by Omid Safi

Over the last few months, there has been a slight increase in the number of Muslim figures who are willing to publicly proclaim themselves as champions of a “moderate” or “liberal” Islam. Yet their interpretation differs radically from the 170 year old tradition of Islamic reform that goes back all the way to the Tanzimat reform of the Ottomans, through Afghani and Abduh, Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman, all the way forward to the modern feminists and progressive Muslim intellectuals.

What do these figures have in common? Increasingly, they come to self-identify as ex-Muslims or secular/agnostic Muslims, and as such are often received by some in the media as being more “objective” towards Islam. After all, the assumption goes, one can’t expect practicing Muslims to somehow speak intelligently about their own faith!

What these figures have in common, ever more, is that of vociferous support for Israel, combined with a tendency to state that Palestinians (and Arabs, and Muslims) have no one but themselves to blame for the agony they are in.

Whereas these disgraceful voices used to be identifiable as Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan, Nonnie Darwish, and others, there are a few more figures running to catch the train of ex-Muslim Zionism. And make no mistake about it, it pays to be on this train. A recent example is Tawfik Hamid.

To begin with, Hamid is not saying anything new here that so many of us have been saying all along: we should not be pretending that Islam (or for that matter any other tradition) is purely a religion where every interpretation, every text is luminous. Indeed, many of us (feminists, social critics, and also those from more traditional perspectives) have been trying to come to terms with existing textual and interpretive traditions that are violent, misogynist, etc.

The question is who brings up these issues, for whose sake, using what methodology, and what politics. Why is Tawfik Hamid receiving a warm reception these days? It’s simple: if you want to speak for a “public” (meaning non-Muslim) American audience, it helps to position yourself as a secular Muslim (or better yet, ex-Muslim), and concretely praise Israel above all else. That is the litmus test that much of the media uses to judge who is a “moderate” Muslim.

Is it any surprise that Tawfik Hamid shows up on –where else?– a virtual stage with Daniel Pipes? Pipes, of course, is pleased to catalogue as malcontents all Muslims who praise Israel and say that Muslims’ shortcomings are their own problems alone. Read this quote in the paragraph below from Hamid’s commentary: The discourse of “Israel as the only beacon of civilization” is right out of American imperialist discourse, reinforced by Zionism. How gracious of Hamid to talk about Arab Israelis living in the situation that they do as having been “accepted” by Israel, which makes it sound like these Arabs were not living in Palestine all along before the state of Israel was formed.

“As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East.

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them “Jews-Free countries” while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have its nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women can not be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of ‘Apostasy,’ while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.

I agree that the ‘Palestinians’ suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel. ” Tawfik Hamid, quoted by Daniel Pipes.

Not surprisingly Hamid parades as a “terrorism expert” for Neocon meetings like “The Intelligence Summit.” Hamid’s talk at the Intelligence Summit was about ” Views From a Concerned Arab Insider on How Israel Could Lose.”

By the way, it is apparently very helpful to be a “secular Muslim” who nonetheless finds inspiration and guidance in scripture, as long as the scripture is the Bible! Read this from Hamid’s biography: “Later on, Tawfik started to read the bible as an attempt to criticize it in the ongoing religious debates between Muslims and Christians, but ended up studying the Bible with increased vigor and genuine interest.”

Having criticized the messenger above, let me go back to the message: the issue of textual sources that justify violence and extremism is serious, and must –must– be taken on directly by those who are committed to developing and realizing alternate readings of Islam. The challenge is: these voices must remain connected to Muslim communities in order for their reform to be effective, and their reform needs to be connected in a serious way to the broader tradition.

So long as Western media insist on defining Islamic reform as the agenda of Salman Rushdie, Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan, and now Tawfik Hamid, they will not understand or hear the meaningful work that progressive Musims around the world are actually doing on these issues.