Letters to the Editor
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‘Double Standard Seen Among Terror Critics’
On June 14, I gave a speech at a conference by the East-West Institute that focused on countering violent extremism and radicalization [New York, “Double Standard Seen Among Terror Critics,” June 15, 2007].
I spoke for 45 minutes and focused the overwhelming majority of my remarks on what we need to do to defeat Al Qaeda and its followers.
However, The New York Sun report focused solely around one comment I made regarding the fact that violent extremism is present throughout many religions, and that all religious leaders need to be held accountable for standing up and condemning such violence.
This has led some to conclude, wrongly, that I find the current threat to be equally present across all religions. This was not my argument.
Comparing violent extremists across three faiths is not to suggest that the threats are equivalent. They are not.
The problems arising from Christian or Jewish extremism are not threatening to the world in the same way as Muslim extremism.
With this in mind, I would like to set the record straight and, again, present the crux of the argument that I made on June 14.
Throughout history, extremists from every religion have sought to kill innocents in the name of their God, but today — with the exception of Muslim extremists — religious radicals have been unsuccessful in mobilizing large numbers of fighters.
I hypothesize, based on my interviews of terrorists around the world, that the widespread perception that Islam has fallen behind the West has created a vulnerability among some Muslims to a false narrative spread by extremists.
The Al Qaeda movement’s story is that the West is deliberately humiliating the global Muslim community, and that the best way for radical Muslims to recover their pride and dignity is through violence against the West and against “impure Muslims.”
While America’s approach to the war on terrorism has been principally military, the enemy has been fighting — not just with weapons — but also with ideas with the aim of spreading its false narrative around the globe to mobilize new recruits.
To fight this scourge, I support the policy recommendations of the EastWest Institute: Our weapons in the war on terrorism must include diplomacy, intrareligious dialogue, intelligence, and when necessary, covert action.
It must also include a major effort to develop a counternarrative that makes clear that the West has no desire to humiliate or destroy the global Muslim community.
That narrative must focus on our common humanity, rather than our differences.
JESSICA STERN
Lecturer
Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass.
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