Jeff Jacoby returns to a favorite topic of his - and mine - the courage of moderate Muslims who speak out about on the crying need for reform in Islam.

It is a sad irony that the world's freest Muslims — those who live in liberty in the West — are so unwilling to publicly condemn the world's worst Muslims — the militant Islamist fascists who believe in violent jihad, intolerant theocracy, subjugated women, and hatred of Jews and Americans....All the more reason, then, to applaud those outspoken moderate Muslims who do lift their voices against the hatred and violence of the extremists. "

Jacoby cites Irshad Manji's best-selling book, "The Trouble With Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith," and notes that:

Manji, who calls herself a 'Muslim refusenik,' has received a good deal of well-deserved publicity. She has also received hate mail, vitriolic insults, and death threats serious enough to require her to have a bodyguard. Muslims who insist on talking bluntly about contemporary Islam and its failings don't have it easy. That is another reason there are so few of them.

'We've got to end Islam's totalitarianism, particularly the gross human-rights violations against women and religious minorities,' Manji writes. She is appalled by 'the continuing scourge of slavery in countries ruled by Islamic regimes' and by 'the Jew-bashing that so many Muslims persistently engage in.' Islam desperately needs to undergo a reformation, much as Christianity did, she argues, and it is Muslims in the West who should be spearheading it. Why? 'Because it is here that we already enjoy the precious freedom to think, express, challenge, and be challenged, all without fear of state reprisal.'

Deciphering terms such as "moderate" can be difficult, writes Jacoby.

It isn't always easy to distinguish between militant Islamism and genuine Islamic moderation. Some Muslim leaders and institutions claim to believe in pluralism and oppose intolerance, yet attack those who expose extremism as bigots and "Islamophobes." Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum says that often the only way to tell the real moderates from the fakes is by asking questions — not vague queries ("Do you condemn terrorism?"), but specific, hard-to-duck ones. Such as:

Do you condone or condemn the Palestinians, Chechens, and Kashmiris who give up their lives to kill enemy civilians?

Will you condemn — by name — such terrorist groups as Abu Sayyaf, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Al Qaeda?

Should Muslim women have equal rights with men?

Should non-Muslims enjoy the same civil rights as Muslims?

Do you accept the legitimacy of a non-Muslim government, such as that of the United States, and will you pledge allegiance to that government?

Do you agree or disagree that institutions accused of funding terrorism should be closed?

Who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks?

A good smell test, indeed.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 24, 2004 07:24 AM

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