cartoons part 3

There was an excellent article on the Wall Street Journal website. In it a Muslim scholar explains what is going on with the cartoons. He made an analogy that was helpful to me and I pass it on to you. Here is an excerpt.

"The Muslim Fury," one newspaper headline screamed. "The Rage of Islam Sweeps Europe," said another. "The clash of civilizations is coming," warned one commentator. All this refers to the row provoked by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper four months ago. Since then a number of demonstrations have been held, mostly--though not exclusively--in the West, and Scandinavian embassies and consulates have been besieged.
But how representative of Islam are all those demonstrators? The "rage machine" was set in motion when the Muslim Brotherhood--a political, not a religious, organization--called on sympathizers in the Middle East and Europe to take the field. A fatwa was issued by Yussuf al-Qaradawi, a Brotherhood sheikh with his own program on al-Jazeera. Not to be left behind, the Brotherhood's rivals, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) and the Movement of the Exiles (Ghuraba), joined the fray. Believing that there might be something in it for themselves, the Syrian Baathist leaders abandoned their party's 60-year-old secular pretensions and organized attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

The analogy that is helpful is to remember that these extremist groups are at their core political not faith-based communities. What I mean by this is they are trying to gain power through use of violence and fear, not trying to practice a religion. So, often we hear the question asked, “Why don’t we hear Muslim leaders cry out against these types of violent events done in the “name of Allah?” I can think of two logical reasons.

One, if a leader lives in a country that is sympathetic toward these extremist political organizations then there is one’s own safety to consider. Two, the Arabic-speaking media is in the sensationalist business like most other media outlets throughout the world and, of course, will report on the most provocative and sensational news possible. Islamic leaders who are not extreme are not often heard, no matter what they say.