I think the only bit where I may disagree with you is the ‘should’. They probably should speak out if the matter is one upon which they should be expected to take a stance, but so should anyone. Not because they happen to be another organisation that people consider affiliated.
Absolutely correct. The idea, as Sage Rat advanced, that Muslims have a “special obligation” to denounce what a different group of Muslims is doing is pure and utter bullshit. To be blunt: it’s bigotry. tomndebb used the bit about gays and NAMBLA as an analogy and, what do you know, Valteron got bent out of shape becuase, while gay, he or she is not actually connected with NAMBLA. It is no different.
Did you happen to follow that Valteron, Sage Rat? It’s no different. Just because you mistakenly conflate two groups does not obligate one group to apologize for or be the special group to educate the other group.
As a secular muslim myself who is more concerned in the reality of life by these issues than the pretend and faux outrage expressed by people who live continents away, I have come to regard these calls and expressions - I was once sympathetic and moved by them - almost always as not more than ways for the persons who have hatred for our ethnic groups and our religion to express this hatred and this bigotry in a way camouflaged…
It is strange also to see again and again the strong statements about what the muslim societies look and act like and what is said in our native languages, things that bear not very much resemblance to what we see in our daily lives. It is impossible to avoid the strong impression that almost all these calls are coming without any sensation of the actual discourses in the islamic world or even the real results of what one can see where a free political decision has occured, as we can see with the case of the elections of the Tunisia.
The discourses which occur of course are not reported in the western media that usually has no knowledge of the arabic or the Bahasa or the Bangla etc. etc. and like to report the very sensation (it is natural, I note), so the noisy extremist who the ordinary muslim - even the practicing believer unlike the not practicing secular - regards as a weird noisy person gets presented as The Voice.
If the extreme voices were not getting pushed back against (can there be more, I am sure, but the idea expressed in this thread that somehow we are all hiding in fear from the takfiris is just… bizarre and takes some very extreme situations of the syria and expands), you would see much more of the unemployed and the frustrated youths turning to the takfiri Salafisme that motivates the DAESH and al Qaeda… Of billions you have only thousands.
There is also a huge and ignorant confusion that some how most of the Islamic world is living under some kind of non-secular political system, when in fact for the past 70 years or more it is exactly the opposite. This ignorant assumption based on stereotype that is confusing the image of the Saudis with the entire islamic world is very wrong and leads to complete error.
The majority experience is not with the non secular rule, but with the corrupt dictatorship as the secular rule. Of course from this has come frustration and a popularity of the islamist and even the salafiste critique that it is the secular rule itself that is at fault.
I do not view this as correct analysis, but I can see how it has been arrived at.
Whereas for the past ten years here it is the consistent ignorant mistake of commentators to be commenting like it is inherent rejection - in fact the secular rule was very popular in reaction to the old system back in the 1960s, the 1970s. This leads many here and more widely to make critiques and propositions for change that are 100% wrong and completely, utterly without good foundation.
In any case, as a secular living far away from any of the takfiri centers, what is my special obligation from Sage Rate and others, I go out and yell so that my neighbors are asking if I am mentally ill - just so some westerners can nod their heads in faux wisdom? — although if I do not do it in the english in front of a Western TV crew there is not any effect?
Well, the effect will be “Damned if you don’t, damned if you do.” If you don’t do that, then morons like a certain poster or two will decry you for not condemning the terrorists loud and long. But if you actually do bother to condemn the terrorists loud and long, more morons will say, “She’s Muslim so she’s lying about that condemnation.”