The defeat of ISIS lies within Moderate Islam
“Muslims in Indonesia Challenge Isis Ideology” is an excellent article published in today’s New York Times by Joe Cochrane. A publicity campaign with a message of tolerance has been created by a 50 million member, Indonesian organization, Nahdlatul Ulama. It is directed against jihadism and will be carried to North America, Europe and throughout Asia. It reminds us that Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world and that in the SE Asian traditional Sunni view of Islam “every aspect and expression of religion should be imbued with love and compassion, and foster the perfection of human nature.” N.U. has produced films showing that the Islamic State’s interpretation of the Quran is blasphemous, and that the IS view of Islam is entirely medieval and utterly unsuited to the twenty-first century. It also quotes an Islamic scholar saying that “the problem with Middle East Islam is they have what I call religious racism . . . and they feel that only Arabs are real Muslims and the others are not.” It quotes the president of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education saying that international discourse has to start somewhere, and asking, if the Islamic State is sending out 2.8 million messages every day on social media, who’s going to counter that?”
