The Clash of Ignorances

Abstract

The responses of my colleagues provide a good representation of the extraordinarily diverse views of Islam, Muslims, and Muslim politics that exist today. Like it or not, we are stuck with the phrase moderate Muslim. Yet, as I read our comments, I keep thinking that for too many, non-Muslims and Muslims alike, moderate means someone “like us.” Thus, moderate is equated with progressive or liberal Muslims but excludes conservatives or traditionalists. Ariel Cohen, in his identification of several moderate Muslims, mentions Amina Wadud’s leading of a mixed-gender Friday prayer. This underscores the problem with moderate, especially when the concept is juxtaposed with extremist. If a woman leading an official prayer service were a criterion for moderate, then many Christian and Jewish groups, denominations, and their leaders (e.g., the recently deceased Pope John Paul II) would fail the test and not be moderates. But they certainly would not be extremists either. Should we, then, add such other litmus tests as position on birth control, abortion, and gay rights? If we go down this road, I wonder how Jews and Christians would react to Muslim countries or Muslim experts and political commentators who attempted to set the definition of a moderate Jew or a moderate Catholic, with the implication that all others were extremists. If, as some non- Muslims have done with regard to Islam, Muslims established institutes and think tanks to define, monitor, or implement their notions of moderate Jew or moderate Christian, how long would it be before they would be accused of being anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic? Would we define a moderate Jew vs. an extremist Jew as one who rejects scriptural justification for claims to Israel, rejects the logic and creation of settlements by religiously motivated Jews, possesses an enlightened understanding of the origins of Judaism and of the Hebrew scriptures; rejects all those biblical passages in which God commands acts of violence and warfare; and eschews any mixing of their faith with politics in Israel, with the support of fundamentalist or religious nationalist groups, schools, or settlements?