Sep 12, 2014

Since 9/11, one of the most frequently asked questions in the West has been, “Why don't moderate Muslims speak out against extremists?” This question was, in fact, a bit unfair. Many Muslim opinion-leaders did condemn 9/11 and other crimes of al-Qaeda and its ilk, but they did not receive much coverage in the Western media. But it is also true that the Muslim world's “moderate” majority — those who oppose terrorism in the name of Islam — could have done a better job challenging the extremists.

A similar question is relevant for the so-called Islamic State (IS) — a ruthless group whose violence has even proven too much for al-Qaeda. While many Muslim governments, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, are now joining forces with the United States to fight against this new threat in Iraq and Syria, it is worth asking again whether there is enough outcry from religious opinion-leaders against IS.

My answer is: No, there is not enough outcry against IS by moderate Muslims. But this is not because these Muslims are sympathetic to the group's actions. Rather, they cannot accept that the horrors perpetrated by IS have anything to do with Islam. They explain the group away as a Western conspiracy and condemn the West for creating such puppets.

Turkey is a good place to observe this line of thinking. Since the Syrian civil war, both the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and its Islamist base have supported the Syrian opposition, paying little attention to the threat of extremists that so worried Ankara’s Western allies. But, about a year ago, Ankara, too, realized that IS is a serious problem. As a result, gradually, the pro-government media began to cast IS as a threat to Turkey and the region.

However, the same media often denied that IS was a reality in itself — a group espousing a genuine Salafist-jihadist ideology. Instead, the group was portrayed as a Frankenstein intentionally created by the United States and its allies, first to “depict Muslims as terrorists,” and then to create pretexts for new military adventures in the oil-rich Middle East.