Peace & Wisdom

Nesrine Malik has written a well argued piece on Comment is free about the excessive attention that is paid to certain ex-Muslim reactionaries in the West, and why it so counterproductive for the liberal Muslim cause (though she has failed to do her own copy-editing).  It has provoked the usual attack of the trolls, and my own robust defence.

In pursuit of the beloved and profitable clash-of-civilisations narrative the Western media have (predictably) seized on the most reactionary ex-Muslims they can find, who have in their turn found it extremely lucrative to shriek what their bigoted, wealthy Western sponsors want to hear. It fits the ‘they hate us for our freedoms’ media narrative like a charm, so getting echoed and amplified into immutable, universal truth. Isn’t it no wonder are such spectacularly bad colonial administrators.

However, if we want to do a better job then we would do better to start listening to a broader sample of people?