Defeating Extremist Islam - A Western Imperative

by Saied Shoaaib  •  June 5, 2017 at 5:00 am

• The infiltration of this ideology is reminiscent of the spread of communism and should be defeated similarly -- not with weapons, but by exposing its true nature and providing an alternative. The West first must abandon, however, the notion that radical Islam is an internal Muslim issue, any more than communism was a "Russian issue" that "the Russians" needed to solve.
• In addition, the views of liberal Muslim scholars, who reject the whole premise of extremist, political Islam, should be supported and widely circulated.
• Finally, imams in Western countries must be held to the same standard as members of other professions. They should be required to receive occupational licenses, based on criteria determined by the state, in conjunction with modern Muslims seeking a peaceful life and the ability to integrate into their societies without fear of repercussions at the hands of fundamentalists.

Many imams in the West are graduates of Cairo's Al-Azhar, a Sunni center for higher learning. Its curriculum includes extremist content, such as tenets that killing "apostates" is a Divine obligation; that it is a Muslim's duty to humiliate female prisoners through sexual abuse; that adulterers should be stoned to death, and that Christians and Jews are the "enemy of God." (Image source: Diego Delso/Wikimedia Commons)

Many imams in the West -- citizens of the United States, Canada and other countries -- use their pulpits to promote practices that go against democratic values and ultimately lead to terrorism.

Some call on their flock to kill Jews, Christians and "infidel" Muslims who do not adhere either to the strictest interpretation of Islam. Others justify the marriage of grown men to nine-year-old girls. There are those, too, who defend the spousal "right" of husbands to rape their wives.

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