From Raymond Ibrahim (via the
Gatestone Institute):
After his recent electoral victory, it emerged that Sadiq Khan, London's first Muslim mayor, had described moderate Muslim groups as "Uncle Toms" -- a racial slur used against blacks perceived to be subservient to whites, or, in this context, Muslims who embrace "moderate Islam" as, in his view, a way of being subservient to the West.
One of Iran's highest clerics apparently shares the same convictions. After asserting that "revolutionary Islam is the same as pure Muhammadan Islam," Ayatollah Tabatabaeinejad recently said:
"Some say our Islam is not revolutionary Islam, but we must say to them that non-revolutionary Islam is the same as American Islam. Islam commands us to be firm against the enemies and be kind and compassionate toward each other and not be afraid of anything..."
According to the AB News Agency,
"Ayatollah Tabatabaeinejad stated that revolutionary Islam is this same Islam. It is the Islam that is within us that can create changes. The warriors realized that Islam is not just prayers and fasting, but rather they stood against the enemies in support of Islam."
How many Muslims share these convictions, one from a Sunni living (and now governing) in London, the other from a Shia living and governing in the Middle East?
According to an Arabic language article, (in translation) "The Truth about the Moderate Muslim as Seen by the West and its Muslim Followers," by Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim Khadr in 2011:
"Islamic researchers are agreed that what the West and its followers call 'moderate Islam' and 'moderate Muslims' is simply a slur against Islam and Muslims, a distortion of Islam, a rift among Muslims, a spark to ignite war among them. They also see that the division of Islam into 'moderate Islam' and 'radical Islam' has no basis in Islam -- neither in its doctrines and rulings, nor in its understandings or reality.
Khadr goes on to note the many ways that moderates and radicals differ. For instance, radicals ("true Muslims") aid and support fellow Muslims, especially those committed to jihad, whereas moderates ("false Muslims") ally with and help Western nations.
(remainder snipped)
This aligns rather well with what I've seen throughout my life. Also check this out from the Brookings Institution:
Problems of the Second Generation: To be Young, Muslim, and American
(snip)
Marcia Hermansen, a Muslim who is also a professor of Islamic studies at Loyola University in Chicago, recounts her shock when she “encountered some Muslim students on my campus who seemed to feel vindicated by the destruction and loss of life on September 11.” As she elaborates, “Quite a number of Muslim youth in America are becoming rigidly conservative and condemnatory of their peers (Muslim and non-Muslim), their parents, and all who are not within a narrow ideological band of what I will define as internationalist, ‘identity’ Islam.”
This trend was picked up by Pew pollsters who reported in 2007 that Muslims older than 30 were much less likely (28 percent) than those aged 18-29 (42 percent) to agree that “there is a natural conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.” When it surveyed Muslims again in 2011, Pew asked if “there is only one true way to interpret the teachings of Islam”: 31 percent of foreign-born Muslims agreed, but 46 percent of native-born Muslims did. Also that year, Pew found that 58 percent of foreign-born Muslims agreed “the American people are generally friendly toward Muslim Americans,” compared with only 37 percent of their native-born offspring.
Among many Muslim-American youth, there is self-conscious rejection of their parents’ easygoing, traditionalist understanding of Islam, inevitably suffused with the customs of their homeland. The youthful response is frequent invocations of the ummah, the worldwide community of Muslims that ideally transcends all barriers of ethnicity, race, and nationality. Sustained by such Islamist constructs, young Muslims on college campuses often trump their parents’ insistence that they marry within their ethnic group with a religiously grounded ethic that prioritizes marrying another Muslim regardless of ethnic or racial background.
As Hermansen notes, such youthful perspectives entail a “religious and cultural superiority … a mindless and rigid rejection of ‘the Other’ … a smug pride in one’s superior manifestation of visible symbols of identity.” One result is a preoccupation with “the evils of Western cultural elements such as the celebration of birthdays, Halloween, and prom night.” And while this mindset does not typically lead to violence, it was clearly on display when Tamerlan Tsarnaev disrupted speakers at his Cambridge mosque when they embraced the celebration of American national holidays such as Thanksgiving and praised a non-Muslim religious leader, Martin Luther King Jr.
(remainder snipped)
The question is: how to deal with this situation of radicalization, particularly among the youth?
