It really baffles me how the Muslim world turns its back on extremism and radicalization. Devout Muslims claim that Islamic extremists aren't real Muslims and just shrug it off. Wrong. They are a growing minority of Muslims whether you like it or not and Muslims need to deal with this plague before it turns Islam upside down. The more Muslims will keep ignoring this the more Islam will be treated as religion of terror and not peace and no western boots on the ground will ever fix this. The best response we've gotten so far is from the Kurds. Nobody else lifted a finger. Turkey even wanted money to accept Muslim refugees. Their own brethren and they wanted money for them... How does anyone expect things to get better when Muslims themselves don't give two shits?
That's a bit like claiming that Catholics in South America are on the hook for Evangelical-committed hate-crimes in North America. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Berbers, and Arabs are all actually distinct ethnic and national groups.
As to extremism, the real problem is the use of Saudi oil money to pay for extremist imams. Many Muslim refugees have shown up in Europe and reported to the authorities that they find their new "local" imam frighteningly extremist, because that "local" imam was Saudi-funded while their original upbringing in Syria or Iraq wasn't Wahhabi.
I certainly agree but there's only as many people of Muslim ancestry that do actively identify as Muslim, want a reform of Islamic thought and are able to safely speak out. Kurds are certainly Muslim, but you don't really see them ascribing their differing values to Islam too much [0]. Seems to stem from their ethnic identity.
The best we can do is, I think, strongly incentivizing all the reformers. The vast majority of them today are in a sleazy situation. You complain to your compatriots - they'll lash out on you. You complain to the West - they'll ignore you. You complain to the Western right-wing[1] - they'll listen but use it to rationalize more hate.
[0] and if they are at heart, then that's definitely not the message that's being broadcasted to the world
[1] for the record obviously it's a hyperbole
What part of that comment could you possibly have agreed with?
Are you accepting the premise that "the Muslim world" turns its back on extremism? Why? How familiar are you with the Muslim world? Who are the people most impacted by radical Islamic terrorism? Here's a hint: it's not non-Muslims! Islam accounts for a quarter of the world's population, and there are tens of thousands of Islamic scholars expressing a continuous spectrum of opinions about the role of Islam in politics, all of which then have to pass through the same lens of geopolitics --- that Egypt has national interests that align imperfectly with those of Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, &c --- that every other school of thought must. How could you possibly accept such a simplistic premise as "the Muslim world ignores extremism"?
Do you find compelling the idea that Turkey should accommodate ISIS refugees without international subsidy simply because those refugees tend to be Muslim? Ignore for a second that Syrian refugees are not in fact all Muslims and stipulate instead that they are: what does a single shared cultural characteristic really tell us about Turkey's obligations to citizens of other countries? Put it this way: care to guess what the dominant religion of Latin America is? Is it therefore the case that the United States is obligated to accommodate every Latino immigrant?
I'm having a hard time locating a single coherent point in the inflammatory comment you just "certainly agreed to". I don't mean "point I agree with"; I mean "point that exhibits any internal consistency".
Can you help me understand what you found persuasive about it?
I have certainly not interpreted it the way you have. I don't question the Islamic world's disavowal of ISIS. I understand radicalism and extremism not to be ISIS but the general illiberalism and yes, unfortunately, in case of anti-Semitism support for terrorism. Which the Islamic world does have a huge PR problem in consistently disavowing IMO. In that context, the exceptionalism of Kurds is not their fight with ISIS but the significantly different stance on Israel, civil liberties, women's rights and in the case of HDP even pushing the envelope on LGBT rights.
I run a personal social media account that's vaguely about Israel with a significant following of Middle Easterners and Pakistanis. I often get messaged by people wanting to do a little bit of debating (amongst the sea of hate mail of course). Which outside of a deep interest is where my personal experience comes from. Part of my family is nominally Muslim too so I'm always eager to look for any signs of Islamic liberalism.
Of course now that you have written it out this way I can understand your reading of that comment too. And, yes, the comment about Turkey I have overlooked.
