B076MJZQSW by Theodore Gabriel & Jane Idleman Smith

Author:Theodore Gabriel & Jane Idleman Smith [Gabriel, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Anti-Islamist Muslims that Pipes approves of include ‘freethinkers or atheists. Some are conservative, others liberal’. Among those on his favoured list are Abdelwahab Meddeb of the Sorbonne ‘who wrote the evocatively titled Malady of Islam, in which he compares militant Islam to Nazism’, Ibn Warraq, a self described convert from Islam who attempts ‘to embolden Muslims to question their faith’, and Ayaan Hirst Ali of Holland who has called Islam a ‘backward’ religion.35 Others include Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam: A Wakeup Call for Honesty and Chang,36 as well as a slew of journalists and authors including Saadallah Ghaussy, Hausain Haqqani, Salim Mansur, Khaleel Mohammad, Tashbih Sayyid, Stephen Schwarts, Khalid Duran and Tahir Aslam Gora.37 Also on the list of ‘moderate Muslims’ is Shaykh Mohammad Hisham Kabbani who in a January 1999 address at the Department of State warned against the imminent danger to America from Islamic extremists armed with 20 nuclear bombs. He also warned that 80% of mosques in the US have been taken over by extremists who have an unhealthy focus on the struggle of the Palestinian people.38 Pipes has also published a list of approved Islamic organisations.39

Aware of the reaction of Muslims worldwide to its policies and attempting to deal with the majority, the USA Government has decided that it has failed in public diplomacy, and not policy. In an effort to enhance its image overseas, the Department of State has supervised the production of several videos that attempted to demonstrate American pluralism, tolerance and inclusion of Muslims. The videos featured Muslim Americans touting the freedom they enjoy in the USA and the fact that their fellow workers appreciate their contributions.40 Unfortunately they were aired around the same time the Justice Department was implementing a program that required Muslim males living in the USA to register. The press was televising worldwide the arrest of nearly 14,000 males who came to register and were now to be deported, as well as the thousands who trekked north and sought asylum in Canada.41

It is clear that the attacks of 9/11 have had a major impact on the presidency of George Bush who has declared that it has ‘changed America forever’. The question continues to be whether this change is to be marked simply by increased vigilance and security measures by Ashcroft’s Department of Justice, or if it serves as an historical demarcation leading to a permanent shift in American foreign policy. Muslims wonder if it has led to what amounts to a declaration of unrelenting war on the Islamist interpretation of Islam, or whether that war is aiming at undermining mainstream Islam. A visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Husain Haqqani, himself a self-proclaimed moderate, recently urged the USA and other Western powers to revise their definition of what constitutes extremists and moderates in the Muslim world. Rather than considering moderates only as those who ‘toe the line’, he said, moderate Muslims should be defined as those who want to engage as equals

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