Moderate Muslims Abound

I have found the moderate Muslims!

According to a variety of Western politicians, bloggers, and experts, the “moderate Muslim” either does not exist, is endangered, is gutless, or is some combination of the three.

Peter King, a Representative of New York, has said he is disappointed that more Muslims didn’t express their outrage at 9/11. Geert Wilders, a vocal and – given his party’s small size – absurdly influential Dutch parliamentarian, has said there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Blogs like Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna attract a truly disturbing number of views and references (Breivik, anyone?), and, in the interest of timeliness, I saw this comment on The American Thinker posted just hours ago.

“…post 9/11 very few Muslims have condemned terrorist actions. We are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities. Waiting for this self-correction is our modern version of searching for unicorns.”

I just realized – not only have I found moderate Muslims, I’ve also found unicorns. Call Ripley’s!

Ramsy Youssef is one of the moderate Muslims I found while researching a story on the New York Arab American Comedy Festival, which is in and of itself a hotbed of moderation. I asked him about jihad, a troubling word for New Yorkers.

“I think jihad has been translated through the media to mean terrorist attack. Jihad has been translated to mean holy war. When actually, Islamically, jihad means struggle. Trying to keep a relationship with God, trying to keep on time with your work schedule, trying to keep on time with your family and balancing all these things at once to a Muslim is jihad.”

(He's right, incidentally. Jihad is a permutation of the three letter radical jim ha daal (j,h,d) - one of its other permutations, ijtihad, refers to individual intellectual exertion in an effort to reconcile Islamic scripture with the world around us.)

Dean Obeidallah, the founder of the festival, is another moderate Muslim. Abbas Noori Abood, one of the participants, another. And so on and so forth.

The kicker? All these people live in the NY metropolitan area. They’ve been here the whole time, speaking out, making jokes, using comedy to try to bridge the gap between the real Islam, the Islam practiced by them as opposed to Al Qaida, and we, the viewers of the US media.

There are others like them…my friend Imran Battla, who was in the army, Salah A-Din (Saladin), who protected Jews and Christians from reprisals during the Crusades, the Yemeni soldier who greeted me at Sana’a’s airport two years ago and, upon hearing that I was Jewish, simply offered me a cup of coffee and said, “It takes all kinds,” my Arabic professors…my list of moderate Muslims is probably longer than the no-fly list.

Cat Stevens!

People like the commenter I quoted above are like a man searching for the glasses he's already wearing – the moderate Muslims they think don’t exist are right in front of them, all around them, their moderation rendering them almost invisible to an American public conditioned to look for a gun or a bomb whenever it hears an Arab name.

But people like Peter King and Geert Wilders, blogs like Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna…they are deliberately spreading misinformation and hate. They are cherry-picking history, theology, and linguistics.

If anyone is really interested in seeing moderate Muslims, go to the festival.

Or better yet, just talk to a neighbor.

You might be surprised.

Oh, To Be Egyptian!

To all the would-be Wall Street occupiers, I get it. I understand. 

It sucks when someone looks cooler than you do.

All those Egyptians and Tunisians, bravely facing down the forces of oppression, brandishing signs and kuffiyehs…who wouldn’t be inspired? The campout in Tahrir Square looked like a blast, too.

So, we have signs and kuffiyehs, right? We can get tents and stoves and stuff for campouts, right? We can get on camera, fight the power, and come out on top as the world looks on in stunned approval, right?

And we – the educated, white American youth with enough time to go camp out at Wall Street - we’ve totally suffered the same kind of brutal, bare knuckled, strangling, adjective-defying repression as the struggling people of the Arab world, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that there is something very wrong with the political system in this country. The level of corporate influence in our government is unacceptable, the partisanship stifling, and the disconnect between the governed and those who govern is quickly approaching oceanic proportions, just like the chasm between rich and everyone else. We must indeed send a message to our bankers and our politicians that their continued adulterous affair at our expense and on our dime will no longer be tolerated.

But taking over Wall Street a la Tahrir Square? That, in my mind, means that the protesters feel their experience to be analogous to those of the Egyptians, Tunisians, Syrians, and Libyans. That does a disservice to the Arab youth now overthrowing their rusted, pitted oligarchs, and does a dishonor to the ones who died in the process.

Frankly, the whole protest is kind of farcical. Why begin an anti-corporate movement on a Saturday, when the business establishments targeted are closed? Why make a stockbroker even happier that it’s the weekend? Why start an outdoor occupation when fall is upon us and an apparently brutal winter is just around the corner? The love affair between Wall Street and Washington is hardly a recent development.

And then there’s this, from the New York Times’ City Room blog.

“After a police lieutenant used a megaphone to tell those sitting on the sidewalk that they were subject to arrest the protesters got up and marched south.”

Arrest!? Oh spare us, sweet God of democracy! How awful it would be to spend a night in the Tombs, where we shan’t be beaten, tortured, have our families threatened, and possibly “be disappeared.” How awful it would be to lose an evening and bail money as the price of our convictions.

What bravery. What courage.

Maybe if the police had brought camels, the protesters would have made a stand. It would look a lot cooler.

My great grandfather once said that God is so plagued with unjustified tears that he has no time for the justified ones. (I’m sure he was quoting from somewhere.) The words seem rather a propos here.

Israel's Sugar Problem

As I read this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times, the image of a petulant child and an overindulgent parent at the supermarket came to mind. The child demands candy and cookies. The parent insists on one or the other. Vegetables do not enter the conversation.

The article, by DavidMakovsky, accompanied by maps, advocated peace based on land swaps – land swaps involving Israel’s settlements.

The suggestions left me a little surprised.

Let us not equivocate. Settlements and water resources are Israel’s candy and cookies, and Israel is becoming a diabetic. The settlements are illegal, according to the 4^th article of the Geneva Conventions, an International Court of Justice decision, and common decency. In fact, they are illegal according to Israeli law itself, and Israel has often promised to stop building them.

Yet the op-ed and accompanying maps advocate an eventual two-state solution in which Israel will annex certain settlements, thereby becoming even stronger, and that the Palestinian state would have to absorb some settlers, adding to its well-documented insecurity. In other words, Israel will be rewarded for bad behavior with territory located directly above precious aquifers – candy and cookies - while Palestinians will have to deal with a zealous, uncompromising, fundamentalist Jewish bloc. (Brussel sprouts?)

I think there’s a simple, just solution to the question of settlements. The American media and government skirt this simple, just solution with all the grace of a figure skating rhinoceros.

Why not abandon all the settlements?

Doing so would be difficult, but so was setting up a Jewish state where none had existed for several thousand years. Moreover, it is the only legal option. It’s as simple as that.

As for leaving some settlers in Palestine…Israel wants recognition as Jewish state, fine. Allow Palestine to exist as Palestinian state.

There are, of course, Arabs in Israel. Though they are increasingly discriminated against, they serve in the Knesset, in the civil service, even in the army. Grudgingly, slowly, reluctantly, they have undertaken the task of adapting to a society that dispossessed their ancestors and continues to make life as impossible as they can for cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents living in the occupied territories.

Israeli settlers living in an eventual Palestine would never do what Arabs living in Israel have undertaken. Israeli settlers endorse a radical form of religiously fueled nationalism. To them, Palestine is not Palestine - it is Israel. While Palestinians implicitly acknowledge the Jewish state by trading with it, negotiating with it, and accepting the fact that it will continue to exist, Israeli settlers have hijacked the peace process, caused both sides too much misery, and compromised Jewish commitment to social and cosmic justice.

Because of their nationalist, border-line messianic fervor, settlers will not leave land on which they live. Nor will they submit to Palestinian suzerainty. Just like the Irgun and the Stern Gang, just like Hamas and Al Aqsa, they will be a violent force for chaos if left in Palestinian territory.

It is time for the settlements to be dismantled. It is time for peace.

It is time for Israel to eat its vegetables.