Tracking the Muslim moderates

My host during the Thanksgiving break introduced me to a newspaper called Muslim World Today. It’s editor-in-chief is Tashbih Sayyed, who is also the president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, which sponsors the paper. The CDT is a grassroots organization which has as its unabashed goal the dethroning of radicalized Islam as part of an ecumenical vision.

Using a mix of news stories and editorials, this weekly paper has comprehensive information about Muslims worldwide. This week’s issue, for example, has stories about the probable civil war in Lebanon, an extract from a British book about a spy inside Al Qaeda, and an op-ed about the increasingly moribund Israeli/Egyptian peace treaty. Everything is an interesting read.

What’s rather sad about this publication, though, is the paucity of Muslim-authored stories and op-eds. As I page through the November 17 edition, what I see are articles that are mostly written by Jews, with a few non-Jewish authors thrown in for good measure. Thus, Daniel Mandel writes that “Israel Still Has No Genuine Peace Partner;” Daniel Pipes opines that “Europe Is Finished, Predicts Mark Steyn;” Frederick Forsythe writes about the “Blatant Hypocrisy” that characterizes about the disproportionate aggression accusation hurled at Israel during the recent war; Gerald A. Honigman talks about the “Conflict of Interest” that James Baker has with Israeli policy; and Alon Ben-Meir questions whether the Iraq War is “The Last War for Oil?” — and that’s just in the papers first five pages. The same pattern continues throughout the paper.

The only Arab authored stories (and I can’t tell if the writers are Christian or Muslim) are about the Abaya, the full covering that ensures that Muslim women are kept invisible and subjugated; and about Palestinian groups that plan to target the U.S. Maha Al-Hujailan wrote the first story, and Ali Waked wrote the second. There’s also an editorial by Mohammed Shaker Abdallah, but I think it was written for the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, and not for the Muslim World Today.

I think Muslim World Today definitely falls into the weekly must read category, simply as a clearinghouse for information about a group that will have more impact on the world in the near future (if only demographically) than any other single group. However, to the extent that Mr. Sayyed obviously cannot find moderate Muslim voices to fill his paper, and has to rely on the same Jews the Muslims hate with such ferocity, I have my doubts about whether the paper can itself make headway towards its goal of harnessing radical Islam. In any event, I admire tremendously Mr. Sayyed’s bravery and integrity, and I wish him all the luck in the world.

By the way, if you’d like to subscribe to the paper’s hard copy, and help support Mr. Sayyed’s laudable goal, you can do so here.

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