Below is an op-ed by Awad Loubani, a Canadian Muslim in Ottawa. The article appears in the Ottawa Citizen. In this article, Loubani describes the hold that Muslim advocacy groups and activists hold over every day Muslims within the Muslim community. The article has also been featured in the Investigative Project on Terrorism web site.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Muslims+help+defeat+terrorism/3488355/story.html#ixzz0yrfvb2q5
I salute Mr Loubani. I firmly believe that within North American Muslim communities, many innocent people feel imprisoned by the anti-Western elements who "speak" for the community.
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There is a lot of stereotyping and generalization here, but the man does make one very important point:
Political and government authorities should not try to reach out to "the ____ community" through a set of self-styled "leaders." Outreach should be too a diverse set of individuals.
A good example in America: Jesse Jackson is virtually irrelevant to a majority of African Americans younger than 60. He is irrelevant for a variety of reasons, ranging from gang-bangers who have no interest in uplift to conservatives who have no interest in a warmed over civil rights liberalism. There are a dozen other reasons the man is irrelevant, but irrelevant he is.
Some forty years ago, I read a pulp paperback by a sometime social worker who had been working with police in a troubled neighborhood -- back in the days when "troubled youth" were more likely to be "white" than "black." They found that they had inadvertently taken a bunch of kids having a fight on a street corner and made them into a gang with a name and a self-conscious identity, because that is what they were LOOKING for.
I know there are plenty of Muslims who are not kowtowing to the kind of intimidation described here. I saw a number of families at a social event recently. Before dinner was served, the adults retired to a nearby room to pray, with the women in a separate row from the men, but otherwise all together. The teen age girls wore veils -- and tight blue jeans with typical American tops. Everyone's face was thoroughly visible.
I'd like to hear from a lot more individual Muslims, and this Canadian Muslim is one of the variety of voices we will hear. He is not, however The Antidote to The Militants.
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