While the existence of militant strands of Islam is not controversial the causes of this militancy is. The debate cleaves into two camps The first views Islamic extremism as it views all forms of religious extremism, entirely divorced from the hijacked tradition. The second school of thought takes the opposite view, conflating Islam and extremism. In this view, summarized by far right Dutch MP Geert Wilders, "there is no such thing as a moderate Islam," and the only recourse is for the west to "[b]an this wretched book [the Quran] like Mein Kampf is banned," and enact policies to make "no more Muslim immigrants allowed [and]. . .no more mosques,"
The ideology championed by Wilders and his far right cohorts is comforting for many, and perhaps that can explain its popularity. Eschewing nuanced understandings in favor of a dogmatic Us vs. Them approach, it shields westerners form introspection and appeals to powerful ethnocentric impulses. We are inherently good, so therefore, anyone with a conflict with us must be inherently evil, we can do no wrong and they can do right. It is easy to see how this belief fits within the context of a worldview where there are no distinctions between us and them, good and evil, where nothing distinguishes Barak Obama, Hugo Chavez, and Adolf Hitler from one another, and it is equally easy to see how detrimental this worldview is to attempts at fostering tolerance, interfaith dialog, and liberal Islam.
Islam is no more at fault for the conflict between East and West than Arab nationalism or Communism were a few decades ago, indeed Islam plays a similar role, as an ideology of resistance, though like then this is not widely understood. Western policy makers have again confused a historical movement, the backlash against colonialism and neo-imperialism, with the ideology encapsulating it. Like Communist and Arab nationalist movements within the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s the popularity of militant Islam is rooted in societal factors only superficially related to the religion. Grievances are always expressed within an ideological framework, and so long as the grievances persist so will an ideology to encapsulate them.
When that ideology was Communism and nationalism western policy makers mistook these beliefs for the cause of anti-western sentiments and sought to replace them by encouraging a third ideology; militant Islam. The most violent fundamentalist movements within the Middle East, Hamas, the Taliban, Wahibism all enjoyed the backing of the West, which hoped Islam would pacify the Middle East by weakening the other two movements. It accomplished that much, it did weaken Communism and nationalism, but from a historical perspective it only replaced them, changing nothing.
Those who ascribe anti-western violence to Islam ignore history. Militant Islam is made potent by the same factors that gave rise to ideologically opposed, but equally violent movements. Displacement and occupation in Palestine led to the rise of Hamas, an organization generally cited as an example of the violence inherent in Islam. The most violent and rejectionist Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was born out of the same conditions as it Hamas, and it is much extremist than the Islamic Resistance, but it is not an Islamic organization. It embraces nationalism and Marxism, and though it is secular, it was founded and led by a Christian, Dr. George Habash, not a Muslim. Oppression, and not Islam, or Communism, or nationalism, is the root of the backlash against the West.
Sometimes it is articulated in Islamic rhetoric, elsewhere in terms of nationalism, paganism, Marxism, liberation theology, or hero worship, but no matter what ideology gives it voice there will be a backlash wherever people are subjugated. Oftentimes this backlash is so strong it transcends belief, in Latin American Osama bin Laden is a popular figure among Catholics with virulently anti-western views, and American atheists of the left are popular among many Muslims, not because of any ideological or religious qualification, but because of the perception of resistance.
In the case of Islam it is important to distinguish the religion from what is done in its name. It does not matter how popular extremism is Islam and its moderate followers are entitled to the respect due one of the world's great religions. Just as it would be unfair to condemn Christianity for the Inquisition and the Crusades or Judaism for the role of groups such as the JDL and Kach, condemnations of Islam on the basis of 9/11 or 7/7 is bigoted and intolerant.
Those who attempt to conflate Islam with its radical elements champion a transparently bigoted agenda that has done nothing but further alienate Muslims and worsen extremism. Al-Qadea is not the only organization to fantasize about a non-existent clash of civilizations. Western extremists often demand to see the evidence of Muslims protesting violence done in the name of Islam, though they don't hesitate demonize those in their own society making "not in my name" demonstrations against western atrocities. By asking where is the face of moderate Islam, but never seeking an answer they beg the question.
They always talk of the Salman Rushdie fatwa, though they appear to be unaware that the faculty of the oldest and most respected Islamic school, Al-Ajhar University in Cairo declared the ruling un-Islamic, or that the fatwa was condemned a month after being issued by 48 of the 49 member states of the Islamic Conference. They never tire of prattling on about how the Mumbai attacks demonstrate the barbaric nature of Islam, though they never mention the bodies of the ten attackers were refused an Islamic burial by officials at local Muslim cemeteries who were outraged at the attack.
Sadly, among the leaders of the anti-Islamic bigots, these omissions are not due to ignorance. An illustrious example is the reaction to the 9/11 attacks. The attacks were condemned by a flurry of fatwas representing almost the entire range of Islamic, even militant Islamic thought, they were condemned in spontaneous mass demonstrations across Iran and Pakistan, they were condemned by Muslims worldwide.
One such Muslim is Debbie Almontaser. Speaking of the attacks Almontaser commented “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims. … Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion." Later when Almontaser became the founding principal of New York City's first Arabic-English public school, one of 67 such dual language schools, a xenophobic hate group calling itself "Stop the Madrassa" initiated a campaign against the school, attacking Almontaser personally. The group had trouble proving she was a "soft Jihadist", a radical, but law-abiding Muslim, seeking to establish a caliphate from within. But they had experienced help. At the helm of the effort was veteran racist activist Daniel Pipes.
Pipes took Almontaser's statement condemning 9/11, removed the last sentence so the quote read “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims," and branded her a "9/11 denier", a petty conspiracy theorist. The original quote did not conform to his ideological preconceptions so he distorted it to validate his bigotries.
The bigots are so caught up in their ethnocentric fantasies they are unable to appreciate elementary distinctions. One of the most popular scaremongering phrases among European Islamaphobes is Bat Ye'or's term Eurabia, in this simplistic worldview there is no difference between Muslim and Arab.
Sadly, this phenomenon is not confined to the traditional nativist xenophobes of the far right. Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz, O.J's leading defense attorney, is both an ardent Democrat and one of the most active anti-Islamic hate mongers in the U.S. For years he has championed a plainly bigoted agenda, his fanaticism is so overpowering not even basic facts stand in his way. Seeking expert commentary on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination by Christian Sirhan Sirhan a Boston Globe columnist consulted Derschowitz. "It [the assassination] was in some ways," Dershowitz informed him, "the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America. It was the first shot. A lot of us didn't recognize it at the time."
R regardless of how bigots exploit the issue for their own purposes there are legitimate concerns about Islamic extremism. For leftists, many of them atheists and agnostics, any form of religious extremism is abhorrent. In the west they are often the only voice of protest against supporting repressive Islamic forces such as in Saudi Arabia, East Timor, and Bosnia. In the Middle East they are typically the greatest rival of Islamic extremists. Yet it is evident the sole issue for leftists is human rights, and so, even when they issue scathing denunciations of militant Islam, they are never condemned as anti-Muslim.
Still, they are the greatest challenge to Islamic extremism. Islamic extremism is dependent on the alienation of Muslims by bigots such as Pipes, Derschowitz, and Wilders and the oppression of Muslims in the third world. Leftists work to integrate Islam and Muslims, they oppose all forms of oppression, and they condemn violence irrespective of the ideology whose name it is perpetrated in. If they did not view these activities as such a threat, radical Islamists would have never felt compelled to kidnap British MP George Galloway, or engage in armed clashes with leftists in the Middle East. Leftists, who are castigated as radical appeasers of Islamofascism by those on the radical right, pose a genuine threat to militant Islam whereas the self-appointed guardians of the fatherland only encourage it.