In his recent Uncommon Knowledge interview, Mark Steyn asserted that “there are moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.” Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Fouad Ajami replies.
I don’t agree with Mark. I was born a Muslim to a Muslim secular Shia family in Lebanon. My family were modernists – they interpreted their faith in a moderate way. None of the women in our family were ever veiled – it was a modern interpretation of Islam. They thought of themselves as good Muslims and they didn’t want these radical Muslims telling them how to worship and how to practice their own kind of Islam. The people who say that there is no moderate Islam trouble me because I know that the battle for Islam is not yet lost.