Yet angry Muslims, not unlike African Americans not too long ago, pay little heed to voices of moderation. This is partly a reflection of the fact that there is no central religious authority in Islam. Only the minority Shiites have a hierarchy of ayatollahs, who instruct followers on religious and sometimes political matters. The majority Sunnis do not have the equivalent of the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. A central tenet of their faith is that there is no intermediary between the believer and God. This makes for great democracy — everyone is free to issue a fatwa (religious ruling) and everyone else is free to ignore it. But the “fatwa chaos” does create confusion — among non-Muslims, who are spooked by the red-hot rhetoric, and also among Muslims, who are left wondering about the “right answers” to some of the most pressing issues of the day.

Muslim Apologetics

There are two kinds of Muslim apologetics. The first is denial: there’s little or nothing wrong with Muslims, when there clearly is. The second, seen among some Muslims in the West, takes the form of self-flagellation, of apologizing for their faith or distancing themselves from it. To wit:

“Yes, the problem is Islam, and we must fix it.” (Why is Islam any more of a problem than any other faith? And how are they going to “fix” it?)

“I am a Muslim but I am not a fundamentalist Muslim.” (Do Christians say, “I am Christian but not an evangelical Christian?”)

“I am a Muslim but ashamed to call myself one.” (Do all Hindus have to apologize for those few who, in 1992, went on a mosque-ravaging rampage in India?)

Some of these sentiments may be genuinely held. More likely, they reflect the immigrant pathology of responding to majority pressures, a new twist on the past practice of immigrants to North America anglicizing their names.

Such defensiveness aside, Muslims do suffer from deeper problems. Many are preoccupied with the minutiae of rituals (Should one wash the bare feet before prayers or do so symbolically over the socks?) at the expense of the centrality of the faith, which is fostering peace, justice and compassion, not just for Muslims but for everyone. Many Muslims are too judgmental of each other, whereas a central tenet of their faith is that it is up to God to judge — Your Lord knows best who goes astray (53:30, and similar injunctions, 6:117, 16:125, 17:94, 28:56, 68:7).

Some Muslims have taken to a culture of conspiracy theories. Hence the notion that Princess Diana did not die in an accident but was killed because the British royal family did not want her to marry Dodi Al Fayed, a Muslim. Or the canard that Jews working at the World Trade Center had advance notice of 9/11.