What Is Moderate Islam?

Contributions by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Anonymous, Aziz Baloch, Meerain Baloch, Richard L. Benkin, Naseer Dashti, Umar Duad Khattak, Sunil Kukreja, Daniel Pipes, Amitabh Tripathi, Kulbhushan Warikoo Edited by Richard L. Benkin

Publication date:

12 April 2017

Length of book:

252 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498537414

Radical Islam is a major affliction of the contemporary world. Each year, radical Islamists carry out terrorist attacks that result in a massive death toll, almost all involving noncombatants and innocents. Estimates of how many Muslims could be considered followers of radical Islam vary widely, and there are few guides to help determine moderates versus radicals. Observers often sit at the extremes, either seeing all Muslims as open or closeted jihadis or recoiling from any attempt to link Islam with international terror. Both positions are overly simplistic, and the lack of rational principles to absolve the innocent and identify the accomplices of terror has led to governments and individuals mistakenly accepting jihadis as moderate. What is Moderate Islam? brings together an array of scholars—Muslims and non-Muslims—to provide this missing insight. This wide-ranging collection examines the relationship among Islam, civil society, and the state. The contributors—including both Muslims and non-Muslims—investigate how radical Islamists can be distinguished from moderate Muslims, analyze the potential for moderate Islamic governance, and challenge monolithic conceptions of Islam.

Introduction: Who is a Moderate Muslim? Richard L. Benkin
Chapter 1: Smoking out Islamists, Daniel Pipes
Chapter 2: Islamist Extremism: Threat to World Peace, Kulbhushan Warikoo
Chapter 3: Wither Moderate Islam: Malaysian Style, Sunil Kukreja
Chapter 4: Is There a Non-Radical Islam?, Naseer Dashti
Chapter 5: An Islam That Rejects Islamists: The Case of the Baloch, Meerain Baloch
Chapter 6: The Debate about Radical versus Non-Radical Islam, Amitabh Tripathi
Chapter 7: Moderate Islam Is an Illusion—at Least for Now, Umar Duad Khattak
Chapter 8: Being Pakhtun: Interview with a Muslim Female Living in Exile, Richard L. Benkin and Anonymous
Chapter 9: Balochistan to the Road of Independence, Aziz Baloch
Chapter 10: South Asian Muslim Attitudes towards Jews, Israel, and Zionism, Navras Jaat Aafreedi
Chapter 11: The Myth of Bangladesh as a Moderate Muslim Nation, Richard L. Benkin

This collection was far too rich to be pressed into a brief review. This book needs to be read in depth, especially by those wanting to know more about specific local problems experienced in certain parts of South Asia today, specifically Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Pashtun region, and Pakistan and Bangladesh. Readers should expect to find quite disturbing yet insightful material, presented from various insider perspectives, often in the words of people with direct experience of violence.