Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Kamal Nawash: Wake-up call for my fellow Muslims

Voices of moderation in the Muslim Community have been strikingly few in the last 3.5 years since Muslim extremists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. So excuse me for taking every opportunity to showcase every moderate Muslim voice I can find. Mr. Nawash points out an element to Islam that, as far as I know, has not been examined before, Political Islam:

Extremism is also growing because of an ideology called political Islam. The basis of political Islam is the rejection of secularism and the belief that the mosque and the state should be completely intertwined. Unfortunately, history has shown that when politics and religion are completely intertwined, disaster results.

He also discusses the issue of the "Freedom House Report" which among other things found extremist Islamic literature in some leading American mosques.

Muslim-bashing. That’s the accusation many of my fellow Muslims now hurl at the various news outlets for their news stories about a Freedom House investigation that found extremist Islamic literature in some leading American mosques. This name-calling is unfortunate.

Most importantly, extremism in the Muslim world continues to grow because most Muslims are unwilling to admit that we have a problem with extremism and support for terrorism. The response by Muslims to the Freedom House report is not the first time that the Muslim community resorted to denial and accusations of Muslim-bashing when presented with evidence of Muslim culpability.

If you have the time, I advise you read and share the article which can be found here.



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