D’Souza vs Glazov
Bryan Preston
There’s a very interesting debate going on over at Frontpage between Dinesh D’Souza and Jamie Glazov over the western left’s role in fomenting and then possibly losing the war on radical Islam. Both leave us much to think about and chew on, but I want to highlight one section of D’Souza’s thinking on the possibility of alliance with traditional Muslims:
D’Souza: Our current strategy is based on trying to find secular liberals in the Muslim world, people who believe in women’s rights and separation of church and state. News flash: there are hardly any such people. Yes, there is Salman Rushdie and a lesbian radio host in Canada who have gotten a lot of attention. I like some of the things these Muslim liberals are saying. But they have no constituency in the Muslim world.
From our limited stay in Baghdad, I think D’Souza is quite right that there are very few Salman Rushdie types in the Islamic world, and he’s also right that they have almost no constituency of support. It probably is self-defeating to go looking for them when there are so many more traditional and radical Muslims around who are so much more influential than true Muslim liberals.
The good news, though, is that ...
