Daniel Pipes puts it most eloquently, but the prevailing consensus is that the solution to "radical Islam" is "moderate Moslems." Although this makes sense, it never sounded quite right to me. And now I think I know why:
- "Moderate" generally means "someone I often agree with," and doesn't have any meaning beyond that. To a Republican, a "moderate Democrat" is someone who is more conservative than most Democrats; a Democrat will characterize as moderate a Republican who is more liberal than most. "Moderate" is a synonym for "agreeable," and that's a meaningless concept.
- To the extent that any religion attracts committed followers, a less-than-committed - or is it "moderate?" - Muslim is not likely to attract the interest of a lot of devout Moslems. There's something offensive about the notion that Muslims should learn to lighten up to become more agreeable. The deeply religious Muslim who distances himself/herself from Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, etc., is probably a far better solution than someone who moderates his/her religious convictions to be more agreeable to outsiders.
- I fully recognize that Middle Eastern terrorist groups consider themselves religious, but I'm far from convinced that religion is the cause of their murderous ways. Far from useful, in my view, is to take issue with the political causes these groups are trying to promote. These are based on nationalist ideologies that seem to exist independently of religion. I think it confuses things to even mix Islam into the picture - better to say "nationalist terrorists" and leave religion out of it.
This means that Pipes could rephrase his slogan to say "the solution to radical Arab nationalism lies in democratic movements in the Arab world," and no Muslims would need to worry. As for the religious rhetoric of terrorist groups, the smartest thing would be to ignore it .
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