Yes, its quite dispiriting that the Western political dialogue continuously criticises moderate Muslims while empowering the zealots with press attention, but so seldom actually does anything to help and support them.
I highly recommend the book Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziaudin Sardar, a book by an active engaged moderate Muslim (also a respected Western academic, but its largely incidental to the book), which reads very much as a lament for the world of moderate Islam caught between Islamic zealotry and Western dismissal and hostility (which, of course, feeds the zealotry).
From the second Arab News link We spent years telling people that Saudis are not monsters. That our religion is one of peace and fairness. The problem is not with the Saudi people, or even with their religion. The problem is, their government are monsters, a hereditary monarchy wildly out of touch with the rest of the world and able to maintain its backward and anachronistic, often deliberately ignorant, stance purely due to a combination of oil money and Western support, and that empowers and fosters zealotry as long as it keeps them in power and turns a blind eye to aristocratic hypocrisy. As long as there is very little economic or political pressure on them to change, they will not -- the Saudi regime is a case where the West props up and empowers the zealots in real terms, and then uses their excesses to attack all Islam.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-10 04:24 am (UTC)I highly recommend the book Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziaudin Sardar, a book by an active engaged moderate Muslim (also a respected Western academic, but its largely incidental to the book), which reads very much as a lament for the world of moderate Islam caught between Islamic zealotry and Western dismissal and hostility (which, of course, feeds the zealotry).
From the second Arab News link
We spent years telling people that Saudis are not monsters. That our religion is one of peace and fairness.
The problem is not with the Saudi people, or even with their religion. The problem is, their government are monsters, a hereditary monarchy wildly out of touch with the rest of the world and able to maintain its backward and anachronistic, often deliberately ignorant, stance purely due to a combination of oil money and Western support, and that empowers and fosters zealotry as long as it keeps them in power and turns a blind eye to aristocratic hypocrisy. As long as there is very little economic or political pressure on them to change, they will not -- the Saudi regime is a case where the West props up and empowers the zealots in real terms, and then uses their excesses to attack all Islam.