Taking Back Islam - Moderate Muslims say their faith is compatible with Freedom.

There's an elephant in the room whenever the current U.S. operation in Iraq is discussed: Is Islam truly compatible with democracy? Or do the U.S.'s troubles in stabilizing Iraq signal that Muslims simply have no desire to live in a free, democratic society?

Right now the answers to these questions are unclear. For every modern Islamic "success story" like Turkey or Malaysia, there are Islamist nightmares like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In the United States, too, there is reason for uncertainty. American Muslims with moderate views have been either unable or unwilling to engage in public discourse. As a result, militant groups with a moderate veneer have been able to set the tone.

Earlier this spring in Phoenix, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) held a "Rally Against Terror" that gave moderate Muslims a platform on which to condemn terrorism and pledge support for the United States.

Identified by the Arizona Republic as "the nation's first Muslim rally against terrorism," the 50-minute event drew, according to various estimates, between 250 and 400 people, most of them non-Muslims.

Considering that the event was actively promoted within Phoenix's 50,000-strong Muslim community, that number is a bit disappointing. Nevertheless, AIFD Chairman Zuhdi Jasser says the rally was a positive first step for the group, which was founded in March 2003 by Muslim professionals in the Phoenix area.

"When the moderates stay silent, the radicals speak for everyone," says Jasser, a physician. "Up until now, moderates have not been articulating a moderate form of Islam which Americans can embrace. We want to take back our faith from the radicals and let them know that we are side-by-side with the U.S."

Listening to Jasser, the son of Syrian immigrants, is a breath of fresh air at a time when anti-American sentiment engulfs a large part of the Arab and Muslim world. A former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander who served as a Navy medical officer from 1988 to 1999, Jasser clearly loves his country and his faith, and sees no reason why the two cannot coexist.

"Our inspiration for this is two things," says Jasser. "Number one, at the core of the war on terror is a battle over ideology. World War II had fascism, the Cold War had Communism. Our present war has the targeting and killing of civilians in the name of religion: Islam. There needs to be a Muslim voice that speaks directly against that ideology. Secondly, there is a lack of any American Islamic institution that discusses the synergy of the U.S. Constitution with the Islamic faith. This makes it an obligation for us to be leaders in promoting a form of Islam that is tolerant and secular in nature."

"Secularism as a term is almost associated with a lack of piety," he says. "What I'm trying to say is that in America, there are many devout people who are politically active. But we don't make decisions here based on theocracy or religious views."

The values that Jasser and AIFD are promoting are deeply rooted in the American experience. Jasser is confident that Muslims in the U.S. will eventually embrace his message and realize that, as he says, "Freedom brings you closer to God."

For now, though, Jasser realizes that views like the ones he expressed in a May 25 op-ed for azcentral.com aren't likely to endear him to the al-Jazeera crowd. In the piece, titled "Iraq is Your War," Jasser listed four reasons why the U.S. is currently fighting abroad:

Change the political environment in the Middle East and we change the associated religious pathology.

"Over half of the Muslim immigrants in the U.S. came here in the past 25 years," says Jasser. "And many of them bring with them the baggage that government coercion and autonomy are necessary, just as in their former countries. We want to educate them and let them know that is not the case."

It would help if U.S. government officials and the mainstream media took notice of AIFD's efforts, rather than continuing to promote the agendas of radical Muslims with anti-American views. AIFD is attempting to increase its visibility through its website and by holding future anti-terrorism rallies.

By supporting the endeavors of AIFD and other moderate Muslim organizations, the U.S. may yet be able to avert the clash of civilizations simmering in its own backyard.

— Nir Boms is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Council for Democracy and Tolerance. Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer for the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism research institute.

my thoughts on "moderate" islam, and the inherent incompatability of Islam as presently constituted and a democratic constitutional republic such as ours are illustrated by the following excerpt from a discussion held months ago on another website:

***(text follows)***

A while ago, M_____ floated the notion that the fundamentalists/islamicists (in contrast with some notional “mainstream” Islam) are roughly comparable to the Ku Klux Klan’s relation to the various flavors of Christianity.

More accurately, he stated that moderate Muslims would make such a comparison.

Of this I have no doubt – I am sure some "moderate" Muslims would indeed attempt to divert criticism of Islam with such a statement.

While I disagree with the intent of this comparison – I believe that fundamentalist extremism is the heart and soul of Islam and incomparable to the marginal and alien KKK’s remote link to Christianity - I did find it an interesting point of departure for more thorough thinking.

First off, let us dispose with the general marginalizing comparison. Islamicists have quite literally hundreds of explicit and clear-text lines of sanctified korannic suriyah and hadith from which to draw their legitimacy. The Klan has, what? One highly debatable interpretation of one passage of Genesis (the flood, and Ham)?

While there can be no doubt that Klansmen were and are Christians (or espousing believers in that creed), the Klan itself is derived extrinsically to the Christian scriptures.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Islamicism is INTRINSIC to Islam.

Secondly, let me revisit my original and consistent statement, that “Islam is intrinsically incompatible with secular government such as our constitutional republic.” The text of the Koran and Hadith are quite explicitly clear on this. Islam demands the creation of Islamic temporal government everywhere.

This cannot be disputed, yet some have tried – by arguing against what I did NOT state.

What I did not state, yet what some disputants here seem to believe I meant, was that MUSLIMS are intrinsically incompatible with secularism. This is either deliberate misconstruction on their parts, or a very typical intellectual slovenliness of the sort I find entirely too familiar.

This sloppiness of intellect - which confuses the creed with the behavior of the adherents - has led to the great display of silly savagery I have been saddened to witness on this thread and on most others wherein this topic has been discussed.

Allow me to end this nonsense:
I have known moderate Muslims, and have no doubt that they are many in number.
I have known IMMODERATE Christians, and am under no illusions as to their numbers.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Christianity itself is intrinsically moderate in terms of temporal matters, and ISLAM is intrinsically IMMODERATE.

Now, when M_____ spoke of the Klan, I am sure he was referring to the current anemic, low-membership, heavily-surveilled, and politically impotent gang of bedsheet-wearing cross-dressers… oops, cross-BURNERS. Had he meant the Klan at its peak of power, in the 1920’s, he’d have been closer to the mark, though still off-base.

First, the islamicists are internationally funded and staffed, in a way and to an extent that the Klan never was.

Second, the Klan had an extremely narrow focus of interest: the South, period – whereas the islamicists have interests and operations spanning the entire globe.

Third, and most important, the Klan was/is not a “religion” protected by law and shielded from thorough infiltration and investigation by the law, whereas, at the moment, unfortunately, the islamicists ARE.

I would think that a better Western comparison would be to say that the islamicists are like unto the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra, or Mafia. The similarities between the groups and the etiology of their spread into host organisms (cultures and nations) are great indeed, as are the tactics of bribery and clandestine infiltration under the cover of licit and innocuous “fronts”, the invasion of new lands in the midst of demographic flow, the betrayal, the infighting, the penchant for murder, extortion, and the ever popular beating-of-chests and declamations of innocence… Indeed, both act behind the walls of their homes and centers of power as very temporal shadow-governments, with their own leaders, laws, and enforcement arms, with their own domestic and foreign policies, and with total disregard for the legitimate laws of the lands in which they take root.

Very similar, indeed, these two groups.

However, like the Klan, the Mafia is not a religion, and thus can be and is heavily pursued by the law. If only La Cosa Nostra had been witty enough to declare themselves a spin-off of Catholicism... then RICO would never have been able to touch them. < /sarc. >

Now, gentle readers, if you have any intellectual integrity, it may amuse and enlighten you to try the following textual exercise:
1. Select a few of the hundreds of excerpts I provided several posts ago
2. Remove therefrom all iterations of “Allah” and “Mohammed” (they are essentially interchangeable, de facto if not de jure), and replace all said iterations with the words “The Leader”
3. Do what you can to ignore or delete the ritual figures of speech, the incessant “peace be upon his name” et omnia generis alia, with which all Arabic is rife
4. Now, read the edited version you have just created, and ask yourself, “What does this awful hate-filled crap most sound like?”

Yes, exactly: Nazism.

Now, I ask you, have you ever heard of “moderate, mainstream Nazism”?

If you did, would you be instantly willing to accept this undemonstrated (and amply counter-demonstrated) notion?

No, I rather thought you hadn’t, rather thought you wouldn’t.

Let us continue this line of inquiry.

I am willing to accept as fact that, just as there are moderate individual Muslims, there were moderate individual Nazis. Nazis who would not themselves have been happy to pack Jews and Gypsies and Catholics into boxcars and ship them off to death-camps. Nazis who would not themselves be happy to gun down prisoners of war with machine-guns. Nazis who, though convinced of German supremacy, may have thought that going to war with the whole world was foolish or excessive. Nazis who, though they may have bought into the notion of the supremacy of the “Aryan Race”, may have thought that old Adolph was a little too rabid and went a trifle too far...

I can see that such moderate Nazis may well have existed.

But would their existence have indicated that Nazism itself was moderate?

No. Of course not. No one would be so foolish as to claim that it did.

So why is it that so many people in the West point to some handful of identifiably moderate Muslims and exclaim “Eureka - Here is Moderate Islam!”?

Why, then, are so many people so very eager to accept the totally undemonstrated and amply counter-demonstrated notion that there exists such a thing as “moderate, mainstream Islam”?

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