JOLLY DAYS

At Long Last

Muslims living in the west are beginning to see that the attempt to destroy democracies in the name of their religion might impact them. In a discussion at Lehrer you can sense an unease, a subtextual self-interest. Still, whatever the motives — which are never pure in human behavior — this discussion was long overdue, startling in its honesty and self-awareness.

ASRA NOMANI: …[hate] is imported into America and this what is we have to face…we have this ideological hatred spewing into America, into communities in England. I mean, right here I have a text … distributed at my mosque in West Virginia, that … says that women can be beaten. And then we have sermons downloaded from Saudi Arabia that say that we should not be friends with the Jews and the Christians…

An articulate Muslim student on the panel spoke with precision and great emotional force:

SHADI HAMID: …I think that our national Islamic organizations, even after 9/11, failed to effectively condemn terrorism and fight extremism within our on communities. For example, I mean, I think it's interesting how you've had all these suicide bombings almost daily in Iraq and Israel and of course we had 9/11. But how come this condemnation, this very forceful condemnation that we mention after the London bombings, why did it take so long, why did we have to take three, four years for Muslim organizations to get together and issue a fatwa? What happened the last three years? And let me just emphasize one specific point is that for too long there has been a double standard. We're very quick to condemn bombings in America, in Britain. But when it comes to say a Hamas suicide bomber blowing himself up and killing innocent Israelis in cafes and pizzerias, I have not seen an effective Muslim response regarding that. There's been a lot of equivocation. And I think the problem is when a lot Muslims argue that the immortality and illegality of these killings is contingent upon certain political considerations, say the occupation in Israel, we enter a very dangerous slippery slope. We have to condemn all suicide bombings, any time innocent civilians are killed, whether it's Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Christians, it has to be one response that we will not tolerate it. It is un-Islamic, immoral, and inhumane.

This young man is a model of fair mindedness and decency — a true beacon of hope. His comments have the unmistakable power conferred by the truth.