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Bird's Blog

Poetry, musings, observations, commentary, rants, confessions...and who knows what else!

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Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Teacher, writer, poet, grandmother, lover, wine-drinker, chocolate eater, beach comber, hiker, traveler, Giants fan, San Franciscan. All work on this blog is copyrighted material.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Whither goest the moderate Muslim voice?

Summoned to bogsblog by a Tinkerbell bitch and a growling canine, I promised to hunt down some links on the moderate Muslim voice and here they are – though I have not vetted these links, done a close reading, or analyzed these texts – I leave that to you:

This article may help explain why the moderate Muslim voice is relatively mute : http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1228&prog=zru
My first question after a very cursory read of the above is: Does the Bush administration WANT that moderate voice to be unheard – does it want to alienate it? Was that a goal from the outset of the Iraqi war/conflict/misbegotten escapade (no bias on my end, right?).

The Christian Science Monitor offers up this report on a “moderate” voice, but following the links…I’m not so sure…
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1126/p06s01-woaf.html
http://uk.amrkhaled.net/index.html

And here is a quote from a Reuters article this morning::
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-02-06T140436Z_01_ISL215987_RTRUKOC_0_UK-RELIGION-CARTOONS.xml

“Moderate Muslim groups as well as Western leaders condemned the weekend violence and calls to arms and urged calm.
‘With growing concern, we are witnessing the escalation in disturbing tensions,’ the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain said in the International Herald Tribune.
‘We shall all be the losers if we fail to immediately defuse this situation, which can only leave a trail of mistrust and misunderstanding between both sides in its wake,’ Tayyip Erdogan and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in the joint article, adding: "let the voice of reason be heard."

Again, I haven’t vetted the info and can’t speak to just how moderate these fellows truly are.

And finally, for now, here is moderate Muslim voice just recently lost – can we assume that someone, via the Muslim College he founded, step up and become a voice which rises above the discord and violence?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/25/db2502.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/25/ixportal.html

And now, this Bird must resume her migratory flight pattern.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

thanks for doing the talon-work on this, Bird... very thorough and helpful...

February 06, 2006 9:19 AM  
Blogger Jack K. said...

Thanks for pointing me to Pete's site. I couldn't agree with him more. (And, I chose not to "lurk" there.)

I am concerned that the world "leaders" have not really heard the plaints from the poor throughout the world. When people are given real opportunities to maintain themselves and their families, there is no viable target for rabble rousers.

We may be about to enter an era of "religious wars" that will not be easily won by the western world. Are we going back to the time of the crusades?

I don't know if you know about David Brin and his blog http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/
I pass on this URL for your consideration.

Good luck with your thesis.

February 07, 2006 7:23 AM  

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