Marc Shneier's blind spot on Muslim condemnations of terror (update)

Writing in The Washington Post, Rabbi Marc Schneier says:

Why don’t Muslim leaders speak out?

That question comes up every time terrorists purporting to be deeply religious Muslims carry out armed attacks that kill innocent people. Where, commentators ask, are the moderate Muslim leaders and why aren’t they decrying the horrors perpetuated by fellow Muslims?

In fact, mainstream Muslims are speaking out, clearly and consistently. Leaders around the world, many of whom I know personally through my work at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, have issued strong and unambiguous statements virtually every time a violent attack has occurred, condemning such acts as immoral and counter to the fundamental precepts of Islam.

Yet somehow their responses are not being heard, barely registering in the public consciousness.

He gives examples of widespread condemnations by Muslim leaders, for example of the hostage taking in Australia and the massacre in Peshawar.

Schneier even says that Muslim leaders are condemning European antisemitism:

For example, after riots by a predominantly Muslim crowd in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles attacked a synagogue and Jewish businesses, the local Muslim Association sent a letter of solidarity and support to the vice president of the synagogue. National Muslim leaders took part in an interfaith ceremony that denounced the violence and called for reconciliation. French Council of the Muslim Faith head Dalil Boubakeur, who attended the ceremony, affirmed that the vast majority of French Muslims are not anti-Semitic. How could they be, he asked, when they themselves are battling racism?

To praise Muslim leaders for condemning a massacre of 130 children is faint praise indeed.

There is no political cost for a Muslim to denounce a massacre of children. There is no political cost for a Muslim leader outside ISIS-controlled areas to denounce ISIS. There is little downside for Western Muslim leaders to send letters of solidarity to Jewish victims of terror.

The question is how many Muslim leaders are willing to denounce Islamic-inspired terror, publicly and to their own confregations, when there is a political cost.

Some do. A wonderful example is Sheikh Samir Aasi, Imam of the main mosque in Akko (Acre), whose condemnation of the Har Nof synagogue attack resulted in one of his flock attacking his car with acid.

However, the emphasis on condemnations misses the point.

The fact is that the percentage of Muslims who support terror is not tiny. A significant number of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries think that suicide terrorism is sometimes or often justified.

This adds up to hundreds of millions of Muslims who justify terrorism.

When Westerners want to see Muslims condemn terror, it isn't "Islamophobic" as Max Fisher claims. They aren't demanding a mea culpa to Western audiences to demean Muslims. The desire to see Muslim leaders condemning terror is a response to the disconnect between how Muslims portray themselves to the West as being against extremism and the fact that hundreds of millions of Muslims don't have a big problem with terrorism.

The point isn't soliciting condemnations. The point is the solve the problem of Islamic terror. 

The question that needs answering is how can so many Muslims openly admit extreme positions worldwide without fear of being shamed by their own Muslim leadership.

If terrorism was as widely and thoroughly condemned in Islam as Rabbi Schneieir claims, then the Pew poll would show low single-digit numbers for each country's citizens supporting terror. The relatively high numbers indicate that there is a serious disconnect between what we are being told and the reality. Schneier is adding to that disconnect.

No one cares about the condemnations per se; what the world cares about is that the terror stops. Since the vast majority of terror attacks (and, now, antisemitism) are done in the name of Islam, it is reasonable to expect Muslim leaders to be in the forefront of fighting terrorism - not just condemning it but addressing it within their own communities and mosques, finding our root causes of how extremism makes it into their own communities and coming up with Islamic-centered solutions that can both convince the youth that terror is not acceptable and that can effectively defeat the ideological roots of Islamic terror.

If moderate Islam is the choice of the vast majority of Muslims, then that majority does have the responsibility to fix the problem with their extremist Muslim brothers. Condemnations are only a small, visible component of what needs to be a major, soul-searching effort. 

That is what the world is not seeing. 

I don't doubt that most Muslim leaders detest ISIS. But the fact is that ISIS emerged from their own belief system. And extremist ideologies like that of ISIS is offering something compelling for young people to want to join it. Perhaps it is the perception that extremism is aligned with piety, perhaps it is from years of being indoctrinated with the idea that Muslims are under attack and it is time for them to take revenge, perhaps something else. But this is not a problem that can be solved by non-Muslims. The responsibility lies with Muslim leaders, both in the first and third worlds. and like it or not, the rest of the world is not seeing the excruciating soul-searching and strategy that is a necessary component of solving this problem that is clearly in the heart of the Islamic world today, not peripheral to it. 

(h/t EBoZ)

UPDATE: After I wrote this, I saw his article showing that Egypt's president gets it:

In a speech on New Year’s day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” in Islam that would displace violent jihad from the center of Muslim discourse.

“Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims worldwide) should want to kill the rest of the world’s population—that is, 7 billion people—so that they themselves may live?” he asked. “Impossible.”

Speaking to an audience of religious scholars celebrating the birth of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, he called on the religious establishment to lead the fight for moderation in the Muslim world. “You imams (prayer leaders) are responsible before Allah. The entire world—I say it again, the entire world—is waiting for your next move because this umma (a word that can refer either to the Egyptian nation or the entire Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

He was speaking in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, widely regarded as the leading world center for Islamic learning.

“The corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You must step outside yourselves and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”

Here's part of the speech. (h/t Effect)