"But what about the moderates?"

[xpastor]

This morning the Toronto Star published an op-ed column by a liberal Muslim lawyer. It illustrates the great difficulties experienced by liberal Muslims in trying to deal with their "radicalized" counterparts.

Mosques have been faulted for turning away extremists instead of trying to help them, but he asks

what are Muslims to do? In fact, our office recently acted for a mosque in reporting another troubled youngster to CSIS [Canadian Security & Intelligence Service] after pushing him out for his views. This “snitch culture” should be troubling to all who cherish privacy and freedoms. Unfortunately, if action is not taken and the “extremist” is involved in violence (note: the actual number who do this is minuscule) then self-proclaimed experts and Islamophobes will be quick to point out community complicity (guilt by association).

He makes an interesting comment on the process of radicalization:

Studies including those by the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism and Duke University’s Triangle Center confirm that most violent radicals are motivated by a cause as opposed to religion. Indeed, most have a poor understanding of Islam, but are empathetic to the plight of the oppressed and occupied. That said, extremist ideas (including viewing people as believers and unbelievers) combined with resentment and a victim narrative can provide the cognitive opening that can be exploited by violent preachers who provide the necessary religious support (chapter and verse) to justify “heroically” responding to these real or perceived injustices.

Unfortunately, he ends up pussyfooting around a big problem:

However, more must be done to challenge some of the existing narratives fueling cognitive radicalization. Imams must be more proactive in undermining some of the classical texts glorifying violence and martyrdom, by emphasizing the ethical/peaceful vision of the Quran. This can only be done by deconstructing and better contextualizing the violent rhetoric in some of the Prophetic teachings and juristic interpretations adopted uncritically by too many. [my emphasis] Parroting that Islam means peace is not enough. Teachings that may serve as the springboard to violent radicalism must be confronted head on. Such efforts must be internally driven. Any government meddling will only backfire.

Like Karen Armstrong, whom I recently quoted in another thread, he is acknowledging that the sacred books do contain incitements to violence while recommending that the imams use learned arguments to prove that the texts do not mean what they plainly do mean. I have no doubt that they can marshal some texts with contradictory meanings, but will this convince anyone to change his views? Perhaps in a few cases "deconstructing" and "contextualizing" the violent passages will convince radicals to abandon their jihad. However, I fear that the problem is largely intractable. Trying to argue against the plain meaning of a text will more likely prompt the radical to reject the imam as a false teacher. And if an outsider tries to present the plain unvarnished truth, that the contradictions prove there is nothing sacred about the sacred texts, he will just be rejected as an infidel.