Due credit to Muslims for sending the right message on Terry Jones

by Tim Kowal on April 25, 2011

Pointing out the recent stories concerning Terry Jones’s plans to protest outside Dearborn, Michigan’s largest mosque—and noting that a local CAIR leader, Dawud Walid, among others, rightly and admirably criticized the legal attempts to shut down Jones’s speech—commenter BSK invites me to defend my argument that American Muslims have a “messaging” problem. 

As readers will recall, I previously pointed out that many Americans harbor suspicions whether “moderate Islam” bears any problematic underlying connection to the “radical Islam” or “Islamism” practiced by our shadowy ideological enemies.  I argued that, even if we assume no such connections exist in reality, one of the reasons connections do exist in perception has to do with a “messaging” problem and, further, that moderate Muslims might be able to take steps to address it.  Given Dearborn Muslims’ apparently unequivocal message supporting Jones’s First Amendment right to voice his message—even while they strongly condemn that message—BSK and James Hanley suggest that those critical of Muslim messaging should at least acknowledge that Mr. Walid and other moderate Muslims got the messaging basically right here.  (See also here, here, and here.)

It’s a good point, and it deserves a response on a few different levels.


Read more: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/timkowal/2011/04/25/due-credit-to-muslims-for-sending-the-right-message-on-terry-jones/