Not Much Room on Muslim "Middle Ground"
Posted by: Clay Waters
6/19/2006 2:32:51 PM
Laurie Goodstein uses Sunday’s front page to give some valuable PR to “moderate” Muslims in “American Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground.” But there are hints, well hidden in Goodstein's puffy piece, that there's less to that "moderation" than the Times would have us think.
“Sheik Hamza Yusuf, in a groomed goatee and sports jacket, looked more like a hip white college professor than a Middle Eastern sheik. Imam Zaid Shakir, a lanky African-American in a long brown tunic, looked as if he would fit in just fine on the streets of Damascus.
“Both men are converts to Islam who spent years in the Middle East and North Africa being mentored by formidable Muslim scholars. They have since become leading intellectual lights for a new generation of American Muslims looking for homegrown leaders who can help them learn how to live their faith without succumbing to American materialism or Islamic extremism.”
The paper’s religion reporter throws in some flattering details: “Mr. Shakir mixes passages from the Koran with a few lines of rap, and channels accents from ghetto to Valley Girl. Some of his students call him the next Malcolm X -- out of his earshot, because he so often preaches the importance of humility.”
But she also gives a pass to some of Yusuf’s more inflammatory ideas.
“He asked the audience to pray for the victims of kidnappers in Iraq, saying that kidnapping is just as bad as American bombings in which the military dismisses the civilians killed as ‘collateral damage.’
“‘They're both sinister, as far as I'm concerned,’ he said. ‘One is efficient, the other is pathetic.’
“Both Mr. Shakir and Mr. Yusuf have a history of anti-American rhetoric, but with age, they have tempered their views. Mr. Shakir told the Houston audience that they are blessed to live in a country that is stable and safe, and in which they have thrived.”
Is comparing the regrettable (but inevitable and accidental) deaths of civilians in wartime with the kidnappings committed by terrorists and criminals really a sign of “tempered views”?
Goodstein strains to make a sunny mosaic out of the Houston crowds: “When Mr. Shakir and Mr. Yusuf stepped off the stage, they were mobbed by a crowd that personified the breadth of their following. There were students in college sweatshirts, doctors and limousine drivers in suits. There were immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and the grown children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the immigrant generation. There were plenty of African-Americans (as many as a third of American Muslims are black), and a sprinkling of white and Hispanic converts. There were women in all kinds of head scarves, and women without.”
But Goodstein gives Shakir the rather disturbing last word, which puts a chill on the sunny scene: “He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, ‘not by violent means, but by persuasion.’”
That eye-opener can be found concealed under a benign Times’ sub-head, “A Goal for America.”
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