What We Should Expect From Muslims

Western Muslims feel badly misunderstood. The vast majority of them utterly abhor terrorism against the countries in which they live. And yet they sense suspicion from their fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, those fellow-citizens are feeling increasing frustration with their Muslim neighbors. Since 9/11, Western security forces have foiled some 40 major plots against Western nations. Many if not most of those plots have been the work of local Muslims. Hundreds of European Muslims have journeyed to join the insurgents in Iraq. Extremist preachers exploit the freedom of Western societies to incite terrorism against them.

Moderate Western Muslims - and careful politicians - prefer not to acknowledge this reality. But euphemism is breeding resentment on all sides. WeÕd all benefit by speaking clear.

Acknowledge Reality; Accept Responsibility

Obviously it would be unjust to blame the religion of Islam for terrorism. But equally obviously, terrorism is a problem within Islam, and Islamic communities bear a special obligation to uproot it.

Yet have you ever heard an Islamic leader in a Western country urge Muslims to take action against the extremists in their midst? Or unequivocally repudiate violent jihad? Or condemn by name those who lead young Western Muslims astray?

Isolate and Exclude Extremists

Too often even the most moderate Western imams excuse and condone extremism.

Charles Moore of the Daily Telegraph cited a very disturbing example of this tendency: The day after the attacks, the imam of the East London mosque, Mohammed Abdul Bari, stood beside the Anglican bishop of Stepney to condemn the London bombings. "But if you look up Mohammed Abdul Bari, you find that he welcomed to the opening of the London Muslim Centre Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, the Saudi-government-appointed imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. In Mecca two years ago, al Sudais described Jews as Ôscum of the earth,Õ Ôrats of the world,Õ and Ômonkeys and pigs who should be annihilated.Õ Yet, criticize al Sudais, and Mohammed Abdul Bari leaps furiously to his defence."

Cooperate actively with police and security services

After the 9/11 attacks, one US Islamic organization distributed a pamphlet called "Know Your Rights," explaining to American Muslims that they had no obligation to answer questions from the police. From a legal point of view, that is of course correct. But one would have imagined that patriotic American Muslims would want to tell the police anything that might possibly help protect the country against future attack and bring the guilty to justice.

Many imams have in fact been cooperating with the police in the United States and the United Kingdom. But they often do so shame-facedly, grudgingly, incompletely, and only under pressure. And they are even more reluctant to urge their congregants to do the same. That must change. The pamphlets on "knowing your rights" should be matched by sermons on "knowing your responsibilities."

Stop carving out special terrorist exemptions.

One important reason that Western Muslims find it so difficult to speak forthrightly against Islamic terrorism is that too many of them want to preserve exceptions in favor of certain forms of terrorism: against India, against democratic Iraq, and above all against Israel.

Israel is a special challenge to Muslim communities in the West. ItÕs very hard to take a principled stand against al Qaeda if you privately support Hamas and Hezbollah. ItÕs almost impossible to hold the line against religious extremism if you yourself are steeped in anti-semitism.

The Arab-Israel dispute is often cited as one of the most fundamental causes of terrorism. But if this is true, it is true in this way: So long as Muslim communities refuse to accept the legitimacy of Israel, they will be crippled in their attempts to deny the legitimacy of terrorism.

Accept IslamÕs status as one religion among equals.

Western societies grant equal rights to all religions. Middle Eastern societies enforce the primacy of Islam: ThatÕs why there are mosques in Rome and churches in Jerusalem, but Jews and Christians are forbidden to set foot in Mecca. Do Western Muslims accept the Western way of doing things - or do they yearn for a Middle Eastern future? The answer is very far from clear. As one prominent North American Muslim said in a lecture in California in 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

Prominent British Muslims have called for the replacement of parliamentary democracy with a "new civilization based on the worship of Allah," in which the Queen herself would pay the extra tax imposed on non-Muslims. And the former president of the Canadian Society of Muslims has argued that Canadian law should permit Muslim communities to punish Canadian Muslims who choose to change their religion.

Islam will have made itself at home in the West when Western Muslims can express dislike for The Satanic Verses while defending Salman RushdieÕs right to publish it; when they accept the right of Muslims to leave Islam as cordially as they encourage non-Muslims to embrace it; and when they welcome Christian and Jewish worship in Saudi Arabia in the same free and tolerant spirit that Islam has been welcomed in the West.

These changes should not be expected overnight. But they should be expected - demanded - all the same.