On Tuesday, a tweet washed up over the digital transom of the slow and somewhat unevenly-keeled rowboat that is my presence on social media–a platform where (it seems to me) everyone else is tooling around on the electronic equivalent of speedboats while I pull on oars that would be happier in an era of print media.
But at any rate, here’s what the tweet said:
@revbennyd: How to free #Islam from #extremism?
Attached to the tweet was a link to a series of articles that gave a few suggestions for how to free Islam from Extremism, most of which seemed sort of unrealistic. It is, however, a fair question and I tweeted back a few of my ideas, but the problem with Twitter is that it’s hard to have a coherent conversation at 140 keystrokes a pop. How convenient, then, that I was trying to figure out what to write for Contact when the question popped up on my iPad’s screen. So here–in more than 140 keystrokes–is how I’d like to answer the question of how Islam can be freed from extremism:
Islam doesn’t need to be freed from extremism; non-Muslims in the West need to be freed from our fear of Islam.
The numbers on this are clear. If we assume that the only extremists of immediate concern are actively violent extremists, then we’re really only talking about fewer than one hundredth of one percent of Muslims worldwide. Now, violent Muslims have the capacity to wreak great havoc, and so we probably should be worried about them, but just because they are dangerous doesn’t mean they define the rest of Islam or that Islam needs to be rid of them. Their tiny numbers relative to the rest of Islam suggest that they are such an anomaly that Islam is already rid of them.
If non-Muslims are going to be freed from our fear of Islam, then we need to listen more to the voices of non-violent, non-extremist Muslims, which is to say that we need to start listening to a subset of Muslims that is so large it is pretty much the entire population of Islam.
If non-Muslims are going to be freed from our fear of Muslims, we also need to demand a measure of accountability from our media and from Media-savvy politicians who distort Islam and misconstrue Muslims, with the willing compliance of the American public. We, who are the public, need to care and need to demand peaceable accuracy rather than fearful deception from the heads that talk at us from the glowing screens that capture our attention and speak to our souls.
Now you may be asking what any of this has to do with Advent or Christmas (’tis the season, after all), and while this really is more of a year-round, all-weather kind of message, still this is the time of year when we wait hopefully for a light that shines in the darkness, a light which no darkness can overcome. This is the light of Christ, which illuminates many things, including (we may hope), our prejudices and fears.
My the light of the Christ Child come to us and so fill our lives with hope that we will have courage to be freed from our fears and live in peace with all God’s children, including those who pray with their eyes and ears inclined toward Mecca.
Peace,
Ben