives of such writers as
Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.
And
non-Muslims wonder why anti-Islamist Muslims in western
Europe and North America are so quiet?
Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives,
unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad
- are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their
individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant
Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and
violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia
and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and
appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.
But
anti-Islamist Muslims not only exist; in the two years since
9/11, they have increasingly found their voice. They are a
varied lot, sharing neither a single approach nor one
agenda. Some are pious, some not, and others are
freethinkers or atheists. Some are conservative, others
liberal. They share only a hostility to the Wahhabi,
Khomeini and other forms of militant Islam.
They are
starting to produce books that challenge the Islamists'
totalitarian vision. Abdelwahab Meddeb of the Sorbonne wrote
the evocatively titled Malady of Islam, in which he
compares militant Islam to Nazism. Akbar Ahmed of American
University wrote Islam Under Siege, calling for
Muslims to respect non-Muslims.”
Moderate voices of Islam
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1255
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