Ignoring Moderates Empowers Extremists

Finding moderate Muslims is as likely as finding “moderate unicorns,” a reader huffed in response to my recent plea for Western states to bolster such Muslims. Dismissing their existence as a myth, he notes that non-Muslims “are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities.”It’s a valid skepticism and a reasonable demand. But recent events in Pakistan and Turkey prove that moderate Muslims are no myth.In Pakistan, an estimated 100,000 people demonstrated in the country’s largest city, Karachi, on April 15 to protest the plans of a powerful mosque in Islamabad, the Lal Masjid, to establish a parallel court system based on Islamic religious law. “No to extremism!” the crowd roared. “We will strongly resist religious terrorism and religious extremism,” the leader of the Mutahida Qaumi Movement, Altaf Hussain, said at the rally.In Turkey, more than 1 million moderate Muslims gathered for four marches that protested the bid of the Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, to take over the Turkish presidency, which would give it control over the two top government offices (the other being the prime ministry, currently filled by Prime Minister Erdogan).The first march took place in the capital city, Ankara, on April 14, and was organized by a former general who is president of the Atatürk Thought Association, Sener Eruygur. An estimated 300,000 secularists — which is to say moderate Muslims — held up banners with pictures of the Turkish republic’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, chanting slogans along the lines of “We don’t want an imam as president!” “We respect belief but not radicalism!” and “Turkey is secular and will stay secular!”A young woman carrying a huge Turkish flag, Muge Kaplan, explained that the crowd was Muslim and believes in Islam, but it doesn’t want Islam “to become our whole way of life.” The crowd was defending its republic “against religious fundamentalists,” a farmer, Bülent Korucu, said.A second march, in Istanbul on April 29, boasted 700,000 marchers and repeated these themes. On May 5, smaller marches took place in the towns of Manisa, Çanakkale, and Marmaris in western Anatolia.Nor are the masses alone in resisting the AKP’s Islamists. The pillars of a secular republic “are being openly questioned” for the first time since they came into being in 1923, the President Sezer warned. Mr. Sezer also inveighed against the imposition of a soft Islamist state, which he predicts would turn extremist. A deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party, Onur Öymen, has also cautioned that the AKP’s taking the presidency would “upset all balances” and create a very dangerous situation.The military — Turkey’s ultimate power broker — has issued two statements reinforcing this assessment. On April 12, the chief of staff, General Mehmet Yasar Büyükanıt, expressed hope that “someone who is loyal to the principles of the republc — not just in words but in essence — is elected president.” Two weeks later, the military’s tone became even more urgent, announcing that the presidential election “has been anxiously followed by the Turkish armed forces,” which are maintaining their “firm determination to carry out clearly specified duties to protect” secular principles.This resolute stand against Islamism by moderate Turkish Muslims is the more striking when contrasted with the cluelessness of Westerners who pooh-pooh the dangers of the AKP’s ascent. A Wall Street Journal editorial assures Turks that their prime minister’s popularity “is built on competent and stable government.” Dismissing the historic crossroads that Mr. Sezer and others perceive, it dismisses as “fear mongering” doubts about Mr. Erdogan’s commitment to secularism and ascribes them to petty campaign tactics “to get out the anti-AKP vote and revive a flagging opposition.”“Even if Erdogan walked on water, the secularists wouldn’t believe him,” a former American ambassador to Turkey, Morton Abramowitz, told the New York Times. The European Union’s “enlargement commissioner,” Olli Rehn, has instructed the Turkish military to leave the presidential election in the hands of the democratically elected government, calling the issue “a test case” of the armed forces’ ability to respect their political masters, a position the American government subsequently endorsed.Is it not telling that great numbers of moderate Muslims see danger where so many non-Muslims are blind? Do developments in Pakistan and Turkey not confirm my oft-repeated point that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution? And do they not suggest that ignorant non-Muslim busybodies should get out of the way of those moderate Muslims who are determined to relegate radical Islamism to its rightful place in the dustbin of history?Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is the director of the Middle East Forum.

Ignoring Moderates Empowers Extremists

Ignoring Moderates Empowers Extremists

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