"Moderate Muslims?"

Monday, August 09, 2004

This from Harry Binswanger on his HB List. The following is the relevant excerpt (titled "Moderate Muslims?") from a larger post looking at what hasn't happened (but should have) in the three years since 9/11:

Imagine that a sect of fanatical Jews blew up three American buildings, killing thousands. Imagine that this sect of Jews issued a declaration of holy war on the United States, in the name of Judaism.

What do you think would have been the response of the rest of the Jews in America and around the world? Our ears would have been deafened by the roar of Jews' moral outrage, their resounding support for America, and their demands for the destruction of the radical sect. You wouldn't be able to turn around in NYC or any urban center without seeing Jews wearing some insignia to show their love for America and hatred for the sect. There would be endless TV spots sponsored by Jewish organizations, there would be T-shirts with "Those killers aren't Jews," there would be multitudes of young Jews volunteering to go into the military to fight the sect. Israel would be acting in the same way.

So where is any peep from the Muslims? Or the Muslim nations?

The WSJ had a review of a new book What's Right with Islam, by Frisal Abdul Rauf. According to the review, "Mr. Abdul Rauf makes an effort to come to grips with this disastrous passivity [i.e., silence] on the part of Muslims, but his comments fall far short. To state that 'suicide bombing is a tragic phenomenon that strikes at us all' and to follow this up with the remark that 'it takes a terrible toll of innocent lives, while it also reflects the deep despair and hopelessness of its perpetrators' hardly seems commensurate with the magnitude of the disaster." I'll say. And I wouldn't describe Osama bin Laden or Muhammed Atta as filled with "despair and hopelessness."

Whatever it says or doesn't say in the Koran, there is something terribly wrong with a religion whose adherents fail to be heard in the 3 years after an attack of this magnitude made in their name.