The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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October 15, 2006

Our View — Moderate Muslims can be weapon against jihad

editorial board

A retired veteran taking a little extra work on an Alabama golf course knew the deal. The Quran, the holy book of Islam, calls on Muslims to kill all the Christian “infidels.”

Why don’t newspapers report that, he asks.

That’s the world we live in. Let’s hope it’s not the world most of the people in power believe in.

The Alabama veteran’s comments highlight, however, an increasingly difficult situation for creating an accurate political context for the Iraq war and the war on terrorism. This pseudo “religious war” has been well publicized by American media. It’s an unfortunate, but convenient lie.

Most Muslims, like most Christians, are moderate. In other words, they don’t believe so extremely in their religion that they take a take-no-prisoners approach.

A bit of this necessary context comes from Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, who writes that since 9/11 “a growing number of Muslim moderates have been speaking out. They have denounced the jihadis’ ideology as a perversion of Islam and a disgrace to Muslims everywhere.”

These moderate Muslims have emphasized they must do more than speak out against acts of terrorism, they must enlist in the war on terror “to delegitimitize and defeat them at home.”

Unfortunately, as Jacoby says, these Muslims get very little press. Hence, that may be the reason for our Alabama veteran’s confusion.

So, it’s worth something at this point to quote one of these Muslim moderates. Zuhdi Jasser, a doctor and U.S. Navy veteran who spearheaded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy in 2003, makes the case and urges a charge for moderate Muslims.

“As Muslims we must help bring these barbaric Islamists to justice and assist in dismantling the systems that create them. We can publicly embarrass radical imams and organizations. ... We can publicly expose the twisted interpretations of the Quran. It is time to teach Muslims to dismantle terrorist organizations like al-Qaida, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah ... The war against Islamo-facism has many fronts, and moderate Muslims need to be leading the struggle.”

The religious context makes a difference in how we view our situation in Iraq. Would we feel differently about the war if we knew the moderate Muslims, often like the moderate Christians through time, have always had to fight the image created of them by their radical wings?

Radicalism, of course, is what makes news. It’s unusual. It’s shocking. It will crank up the ad rates for advertising on the Bill O’Reilly show. But does it serve us? Does it serve efforts to promote world peace?

Probably not.

These moderate Muslims, as a recent report from the top U.S. intelligence agencies has argued, are the strongest weapon against the war on terror.

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