What Is a Moderate Muslim?

Two right-wing think tanks, Britain’s Politeia and the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, organised a day-long conference in London this week. Rarely enough one gets to see some real neo-cons this side of the Atlantic, and I certainly didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity. I went away full of fresh ideas and sufficiently agitated to write my column for Madrid11.net, but one question kept bugging me. Alex Alexiev, in an otherwise pretty dim presentation in which he blamed the entire world – but especially Muslims and Europeans – for conspiring against the United States, repeatedly referred to the ‘moderate Muslims’ in the Arab world which, in his view, needed to be empowered. The one question Alexiev didn’t answer was: what precisely constitutes a ‘moderate Muslim’? Did he mean secular Muslims? The problem with secular Muslims, of course, is that there aren’t too many of them. As Israel’s former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, wrote in an article for Madrid 11.net, ‘the real immediate choice in the Arab world is not between dictatorship and democracy, but between the secular dictatorships prevailing in most of the Arab countries and Islamic democracies’. And indeed, the tiny progressive elite, consisting of some brave but nevertheless isolated university professors, writers and other intellectuals, may be amongst the most vocal Muslim voices on the transatlantic conference circuit, but their ability to mobilise the masses back home is very limited. What, then, about all those Muslims who oppose violence? Are they the Muslims we should seek to empower? Unfortunately, ‘opposition to violence’ isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Take, for example, Yusuf al Qaradawi, the famous Muslim scholar who is believed to be the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi has spoken out against terrorism in the West, and was amongst the many imams who condemned both 9/11 and the London attacks as un-Islamic. At the same time, Qaradawi strongly supports suicide attacks against civilian targets in Israel, claiming that these are ‘evidence of God’s justice’. Qaradawi is hugely popular amongst Muslims in the Arab world and Europe, and London’s mayor Ken Livingstone, who invited Qaradawi as part of his own initiative to strengthen ‘moderate’ Islam, may be correct in saying that Qaradawi is more representative of ‘mainstream’ Islam than any of the secular Muslims who are paraded by Western governments. My suspicion is that Alexiev’s idea of a moderate Muslim is someone who is in full agreement with the foreign policy of the Bush administration. That, of course, is a definition which not only Muslims will find hard to meet, but most non-Muslims either. For those more seriously concerned about how to engage the (often silent) Muslim majority, the question of what kind of people we want to empower poses a terrible dilemma. The secular, progressive Muslims may share most of our values, but what’s the point in reaching out if no one wants to listen to them? Some of the more ‘moderate’ Islamists, on the other hand, may have much support and speak out against violence in the West, but they still promote a world view that is based on a ‘clash of religions’ in which violent jihad, even against civilians, can be justified. What is a moderate Muslim? The question is at the heart of the current breakdown of dialogue between the West and the Islamic world. And I fear it is one to which there are no simple answers.