How we strengthen Muslim radicals

Last night I finished my galley copy of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's forthcoming (Feb. 2007) book "My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir". I think it's safe to say that when this book comes out, there's going to be a great deal of media attention paid to it. DGR was raised in a liberal Jewish family in Oregon, converted to Islam in college, and spent a year working for a radical Islamic "charity" and being transformed from a progressive, liberal Muslim into a Wahhabi. He finally broke free of the cultish hardliners, and eventually left Islam. He's got an incredible story to tell about how intelligent and otherwise normal idealists get sucked into radical Islam. His is a vitally important book.

Yesterday I wrote to DGR to ask him his thoughts about the Benedict controversy. The pope's deeper point, questioning Islam's relationship to reason, was cast in a certain light by DGR's experiences with the Wahhabis (also called Salafis), who operated on the basis of force. There was no room in that circle for debate: you were told what to believe, and you accepted it. It was eerily fascinating to watch DGR slowly give up his capacity for independent thought, and come to discover that there was a lot stronger case in the Koran and the hadith for the Salafi interpretation than most of us would care to consider. With that in mind, I asked DGR to offer some thoughts. This is his response:

When I practiced Islam and went through my own process of radicalization, I found the case made by radicals (as opposed to the case made by progressive Muslims) to be more logical and sound. The logical force of the radicals' interpretation of the Islamic faith cannot be denied; anybody who brushes off Islamic radicals' interpretation of jihad as clearly and simply distorting Islam is either dissembling or else speaking from sincere ignorance.

I don't think, though, that the radicals are inevitably right, and thus haven't yet given up the hope that Islam can save itself. One of my major long-term projects is an assessment of moderate Islam's chances of success. One of the Muslim moderates with whom I've been dialoguing for that project tells me that the Salafi interpretation seems insurmountable at first, but as a Muslim gains greater mastery of Arabic and is able to interpret Islamic history on his own, less radical alternative interpretations may seem more compelling. At this point, it's too early for me to assess whether this statement is accurate.

But the fact that I don't think the radicals are inevitably right makes the current controversy over Pope Benedict's remarks all the more distressing. It seems that whenever a prominent Westerner voices strong criticism of Islam, two things happen: Muslims threaten violence in response and often actually resort to it, and in return the Western media and leading intellectuals condemn the initial statements rather than the violence. Recall Jerry Falwell's statement back in 2002 that Muhammad was "a violent man"; the ironic -- and tragic -- response was rioting in Solapur, India that killed at least ten people, as well as a fatwa condemning Falwell to death. Yet by and large the media wasn't interested in the Muslim overreaction; it was intent on condemning Falwell.

The violent response to Pope Benedict's remarks is indicative of the pathologies within contemporary Islam. Angry Muslims set fire to seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza. An Italian nun in Somalia who worked in a children's hospital was brutally assassinated. There have been calls to assassinate the pope. And Islamic leaders such as Yusuf Qaradawi have called for a "day of rage."

But it seems the media would rather condemn the pope and th us place criticism of Islam off limits rather than focus on the pathologies in contemporary Islam. This Western response serves to undermine Muslim moderates and strengthen radicals. It undermines moderates because one of the strongest big-picture arguments the moderates have is that Muslims need to act like adults, that they can't go off burning churches and killing people at the slightest provocation. Yet the signal we're sending is that we're willing to look the other way and create a ridiculous double-standard: that we're unwilling to hold Muslims accountable for unacceptable behavior and unacceptable actions. The extremists are helped not only by the missed opportunity to examine the crisis in contemporary Islam, but also because it increasingly appears to them that if they want to use threats of violence to stifle speech, they will be helped in their cause by hordes of guilt-ridden Westerners who will side with them. We live in cowardly times, and it's sad to see that so many Westerners pick the wrong side in what is a stark choice between free speech and intimidation.