Building Moderate Muslim Networks

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Building Moderate Muslim Networks

This is a free PDF monograph you can obtain simply by clicking on the link above. You can read it online, download it to your hard drive and print it out (217 pages). It was sponsored by the Rand Corporation. (No relation to our beloved. )

Daniel Pipes even recommends this document and this is precisely the approach I have been arguing for. See his latest article for New York Sun:

Bolstering Moderate Muslims

April 17, 2007

I have not read this document yet. I will and report back.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Building Moderate Muslim Networks

This is a free PDF monograph you can obtain simply by clicking on the link above. You can read it online, download it to your hard drive and print it out (217 pages). It was sponsored by the Rand Corporation. (No relation to our beloved. )

Daniel Pipes even recommends this document and this is precisely the approach I have been arguing for. See his latest article for New York Sun:

Bolstering Moderate Muslims

April 17, 2007

I have not read this document yet. I will and report back.

Michael

I have read about forty pages (I plan to finish the document) and I have discovered the flaw in the Rand study. They assume Muslims are basically sane, even the so-called moderates. Not so. Their religion has fried their brains. The damage is done in childhood with the insertion of the two Memes from Hell. The Jihad Meme and the Martyrdom Meme. It is extremely difficult for an adult Muslim to become sufficiently sane to reject the essential ethos of his religion. Read -In the Shade of Q'ran- by Sayyid Qtab. This is almost literally the -Mein Kampf- of the Islamic movement. Please recall that no one took Hitler's book seriously until the Nazis started to overrun and wreck Europe. The Europeans (who are gutless swine in any case) figured the Nazis were really like them and could actually be talked to and with. Their mistake. Result: six million Jews slaughtered, six million other "sub-humans" slaughtered and thirty million other combatants and non-combatants slaughtered all because of this goody two shoes assumption about the enemy. We have to demonize the enemy because,..... well because the enemy is a demon.

Perhaps if we had attempted to achieve some kind of intellectual and moral rapport with the Enemy fifty or sixty years ago (right after WW2 for example) we might have tapped into a vein of moderation in the Ummah. It is to late for that. The Ultra Crazies will have nuclear weapons within five years. We are out of time.

Many thanks for the pointer. I am afraid we are in for hard times. Our smartest people have mistakenly granted to the Muslims a sanction -- the assumption of sanity. We will have to wait for the next WMD attack on New York City (where the Jews are) or Washington D.C. (where our government is) to be disabused of this error. It is sad, but that is how it is.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

With all due respect, you know precious little about Muslims.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

With all due respect, you know precious little about Muslims.

Michael

\

With equally due respect, I have read the Q'ran, the Haddith and Sayyd Q'tub-s book. It is bone chilling. Islam is a toxic, evil and demonic religion. It has not undergone the same detoxification the Judaism did. The Jews altered their religion after getting the shit kicked out of them for 1500 years. Judaism is now a Rabbinic Religion, not a Biblical Religion. It has toned down quite a bit. That is why it is safe to live next door to Jews. When was the last time a gang of Jews hijacked a plane full of unarmed travelers and crashed it into a tall building full of equally unarmed occupants?

By their fruits you shall know them (The Muslims that is). We found out what Islam was about on 9/11 and even more on 9/12 when Jordanian and Palestinian immigrants were dancing in the streets of New York. I will alter my views after the next Million Muslim March Against Terrorism, not one day before. Everything that happened Sayyd Q'tub called for in his book. Alas! The world did not take -Mein Kampf- seriously either.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Delenda Islama est

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

The orientation of this site as regards Muslims and this whole problem is education first. If all you are going to do is preach hatred and destruction, this will become problematic since it will create a huge noise factor for those who want to learn.

Your position is duly noted and it is OK to express it periodically. But please note that I emphatically don't agree with it and I am trying to build something (as are many intelligent people in other places like Pipes). You will not convince me with rhetoric and opinions and I will not tolerate someone destroying what I am trying to build with heckling as I build it.

So let's leave it at that.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

So let's leave it at that.

Michael

Done and done. Until the next Big One. Then you will hear from me.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

The Muslim world is like a prison where everything reduces to physical force and terrorism, including Muslim on Muslim terrorism.

The world is much too dangerous to tolerate state toleration of Muslim terrorism. This means that Syria and above all Iran must be isolated, neutralized, bullied, forced not to sponsor such terrorism. Iran must not be allowed to create, possess or use nuclear weapons. It must be broken up into its natural constituent parts. Saudi Arabia must be dealt with too. And the West must end its dependency on Middle Eastern oil. The lower the price of oil the weaker Russia will get, for example.

We are still at the historical point where we can do something about Hitler without WWIII. Iran must be dealt with before it's too late. If the US doesn't act, Israel better--or it will react terribly to "the next Big one."

This is the only way to really make room for and bolster moderate Muslims.

--Brant

Edited April 19, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Let's make something clear so it isn't misconstrued. My position is that I despise suicide bombers and the like. I am actively fighting that in the best manner I know how.

That does not mean that I agree with Islam. But I also do not agree with Christianity. There is a lot of goofy stuff in both. For instance, recently on another site , there is a post that God killed 2,038,344 people in the Holy Bible and Satan only killed 10 people.

See here for the chart.

See here for the breakdown.

That's about as vicious as anything in Islam if killing is the focus.

Where we disagree is about holding over a billion people responsible for the minority of fanatics. You say they are all crazy and must be destroyed by force. I say the overwhelming majority of that billion-plus is made up of good people and they can be swayed with ideas.

As regards the hardcore Islamo-fascist fanatics, I think we are in agreement.

My post crossed with Brant's. I essentially agree with his comments on not tolerating the sponsorship of terrorism by countries and dealing harshly with the governments of the ones that do.

Michael

[Robert Jones]

While, sadly, I'm inclined to agree with Bob, that does not mean I throw my hands up in the air and give up. While we must find a way to so humiliate these Islamists that they'll never be heard from again, it's our moral duty to promote and encourage reason where it exists.

Irshad Manji, who's received death threats for her stances, is one stand-up advocate of reason. I beseach anyone concerned with the future of civilisation to watch her PBS special tonight, titled "Faith Without Fear: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." It should be airing at 9 p.m. Central (I can't find air times for stations outside of San Antonio).

Check it out!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

What a wonderful soul! Here is Irshad Manji's website:

Muslim Refusenik

On the article below, there is a link to the video of her appearance on 60 Minutes (click on the video link under her picture on the left). The article is about a reformed Islamist terrorist, Hassan Butt:

The Network

I saw her 60 Minutes appearance and what a wonderful, wonderful thing she is doing. I like her idea about recapturing the religion and blaming the majority of moderate Muslims for complacency. This young lady is putting her life and efforts where her mouth is. And I believe she is only a small start. I predict a huge impact in the Muslim world that will grow from this seed.

Hassan Butt also deserves all of our support. That guy has balls. One thing in the article about Hassan disturbed me. Apparently England has been shooting itself in the foot for a long time.

Butt was only 16 when he was recruited by the network. Like thousands of other young British Muslims, he became exposed to some of the most radical Imams in Britain – Imams who supported attacks on westerners all over the world and believed that they had a tacit agreement with the British authorities.

They could preach hatred, they could recruit followers, they could raise funds, and they could even call for Jihad – Holy war – as long as they didn’t call for attacks on British soil. London became such a safe haven for Muslim militants that it came to be known as "Londonistan."

The only hitch I see is that she is Sufi and this denomination of Islam is not seen well by many traditional Muslims. This is why Hassan is so important to her now. He is traditional. I think I will end up writing more about these people as we go along.

Bless them.

Michael

[Michael Russell]

While, sadly, I'm inclined to agree with Bob, that does not mean I throw my hands up in the air and give up. While we must find a way to so humiliate these Islamists that they'll never be heard from again, it's our moral duty to promote and encourage reason where it exists.

Irshad Manji, who's received death threats for her stances, is one stand-up advocate of reason. I beseach anyone concerned with the future of civilisation to watch her PBS special tonight, titled "Faith Without Fear: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." It should be airing at 9 p.m. Central (I can't find air times for stations outside of San Antonio).

Check it out!

I remember the first time I saw Irshad Manji; it was a year or so ago, when she made mincemeat out of that pompous ass Richard Belzer on "Real Time with Bill Maher". I watched her PBS special tonight; I, too, encourage everyone to check it out. Her visit with her mother to her mother's Mosque, and their stoic response to the unreasonable indignities visited upon them by the two goons at the Mosque was very moving.

Mick

[Chris Grieb]

Ba al; I don't care for Islam either but I wonder if you have all your facts straight. I thought the rejoicing happened in refugee camps in Jordan or the West Bank. I have a huge number of people marched in Tehran in support of the US and against destroying the WTC.

[BaalChatzaf]

Ba al; I don't care for Islam either but I wonder if you have all your facts straight. I thought the rejoicing happened in refugee camps in Jordan or the West Bank. I have a huge number of people marched in Tehran in support of the US and against destroying the WTC.

I must have missed out on the Million (American) Muslim March Protesting Terror Attacks. Perhaps I did not get the memo or my t.v. was out that day and I missed the March on CNN and Fox. What I did hear was a lot of the following:

Yes, it was terrible .... but.

When I hear Yes...But in circumstances like this my blood pressure goes up all the way to 130/85.

If an American had Yes... Butted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor back in 1941 he would have been either strung up on the spot or tarred and feathered. Now that the (first) Pearl Harbor is over sixty years behind us, there are historical revisionists who justify it on the grounds of how mean we were to the Japanese after they raped, looted, plundered and conquered in Manchuria. I hear similar crap and balderdash today concerning the attack on 9/11. Isn't it awful how America supports Israel against Muslim attackers that blow up supermarkets and pizza parlors? No wonder a bunch of Egyptian and Saudi Wahabites attacked on 9/11.

And so it goes.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited April 20, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Dragonfly]

My experience with "moderate" muslims hasn't been much better. When Theo van Gogh was murdered, I've heard many comments by such moderates, and the pattern was always the same: Yes, we condemn this murder, BUT... and my blood pressure also leaps when I hear that BUT. The implied message is "Van Gogh asked for it (while he strongly criticized the islam), so it's understandable! That shows that there is something seriously wrong with those people. No, I don't think they should be killed for that, but they should be lambasted and boycotted (instead of all the mumblings about dialogue and integration) and made clear how despicable their attitude is and that they can't get away with it. If you want to be accepted you should condemn the murder unconditionally, without any "buts". We shouldn't compromise on this.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

No, I don't think they should be killed for that, but they should be lambasted and boycotted (instead of all the mumblings about dialogue and integration) and made clear how despicable their attitude is and that they can't get away with it. If you want to be accepted you should condemn the murder unconditionally, without any "buts". We shouldn't compromise on this.

Dragonfly,

I essentially agree with this sentiment, but when you belong to a population of over a billion people, I don't think social ostracism is much of an incentive to change anything. If your suggestion is taken to the economic realm, however, I am all for it. Let us stop buying their oil immediately (especially from the Salafi-spreading Saudi Arabia).

Since reality will not be ignored and that billion-plus people will not go away or line up to be shot, we have to deal with them in some manner that is effective. The Salafi version of Islam (essentially a marginal wing) is so well funded that it has been successful in spreading partially by lack of another version deploying equal means to compete. So the idea of the Rand study is to get funding to the Islamic reformists and compete. This is a war of ideas that will only be won with actions from inside the culture. Supporting the people who perform the right actions makes good sense.

I agree that this measure shows great promise in being highly effective on the ideological level. After that hump is crossed (Muslims speaking out against the violent faction), then we can present these people (in general terms) with other rational ideas from Objectivism and the West. But that will not be nearly as crucial as getting them to accept separation of church and state, and individual rights.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I essentially agree with this sentiment, but when you belong to a population of over a billion people, I don't think social ostracism is much of an incentive to change anything. If your suggestion is taken to the economic realm, however, I am all for it. Let us stop buying their oil immediately (especially from the Salafi-spreading Saudi Arabia).

We import 60 percent of the oil we use. About 25 percent from the Saudis and the Emirates. What shall we run our cars and trucks with -- moral rectitude and optimism?

We have to reconfigure our energy usage and that will take years, probably decades. So we are not going to stop buying their oil immediately unless you wish to see gasoline rationing by the (ugh!) government. I was a kid during WW2. I remember how my Dad was limited to five gallons a week and four new tires a year. There was, as you can imagine, a lot of car-pooling going on. Do you think Americans are ready for this?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I essentially agree with this sentiment, but when you belong to a population of over a billion people, I don't think social ostracism is much of an incentive to change anything. If your suggestion is taken to the economic realm, however, I am all for it. Let us stop buying their oil immediately (especially from the Salafi-spreading Saudi Arabia).

We import 60 percent of the oil we use. About 25 percent from the Saudis and the Emirates. What shall we run our cars and trucks with -- moral rectitude and optimism?

We have to reconfigure our energy usage and that will take years, probably decades. So we are not going to stop buying their oil immediately unless you wish to see gasoline rationing by the (ugh!) government. I was a kid during WW2. I remember how my Dad was limited to five gallons a week and four new tires a year. There was, as you can imagine, a lot of car-pooling going on. Do you think Americans are ready for this?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Besides the point: Gas rationing in WWII was done not because of a gas shortage but to save rubber. The rubber shortage would have been exponentially worse if an industrialist seeing what was coming had not stockpiled it just before we entered the war.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Of course I don't really believe that we should stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia. I was trying to highlight the problem of those who want to isolate a culture and ideology we are paying to propagate. You can't have it both ways.

If you personally arm a hostile person to the teeth, you shouldn't be surprised when he uses the arms against you.

This is one of the fundamental problems in the mix of today's mess. Ignoring it won't make it go away. The fact that it is seen so clearly by those advocating a reform of Islam is heartening.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have started reading the Rand Corp. report and it is marvelous.

The approach was first to identify the two things that fundamentalist Islamists have that moderate Muslims do not: funding and organization. Then a comparison was made between the present situation with the Islamic world and the Cold War with Communist Russia. Ideological warfare is needed and the specific differences were highlighted. Here is a small comparison near the beginning outlining essentials with the Middle East in these terms. It is a table, so I had to modify it a bit for forum presentation.

Table S.1

Networking Challenges: The Cold War and the Middle East Today

Role of civil society

Cold War: Historically strong.

Middle East (Today): Historically not strong but developing.

Hostility between United States and targeted society/government

Cold War: Open hostility between Soviet Union and United States. Western societies favorable. United States seen as liberator in Western Europe.

Middle East (Today): U.S. democracy promotion and moderate network building is seen by authoritarian U.S. Middle East security partners as destabilizing. United States not seen as liberator.

Intellectual and historical ties

Cold War: Strong.

Middle East (Today): Weak.

Adversary’s ideology

Cold War: Secular.

Middle East (Today): Religion based.

Nature of opposing networks

Cold War: Centrally controlled.

Middle East (Today): Loose or no central control.

Policy challenges

Cold War: Less complex.

Middle East (Today): More complex.

This apparently does not appear to be all that important until you start progressing in the report. Then you start seeing what worked with the Cold War and how it needs to be adapted. Actually, so far I have learned a great deal about Cold War activities that I did not know. One thing is clear to me. If there had not been all the intellectual preparation provided by such efforts, Gorbachev would not have succeeded in lowering the Iron Curtain.

There certainly is no lack of initiatives to carry out with Islam. Funding and organization-wise, the report advocates the use of NGO's (non-governmental organizations), briefed as to expectations before funding, but then treated hands-off. This is a wise policy.

There is a section on defining criteria for identifying actual moderate Muslims and radical fundamentalists posing as moderate Muslims. This is hard but not impossible. Also, the approach is to strengthen pockets and countries of moderate Muslims as intellectual centers. Only the fundamentalists have presented themselves as such so far.

All in all, I am quite heartened. Much more is going on than I imagined and the information presented is on a more objective and factual level than has been discussed in Objectivist circles. I have no doubt the good guys will win and Islam will take its place as a religion separate from state just like present-day Christianity.

I will report more on this after I read more. I have not even scratched the surface with this small post.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I don't see why we should build bridges to moderate Muslims. I think we should crush state sponsored terrorism. I think we should kill terrorists. I think we should keep Iran from getting the bomb. I'm also not interested in building bridges to moderate Christians or Jews.

The problem with this bridge building is that it diverts attention from what's important and some folks might interpret it as appeasement.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

It is not working that way and one thing does not cancel the other. There is no appeasement going on. Military does military stuff. Intellectuals do intellectual stuff.

Daniel Pipes is the one who brought this report to my attention in a taped lecture, sitting right beside Yaron Brook.

I am not military.

Michael

[Steve Gagne]

Bob,

The orientation of this site as regards Muslims and this whole problem is education first. If all you are going to do is preach hatred and destruction, this will become problematic since it will create a huge noise factor for those who want to learn.

Your position is duly noted and it is OK to express it periodically. But please note that I emphatically don't agree with it and I am trying to build something (as are many intelligent people in other places like Pipes). You will not convince me with rhetoric and opinions and I will not tolerate someone destroying what I am trying to build with heckling as I build it.

So let's leave it at that.

Michael

Michael

Man that was harsh. You two got a history?

I just downloaded the pdf file and read the premises for the report, concerning this "vast" group of nominal muslims. I will be looking for evidence (numbers) to validate these premises as I read it. But the topic I brought up about demographics impinges on the same territory, and is working from a different premise:

This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.

Let's start with demography, because everything does:

If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.

For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number:

The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.

Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation -- or pseudo-nation -- of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.

Marc Steyn, "America Alone"

Granted, there are muslims of good will. More so amongst the Sufi and Sunni, than the Shi'ite and Wahhabi. And perhaps the comparison to cold-war methodologies are helpful. But are we talking about trying to negotiate with children here? Is that who will have their fingers on the button?

[Note: edited due to lost attribution. By-line originally inserted in "quote' directive but not functioning; added at end of passage.]

Edited May 24, 2007 by Steve Gagne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve,

Here is a quick reply with a quick example. I just met a guy, a really nice guy as a matter of fact, here in Chicago (he fixes computers) who is from India and is a Muslim. When I perceived this, I asked him about his beliefs. He mentioned Dr. Zakir and for me to Google him. I did and of course he is all over the place: Dr. Zakir Naik, director of the Islamic Research Foundation (and here).

I have never heard of this guy before, so I have no idea if he is a Muslim who preaches violence or not. Going by the guy I met, it seems unlikely. But frankly, I have no idea what denomination of Islam is practiced in India. (I will look this up later.) I have read news reports at times of clashes between Muslims and Hindus in India, but that's about it in terms of violence. I believe Indian Islam is on the Rand Corp. list as a potential source for developing a moderate approach.

It's a big world and there are about 1.5 billion Muslims out there. They are not all one flavor. We ignore reality if we ignore that fact.

Michael

[studiodekadent]

We import 60 percent of the oil we use. About 25 percent from the Saudis and the Emirates. What shall we run our cars and trucks with -- moral rectitude and optimism?

A Hybrid Car Campaign for Non-Environmentalists:

"Buy A Hybrid Car And Starve A Towelhead Today!"

And the Emirates is not bad. Abu Dhabi is liberalizing fast and Dubai has been liberalized and is a free trade area (with a killer water park to boot).