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Yes, There Is a Moderate Islam - Let's Support It

[Jerusalem Post] Daniel Pipes - 'What moderate Muslims?" is the near-inevitable retort to my stating that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution. Moderate Muslims do exist. A just-published study from the RAND Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, methodically takes up and thinks through this concept. They start with the argument that "structural reasons play a large part" in the rise of radical and dogmatic interpretations of Islam in recent years - one of those reasons being the Saudi government's generous funding over the last three decades for the export of the Wahhabi version of Islam. Saudi efforts have promoted "the growth of religious extremism throughout the Muslim world," permitting the Islamists to develop powerful intellectual, political and other networks. "This asymmetry in organization and resources explains why radicals, a small minority in almost all Muslim countries, have influence disproportionate to their numbers." The RAND study promotes four partners: secularists, liberal Muslims, moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis. The study proposes de-emphasizing the Middle East, and particularly the Arab world, because this area "offers less fertile ground for moderate network and institution building than other regions of the Muslim world."
2007-04-20 01:00:00
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