Brave Muslim moderates continue to press for reforms
Some live in the shadow of death threats,
some have already paid with their lives
often complain that the West looks their way only when there is something negative to say about Islam and its people. This time, they have a point.
A most extraordinary event took place this month in St. Petersburg, Fla., and it received only scant attention outside the blogosphere. The Secular Islam Summit brought together about 200 delegates determined to speak their mind about the direction of the Muslim world and to redraw the battle lines of today’s overarching ideological conflict.
Describing themselves as “secular persons of Muslim societies,” and explaining that they are “believers, doubters, and unbelievers,” they redefined the battle as “a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.”
Delegates asserted the need to separate “personal faith” from “political doctrine” and they reaffirmed the equality of all people – including Christians, Jews, Hindus and non-believers. That sounds tame in Florida, but in some Muslim countries it’s downright revolutionary.
The two dozen speakers who rose to the podium represent a most extraordinary sampling of the sheer courage one can find among passionately moderate Muslims. Many of them live in the shadow of death threats from angry extremists and of fatwas from religious authorities. Others have already paid with their lives for speaking of the need for reform in the Muslim world.
The list of those who signed the St. Petersburg Declaration includes such truly heroic figures as Mithal Al-Alusi, the progressive Iraqi legislator whose two sons were murdered before of his eyes after he travelled to Israel for an anti-terrorism conference in 2004. Despite continuing attempts on his life, he takes every opportunity to stand up for democracy and say that secular, not religious law should govern Iraq and the Middle East. The first signature on the declaration is that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali refugee who rose to become a member of the Dutch parliament. Now living in the United States, she remains a fierce advocate for the rights of Muslim women, as well as a critic of Europe’s tolerance of Muslim extremism in its midst.
Hirsi Ali’s partner in the production of a controversial movie about Islam, filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered and nearly beheaded by a Dutch Muslim radical. The assassin stabbed a letter, a death threat addressed to Hirsi Ali, into the lifeless body of his victim. The threat shook her, but did not silence her.
Other delegates, such as Irshad Manji and Nonie Darwish, have spoken against the virulent anti-Semitism that permeates radical and not-so-radical Islam. Darwish, an Egyptian, is founder of ArabsforIsrael.com.
The list goes on, a Who’s Who of intellectual and moral firepower in the Muslim world. It includes people who no longer consider themselves Muslim, as well as those who describe themselves as devoted believers, but want religious reform and an end to political Islam.
If you want to become deeply unpopular in the Middle East and the Muslim world, you speak well of Israel. If you want to get killed, you criticize the way Islam is practised in too much of the Muslim world. That’s why it is nothing short of inspiring that a group of people – Muslims, no less – got together to publicly “demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of powerhungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.” Talk about fighting words.
It’s not surprising that Muslim organizations scoff at the work of these activists. After all, they are calling for an overhaul of the status quo. The status quo doesn’t like that. What is surprising is how little attention the U.S. and international media pay to their work. Perhaps the fear of offending those who call themselves the official representatives of Muslims keeps Westerners from shining a spotlight on those who threaten the Muslim establishment.
The next time a Muslim extremist commits an act of murder and people in the West cry out, “Where are the Muslim moderates?” remember this group, and read the amazing document called the St. Petersburg Declaration. You can find it at www.SecularIslam.org.
http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
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Some live in the shadow of death threats,
some have already paid with their lives
FRIDA GHITIS
Muslimsoften complain that the West looks their way only when there is something negative to say about Islam and its people. This time, they have a point.
A most extraordinary event took place this month in St. Petersburg, Fla., and it received only scant attention outside the blogosphere. The Secular Islam Summit brought together about 200 delegates determined to speak their mind about the direction of the Muslim world and to redraw the battle lines of today’s overarching ideological conflict.
Describing themselves as “secular persons of Muslim societies,” and explaining that they are “believers, doubters, and unbelievers,” they redefined the battle as “a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.”
Delegates asserted the need to separate “personal faith” from “political doctrine” and they reaffirmed the equality of all people – including Christians, Jews, Hindus and non-believers. That sounds tame in Florida, but in some Muslim countries it’s downright revolutionary.
The two dozen speakers who rose to the podium represent a most extraordinary sampling of the sheer courage one can find among passionately moderate Muslims. Many of them live in the shadow of death threats from angry extremists and of fatwas from religious authorities. Others have already paid with their lives for speaking of the need for reform in the Muslim world.
The list of those who signed the St. Petersburg Declaration includes such truly heroic figures as Mithal Al-Alusi, the progressive Iraqi legislator whose two sons were murdered before of his eyes after he travelled to Israel for an anti-terrorism conference in 2004. Despite continuing attempts on his life, he takes every opportunity to stand up for democracy and say that secular, not religious law should govern Iraq and the Middle East. The first signature on the declaration is that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali refugee who rose to become a member of the Dutch parliament. Now living in the United States, she remains a fierce advocate for the rights of Muslim women, as well as a critic of Europe’s tolerance of Muslim extremism in its midst.
Hirsi Ali’s partner in the production of a controversial movie about Islam, filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered and nearly beheaded by a Dutch Muslim radical. The assassin stabbed a letter, a death threat addressed to Hirsi Ali, into the lifeless body of his victim. The threat shook her, but did not silence her.
Other delegates, such as Irshad Manji and Nonie Darwish, have spoken against the virulent anti-Semitism that permeates radical and not-so-radical Islam. Darwish, an Egyptian, is founder of ArabsforIsrael.com.
The list goes on, a Who’s Who of intellectual and moral firepower in the Muslim world. It includes people who no longer consider themselves Muslim, as well as those who describe themselves as devoted believers, but want religious reform and an end to political Islam.
If you want to become deeply unpopular in the Middle East and the Muslim world, you speak well of Israel. If you want to get killed, you criticize the way Islam is practised in too much of the Muslim world. That’s why it is nothing short of inspiring that a group of people – Muslims, no less – got together to publicly “demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of powerhungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.” Talk about fighting words.
It’s not surprising that Muslim organizations scoff at the work of these activists. After all, they are calling for an overhaul of the status quo. The status quo doesn’t like that. What is surprising is how little attention the U.S. and international media pay to their work. Perhaps the fear of offending those who call themselves the official representatives of Muslims keeps Westerners from shining a spotlight on those who threaten the Muslim establishment.
The next time a Muslim extremist commits an act of murder and people in the West cry out, “Where are the Muslim moderates?” remember this group, and read the amazing document called the St. Petersburg Declaration. You can find it at www.SecularIslam.org.
http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
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