Pacific Daily News readers who posted online asking where the "moderate" Muslims are, why they have been quiet, may not have read enough.
Born and raised a Muslim, I have written in this space since Sept. 11, 2001, about Islam and radical Islam.
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Had it not been for the struggle for Islam's soul between majority traditional Muslims, who believe and practice Islam as a religion of peace, and the small but growing numbers of radical Islamists, who chop heads and limbs, bomb mosques, schools and markets, I wouldn't feel a need to write about Islam.
My God says: "You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion" (109:6), and He instructs Prophet Muhammad: "(O Muhammad) remind, for you are one to remind, you are not their overlord" (80:21-22), and "you are not to overawe them by force" (50:45).As radical Islamists have hijacked Islam and speak in Islam's name, it is a tactical mistake to neglect traditional Muslims, attack Islam, stereotype Muslims as murderers, echo Islamists' voices and views, and thereby legitimize Islamists. It's arrogant for non-Muslims to claim to know the "true" faith of the world's fastest-growing religion better than the believers, as if 1.5 billion Muslims are all nuts.
The Koran describes Muslims as "those who restrain anger and pardon people; Allah loves the doers of good (to others)" (3:134); and teaches, "when you hear Allah's verses rejected and mocked at (by people), do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse" (4:140).
Last Sept. 18, I watched a Canadian feminist Muslim speak on CBS's "freeSpeech." Born in Uganda to Muslim parents of Egyptian and Indian descent, Irshad Manji and family fled to Canada when she was 2, as Idi Amin expelled South Asians. Her book, "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith" is published in 25 languages.
As tension raged after Pope Benedict's speech at Regensburg University about a 14th century Byzantine emperor's castigation of Prophet Muhammad's teaching as "evil and inhuman," Manji said on CBS, "As a faithful Muslim, I do not believe the pope should have apologized" for what he said, because, "Actually, he called for dialogue with the Muslim world."
"To ignore that larger context and to focus on a mere few words of the speech is like reducing the Koran, Islam's holy book, to its most bloodthirsty passages," Manji declared. "We Muslims hate it when people do that. The hypocrisy of doing this to the pope stinks to high heaven."
"Yet some Muslims have gone further," Manji charged, and cited West Bank churches being firebombed, the London protesters' banner "Islam will take Rome," and the Catholic nun who was murdered in Somalia.
"Coincidence? I think not," she affirmed.
The Koran teaches Muslims to think, and "to reflect far more than to retaliate," she said; "God told the Prophet Muhammad to 'read.'" She urged Muslims to "Read the pope's speech -- in its entirety -- and you'll see that his message of reason, reconciliation and conversation would make him a better Muslim than most of us."
Meanwhile, the March 1, 2006, National Review Online published "A Muslim Manifesto" by Mustafa Akyol, a writer and journalist based in Turkey, and Zeyno Baran, a political economist at The Nixon Center. The 10-paragraph manifesto ends with "we strongly disagree with and condemn those who promote or practice tyranny and violence in the name of Islam."
In the Dec. 30, 2005, Wall Street Journal's "Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam," Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, spoke of Osama bin Laden obtaining a "religious verdict, ... justifying the use of nuclear weapons against America and the infliction of mass casualties."
Wahid asked, "Can anyone doubt that those who joyfully incinerate the occupants of office buildings, commuter trains, hotels and nightclubs would leap at the chance to magnify their damage a thousandfold?" He asked the world to "set aside our international and partisan bickering, and join to confront the danger that lies before us."
In the May 23, 2006, Washington Post's "Extremism Isn't Islamic Law," Wahid posited that "Western involvement in this 'struggle for the soul of Islam' is a matter of self-preservation for the West."
Someone said people needed images of traditional Muslims speaking out.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who partnered with veteran film-maker Martyn Burke to direct and produce "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center" for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's "America at a Crossroads," had sharp words for CPB in the Apr. 13 National Review Online's "PBS at a Crossroads, Why is a film on moderate Islam being suppressed?" and in the April 30 Townhall.com's "Where are the liberal non-Muslims?"
The film wasn't aired, because, Gaffney charged, CPB judged it "unfair" to "conservative imams" and Islamists, "shown denouncing, threatening and, in one case, proposing to murder the moderate Muslims (in the Gaffney and Burke) profile."
Gaffney claimed the film "features compelling stories of anti-Islamist Muslims who have had the courage to stand up" to Islamists.
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