I've long argued that the Arab and Islamic world have been engaging in a real public debate about political Islam, about terrorism, about the need for reform in their own societies for many years. I've argued that the attention paid to Abd al Rahman al Rashed's column as evidence that at last, finally, Muslims are starting to talk about these things just gets the facts wrong. You know who agrees with me? Abd al Rahman al Rashed.
In his column in al Sharq al Awsat today, Rashed recounts a conversation he had with a European broadcaster, who asked him about the "late recognition" of the problem of terrorism in Muslim society. Rashed: "Who said it was late? I pointed to the large amount of articles in Arab newspapers which had dissected this phenomenon and had admitted the crisis. And in the Arab arena there has been an ongoing controversy since the beginning of the crisis or maybe the late 1990s in which a large number of intellectulas have participated, discussing the dangers of extremism."
Rashed goes on to say: "It is therefore not right to say that what is said today comes late, or that it was driven by the events in the Russian school, or by the series of kindappings and beheadings in Iraq. We have discussed it for years, but unfortunately nobody reads Arabic outside the Arab world."
I certainly have my differences with Rashed, so hopefully his endorsement of my argument will carry some weight.
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