The Moderate Muslims Meet In Denmark

WHATEVER HAPPENED to the moderate Muslims? That has been the refrain ever since 9/11. When President Bush spoke of Islam as a religion of peace it was presumably to encourage the moderate Muslims to come forward and declare themselves for democracy and capitalism.

Don’t look now, but the moderates have arrived. “Islam’s Moderates are On The March,” writes Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam Today.

There is reform in Pakistan. For 30 years Pakistan has jailed women for adultery under the so-called Hudood laws.

Thanks to a vocal, but religiously respectful, campaign by civil society groups, the influential Council for Islamic Ideology recently recommended reform. That move allowed President Musharraf to begin releasing some of the 1,300 women who were in jail awaiting trial.

The liberal Muslims have been meeting in Denmark. They even met with “Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten and publisher of the reviled cartoons.”

And here is what a few Muslims said at the conference.

Man from the Netherlands: “We, as Muslims, need to look in the mirror instead of blaming everybody else!”
Woman from Germany: “I don’t have an identity crisis. I’m Western and Muslim and grateful to be both.”

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. But you gotta say, it’s a start.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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