While the knee-jerk response is still to brand as “bigots” all those who call upon Muslims to confront and work against the violence engendered by Islamic teaching, Youssef Ibrahim is not afraid to stand up and speak the truth.
From the New York Sun (thanks to all who sent this in):
The latest batch of attacks by Islamic terrorists raised fresh concerns among Muslims over what they fear may be “heinous attempts” to link terror with Islam.
British Muslims, who number 1.6 million, are reportedly funding advertising campaigns across Britain that proclaim Islam is “the religion of peace” “” in the process also implicitly warning fellow Britons against criticizing their faith.
Yet a year ago, a weighty Muslim writer and pundit, Abdelrahman Al Rashed, manager of the pan-Arab TV network Al-Arabiya Television, famously launched a stormy debate when he opined, “While all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are now Muslims.”
Ever since, the question among Muslim scholars and activists is precisely how much of the terror inspired by Islam is due to the faith itself “” and how much is due to the way it is being preached.
Clearly, the issue is enormously delicate, fraught with the pitfalls of prejudice and all sorts of other sensitivities.
But as hundreds of thousands of people from New York to Baghdad are butchered under Islam’s banners, failing to tackle it head-on is unacceptable.
Read it all.