M. Zuhdi Jasser has a excellent piece concerning the lack of progress America has made in addressing radical Islam:
This week the President stated,
We must encourage more Muslim leaders to add their voices, to speak out against radical extremists who infiltrate mosques, to denounce organizations that use the veneer of Islamic belief to support and fund acts of violence, and to reach out to young Muslims — even in our country and elsewhere in the free world — who believe suicide bombing may some day be justified.
If we keep saying the same thing to the same groups while ignoring the root causes of militant Islamism, six more years from now and many more plots later we may sadly be hearing the same speech.
Great point. But rather than just complain about the problem and leave it at that, he offers a solution:
Mr. President, as a devout Muslim, I can tell you that the only way the United States can make progress in this war is to have your administration give anti-Islamist Muslims acknowledgement for the centrality of their ideas in this war of ideologies. We can defeat political Islam only if we engage it and marginalize Islamists while positively engaging spiritual Islam. It is time for the administration to set the parameters defining the ideology we are fighting and be critical of organizations which facilitate it. The words of encouragement and admonition to Muslim organizations to lead the charge against radicalism are too vague. The reality is that the priorities, ideologies, and minority politics of the current agenda of the Islamic organizations the administration has courted and which attended last Wednesday’s press conference are far from being on the right page in this conflict.
