HEARTS AND MINDS

There is an excellent (and I think a must read) editorial in Opinion Journal written by Abdurrahman Wahid.

According to Opinion Journal, "Mr. Wahid, former president of Indonesia, is patron and senior advisor to the LibForAll Foundation (www.libforall.org), an Indonesian and U.S.-based nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism and discredit the use of terrorism."

In his editorial Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam: Muslims and non-Muslims must unite to defeat the Wahhabi ideology, he warns us:

It is time for people of good will from every faith and nation to recognize that a terrible danger threatens humanity. We cannot afford to continue "business as usual" in the face of this existential threat. Rather, we must set aside our international and partisan bickering, and join to confront the danger that lies before us.

He explains that:

An extreme and perverse ideology in the minds of fanatics is what directly threatens us (specifically, Wahhabi/Salafi ideology--a minority fundamentalist religious cult fueled by petrodollars). Yet underlying, enabling and exacerbating this threat of religious extremism is a global crisis of misunderstanding.

Some other bullet points:

1. All too many Muslims fail to grasp Islam, which teaches one to be lenient towards others and to understand their value systems...
2. This crisis of misunderstanding--of Islam by Muslims themselves--is compounded by the failure of governments, people of other faiths, and the majority of well-intentioned Muslims to resist, isolate and discredit this dangerous ideology.
3. Failure to understand the true nature of Islam permits the continued radicalization of Muslims world-wide, while blinding the rest of humanity to a solution which hides in plain sight.
4. To neutralize the virulent ideology that underlies fundamentalist terrorism and threatens the very foundations of modern civilization, we must identify its advocates, understand their goals and strategies, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and effectively counter their every move. What we are talking about is nothing less than a global struggle for the soul of Islam.
   

Go read the whole editorial.