Mansoor Ijaz: Voice of a New Movement or Destined for the Witness Protection Program?
Since I've been pretty skeptical about the existence of Muslim moderates, I was delighted to see this Op-ed by Mansoor Ijaz in the LA Times this morning. His point is well taken about the whole "moderate" label, and he makes a compelling argument that the problem with Islam isn't that there are so few "moderates," it's that there are so few real fundamentalists. I've heard it said before, but never so well. He makes a lot of good points, so read the whole thing.
The most tragic aspect of what is going on in the Islamic world today is that, despite all of those who pretend to speak on behalf of the Muslim masses, the lives of these poor people never seem to improve. To the contrary, everyone in a position of influence in that world is much more interested in exploiting its problems than correcting them. And, although the Western Left and the MSM have been quick to adopt Muslims as the new proletariat, they have, in furtherance of their own Western ideological agenda, misidentified the oppressor.
An American Muslim of Pakistani descent, Ijaz doesn't fall for such nonsense nor, God bless him, does he pull any punches. He points out, first, that Osama bin Laden is nothing more than a hypocritical ideologue and yet, "[h]e has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank." And how. Then Ijaz turns his attention to the real problem:
"Take the money spent by any Middle Eastern royal family at a London hotel or Geneva resort during one month and you could build enough schools and medical clinics to take care of 1,000 Palestinian children for a year. Yet rather than educate and feed Palestinian and Muslim children so they may learn to settle differences through dialogue and debate, instead of by throwing rocks and wearing bombs, the Muslim "haves" put on a few telethons to raise paltry sums for the "have nots" to alleviate the guilt over their palatial gilded cages."
And, just when I thought he wasn't going to finish the thought, he issues this blistering indictment of what he calls "Islam's mobsters",
"having failed in their mission to lead their masses, they seek any excuse to demonize those of us in the West and to try to bring us down. They know they are losing the ideological struggle for hearts and minds, for life in all its different dimensions, and so they prepare themselves, and us, for Armageddon by starting fires everywhere in a display of Islamic unity intended to galvanize the masses they cannot feed, clothe, educate or house."
Shazzam! Engels couldn't have said it better. And, in that tradition, these ideas are shockingly subversive. So, don't hold your breath waiting to hear this kind of thing on Al Jazeera or, even less likely, from the poseurs in the West that call themselves the Left.
Finally, I have to say I appreciate Ijaz' thoughtful remarks about "haters of Islam." Even so, I have to say that if a few more people like Ijaz spoke up, people like me would be less alarmed by all the "Behead those who insult Islam" placards. And there in lies the problem, no? Muslim intellectuals who question the status quo invariably become targets. Thus, and although I appreciate and admire Mr. Ijaz' intellectual courage, the sad fact of the matter is that he probably needs to watch his back.
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