What matters about the discussion this week is that it exposes important, leading figures from throughout the Islamic world to the American public (and I assume to a wider world audience as well). Thus, we have the opportunity to sit down and read at leisure the thinking of the scholar Tariq Ramadan, to browse the pithy responses of Murad Hofmann and to reflect on former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid's thoughts about Islam's internal struggle against its own fundamentalists. This is an opportunity that affords us a vital introduction into Islam's internal intellectual and spiritual diversity. (Overall, it seems to validate what a colleague of mine says when she refers to "Islams," rather than Islam, a formulation that might as easily be applied to world Christianity.)
We in the West already know about militant and ultra-violent groups. Since at least 2001, they have skillfully promoted their message every single week (if not day) of the year, with the mastery of veteran public relations specialists. They are aided by a ruthlessness that allows them to create stark visual images of utter destruction that are a natural for every news camera in the world.
Yet Islam, to say the obvious, is a faith of more than a billion people on six continents, in every major ethnic group, with a 1,500-year history--in other words, not a monolith for which any one group or individual can speak. Given the United States' ever-deepening economic, political and military involvement (will we spend a trillion or more dollars in Iraq?) with Muslim-majority nations throughout Asia and north Africa, Islam in all its varieties deserves a great deal more of our attention and knowledge than what's imparted by fleeting, television news images of smoky scenes of destruction in Baghdad and the Afghan hinterlands. This week's production is a good place to start.
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