‘Wage jihad against jihadism’: ‘Progressive’ Muslims

Outreach to the more secular segment of the Canadian Muslim community and some of the minority sects, whereas many of the challenges are with the more fundamentalist and ‘mainstream’ sects and individuals. While valid, a bit preaching to the converted:

Acknowledging that military action, which also includes arming and training Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, would not stop ISIS by itself, he [Kenney] said it had at least “stopped the spread of Daish [the Arabic name for the group] in Iraq, and we will never know how many lives it has saved.”

The minister made the comments at an event organized by the Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations, which brought together leaders of Canadian Yazidi, Christian, Shia, Ahmadiya, Jewish, Sunni, Kurdish and other groups to discuss strategies for fighting ISIS.

Kamran Bokhari, a Middle East analyst and author, said it was up to police and intelligence agencies to deal with those who break the law, “but they can’t police ideology, that’s the job of the Canadian Muslim community.”

He said a Muslim mainstream would have to emerge to moderate the extremists, whom he noted were not present at the event. “Ultimately what we need to do is wage a jihad against jihadism,” he said, defining the problem as “it’s our way or the highway” thinking.

“How do we reach out to them? That is our challenge.”

The national president of the Ahmadiya Muslim Jama’at Canada, Lal Khan Malik, blamed Muslim scholars whom he said had misunderstood the concept of jihad as a call to kill non-believers. “This is a grossly misguided understanding of Islam,” he said.

The Coalition’s Facebook page hasn’t been active since December 2013 so unclear how active the group is (although the President, Salma Siddiqui, is a regular commentator on Islam and radicalization issues).

‘Wage jihad against jihadism’: ‘Progressive’ Muslims eager to reach out to radicalized youth in Canada