Dalia Mogahed is a Muslim Brotherhood apologist (which is part of the reason the UAE government kicked her and Gallup out). That’s her prerogative, but let’s not mince words. She does not speak for liberal America, and not for liberal Muslims here. She seems to have been picked up as a voice of moderation by certain naive (or complicit) voices, which deserve more than a simple comment in reply.
Dalia is wrong: to defeat ISIS, we must recognize and publicly proclaim that Salafi doctrine, based on their centuries-old intepretation of the Quran, is abhorrent to American ideals and to liberals worldwide. And we must work to overcome it. Otherwise "we are actually doing their propaganda for them." Dahlia fails to do this, perhaps because she cannot bring herself to critisize Islam, perhaps because she does not want to alienate those who fund her. And there is more overlap than most liberals are aware of or willing to admit, between the basic religious beliefs of ISIS, Salafists, and Muslim Brotherhood (of varying shades).
We have to be careful not to give in to the false-peace narrative of Mogahed, who wants to create Western support for the Muslim Brotherhood and define Islam in her terms. She is not a voice of real progress for the Middle East. She is among those who like to pick and choose select phrases from the Quran, without providing the full context. E.g., we’ve all heard that the Quran allegedly says: "if any one slew a person it would be as if he slew all mankind.” President Obama ‘quoted’ this verse, so it must be true, right? But in fact this omits a key phrase, the correct full text (in English) is: “if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land — it would be as if he slew the whole people.” And what might “spreading mischief in the land” (sometimes translated as “spreading corruption”) incude? Opposition to Islam. Read the very next verse, Quran 5:33 : “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides...” The Quran is the literal and timeless word of God, as revealed to Muhammad by Gabriel, for Daesh, Saudi Arabia, and (when they are in control of a government) the Muslim Brotherhood. To suggest that the Quran is not timeless, that it must be re-interpreted, that norms evolve — that would be bid’ah, blasphemy in mainstream Islam as believed worldwide.
We know nothing from the "research" that Dalia Mogahid has conducted, because it lacks scientific credibility or objectivity. She conducts "studies" to prove her points, but refuses to release her data for peer review, verification, or possible falsification. It is the antithesis of science. This statement, in particularly, is egregiously false: "The more religious someone is, the more often they go to the mosque, the more likely they are to reject attacks on civilians." There is zero scientific evidence to back up this howler.
There is no meaningful comparison between the ignorant, white supremicist beliefs of Dylann Roof and the beliefs of ISIS. Dylann Roof is not justifying his actions by quoting some basic religious text, there are no billionaires backing him, there is no global network of terrorists supporting him (thank god!). ISIS' views on Islam are not only compatible with Saudi Arabia's, ISIS uses Saudi textbooks (on all subjects including Islam) in its classrooms.
There is no similarity between the horrible racism, chattel slavery (450,000 Africans enslaved and shipped to the USA, maybe 100,000 dying en route), infathomable abuse, murders, rapes, lynchings of 5,000 people, and other discrimination (including the decimation of millions of Native peoples) in US history, on the one hand, and the religious-based terrorism and targetting of innocent civilians by ISIS, on the other hand. Both are horrible; they are different. This is a basic point of any analysis. Not all bad things are similar.
We identify mass killings by Islamist terrorists as religiously-rooted, because they are. We do not identify mass killings by psychotics like Adam Lanza or James Holmes as religiously-rooted, because they were not. This distinction, too, is not rocket science.
The vast majority of terrorism *worldwide* (not just in the USA, where we are protected by our homeland security forces) is in fact conducted by Muslims. Yes, often against other Muslims — exactly. As practiced worldwide, it is not a “religion of peace,” even within its own camp. (This was evidenced from the very beginning in fights over the succession to Muhammad and the resulting Shia-Sunni split.) This data is widely and easily available. E.g., from the U-MD’s Global Terrorism Database www.start.umd.edu/... With information on more than 140,000 terrorist attacks worldwide, the last time I checked 80% of them were conducted by Muslims. Another source, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC, www.nctc.gov), concluded that Sunni Muslim terrorists committed “about 70 percent” of the 12,533 terrorist murders in the world in 2011. Etc.
Dalia’s 2008 book with John Esposito, with the arrogant subtitle “what a billion Muslims really think,” and the presumptuous title “Who Speaks for Islam?,” is deeply misleading. Esposito was once a scholar but has become a caricature of an academic sell-out, with $20 million in funding from Saudi Arabian sources. (He thrives on people like Pamela Geller — as if right-wing kooks were the only critics of Islam.) Ask Dalia or John to provide their original data, their original survey instrument, and their methodology for ensuring that the survey wasn’t simply filled in by low-paid, biased research staff, and you’ll get a brush-off (as they have done for almost a decade). If you want to read more about how shoddy, biased, and secretive the “research” was for that book, read some critiques. (There are grains of truth even in right-wing critiques of it.) And even Dalia and John conclude (if you examine the data closely) that more than 1/3 of Muslims believed the killing of innocent civilians on 9/11 was either partially, in some way, or totally justified. But they present this in the most white-washed way imaginable, deeply misleading readers.
The majority of Muslims’ worldwide (98.5% of whom live outside The West) have vastly different values than most Kossacks on issues relating to women, LBGTQ, freedoms of speech, blasphemy (the freedom to criticize religions), apostasy (the freedom to change one’s religion), prayer, inter-religious marriage, separation of church/mosque and state, democracy, capital punishment, corporal punishment, anti-Semitism, the life of Muhammad (raping a nine year-old girl, leading the slaughter of those who opposed his religious views or refused to pay him tribute), etc. Much of the problem lies with Saudi Arabia (for Sunni) and Iran (for Shia), and the repressive doctrines they have promulgated throughout the ulama and believers worldwide, for decades. But that is the reality of current Islam (whatever it might someday become).
One thing is clear: Dalia Mogahed does not speak for liberal America.
[Update: revised the headline, better fit with the diary.]
