BOSTON — Even for those who do not follow such affairs closely,
it is no secret that radical Islam has settled a rather large piece
of real estate in cyberspace. Al Qaeda and a host of other terror
groups have used websites as a tool for boasting, for bloody
self-promotion and, with more serious implications, to send coded
signals to cells, thus commencing terror attacks. Throw the word
“martyr” into Google and you will find thousands of extremist sites
celebrating the lives and times of suicide bombers.
With any luck, however, those days of murderous electronic
mayhem may have reached the high water mark. In recent months,
enterprising American Muslims have taken to this same electronic
superhighway, so plagued and congested with hate, to argue for a
more healthy approach to the interpretation and practice of Islam
(i.e. doesn’t champion the slaughter of all infidels).
One of these sites is maintained by the Free Muslim Coalition
Against Terrorism , a non-profit group founded by Kamal Nawash,
a former Virginia State Senate candidate who once made the
ill-advised decision to briefly defend Abdurahman Alamoudi against charges that he was
cavorting with and receiving cash from Libyan jihadists, charges
Alamoudi later pleaded guilty to in federal court. To his credit,
Nawash has of late taken a much bolder stand against terrorism than
most American Muslim organizations have been willing to.
The mission statement found on the FMCAT website condemns the
“sympathetic support for terrorists by Muslim leaders and
intellectuals” as “a dangerous trend” and further encourages
Muslims and Arabs to “be proud of their faith and at the same time
critical.” It continues: “Muslims are the only ones who can resolve
the problem of terror in Islam, and sadly until the founding of
this Coalition, they were the only group who had not definitively
spoken up against the use of terror.”
Last week Nawash made worldwide headlines with an op-ed,
entitled, “We are so Sorry for 9-11.” In it Nawash scolds Muslims
for lazily blaming every evil in the world on “an imaginary Jewish
conspiracy” and issues a stinging indictment of even the moderate
Muslim’s passivity towards atrocity:
After numerous admissions of guilt by Bin Laden and
numerous corroborating admissions by captured top level Al-Qaeda
operatives, we wonder, does the Muslim leadership have the dignity
and courage to apologize for 9-11? If not 9-11, will we apologize
for the murder of school children in Russia? If not Russia, will we
apologize for the train bombings in Madrid, Spain? If not Spain,
will we apologize for suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and
other public places? If not suicide bombings, will we apologize for
the barbaric beheadings of human beings? If not beheadings, will we
apologize for the rape and murder of thousands of innocent people
in Darfour? If not Darfour, will we apologize for the blowing up of
two Russian planes by Muslim women? What will we apologize for?
What will it take for Muslims to realize that those who commit mass
murder in the name of Islam are not just a few fringe
elements?
Muslim Wake
Up!, another, more established moderate Muslim website, has
posted more than 800 articles posted and receives more than 90,000
hits per month. The site’s founders, Ahmed Nassef and Jawad Ali,
claim this makes it the most popular Internet stop for North
American Muslims, although that seems an exceedingly difficult
claim to prove. Still it is clear that the site’s message of a
“free exchange of ideas, in an atmosphere that is filled with
compassion and free of intimidation, authoritarianism, and
dogmatism” is reaching a significant number of people.
And there is an element of bravery here. One of the most recent
essays on the site is an account by Inas Younis of how as a young
Afghani teenager she subscribed to the primitive interpretation of
Islam held by the rebels who would eventually found the Taliban
theocracy. Younis lays out in detail how she came to believe what
the Taliban said and also the humiliation and degradation of living
as a woman under Islamic fundamentalist rule. Today, as a 30 year
old woman no longer under their spell, she lashes out in anger at
those who oppressed her in the name of piety.
“If the things we cannot explain and do not understand are the
means by which we seek to reinforce our belief in God’s presence,
if accepting religious law submissively without question, laws and
fatwas which are not grounded in intellect but on vague
interpretations of revelation, are the greatest reinforcement we
have of the validity of any religious claim, then the measure of
faith in God becomes contingent on the degree to which one is
willing to forgo logic,” Younis writes.
Another article by Asra Nomani questions the increasing trend in
American mosques of treating women as substandard.
“Nothing in the Quran restricts a woman’s access to a mosque,”
Nomani writes. “Muslim women, with men supporting them, should obey
the Qur’anic command to fight the zulm, or ‘oppression,’
that denies women fundamental rights, their civil rights —
especially in America with its strong tradition of fighting for
fundamental freedoms.”
STRONG STUFF, BUT Muslim Wake Up! is not without its critics.
Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, in particular, is
not so enamored of a group that has a section on its website
called, “Hug a Jew,” but only showcases Jews who are anti-Israel.
“All Nassef is doing by hugging his right-thinking Jewish friends
is letting us all know that Islamic totalitarianism is not the only
source of the Muslim world’s rejection of the Jewish people’s right
to freedom and self-determination,” she writes.
It’s true that neither of these sites is particularly sensitive
to Israel’s plight. But nevertheless they are willing unequivocally
to condemn terrorist acts against the Jewish state, as well as take
to task the corrupt authoritarian governments that surround it. All
civilized people condemn the Palestinian terror campaign against
Israel, but when the killing stops, no matter how one feels about
the situation, a political problem remains. Now that the Bush
Administration, the Israeli government, and most nations of the
world have agreed on the eventuality of a Palestinian state, it is
inevitable that there will be serious and complicated disagreements
about how to proceed. Palestinians and Israelis will have opposing
interests in many areas. The goal here, and one that moderate
Muslim voices will certainly help foster, is to end these murderous
rampages sanctioned by sick-minded Imams so that the world can set
about making happen what they have all agreed on in principle.
To be clear, radical Islam is a curse on the world, killing
innocent civilians on every continent. Hopefully, the core message
of websites like Muslim Wake Up and the Free Muslim Coalition
Against Terrorism — that violence and oppression in the name of
Islam is unacceptable by any standard — will eventually capture
many minds that otherwise would go on to become martyrs and
madmen.
