Mudita Journal

An Interview with Moderate Islamists

July 1, 2006 · Filed under: Current Events, Politics
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Michael Totten’s interview with moderate Islamists is wonderful reading.

Here’s one exchange that stood out to me as particularly remarkable:

Just as I was beginning to think he and his father had no good reason to refer to themselves as Islamists, that the Kurds therefore really – truly! – are different, out came the sadly typical (for the region) paranoid comment: “I think America let Osama bin Laden go free on purpose.”

Look, I said. He killed thousands of Americans. We don’t let a guy like that get away. Just because we have not killed or captured him yet doesn’t mean that’s by design.

So many Middle Easterners think the United States is so all-powerful that we can do anything at any time, that nothing is beyond our capabilities, that everything wrong is therefore designed to be wrong on purpose.

I explained to him that the U.S. is a powerful country, but it’s still just one country. Americans are flawed and limited humans just like the Kurds. He took me seriously, and he was willing to climb down from his crazy position much faster and more completely than I expected.

“It is good that we are having this conversation,” he said. “We can tell each other when we are wrong.”

Read the full article for more.

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