[lbo-talk] Tariq Ali: letter to a young Muslim

uvj at vsnl.com uvj at vsnl.com
Thu Jun 16 10:47:56 PDT 2005


Doug Henwood posted:


> Letter to a Young Muslim
> by Tariq Ali


> The Iranian ayatollahs dealt severely with Muslims who preached >in favour of a social radicalism. If I genuinely believed that >this radical Islam was the way forward for humanity, I would not >hesitate to say so in public, whatever the consequences. I know >that many of your friends love chanting the name "Osama" and I >know that they cheered on September 11, 2001. They were not >alone. It happened all over the world, but had nothing to do with >religion.>>

Tariq Ali seems to imply that a very large number of muslims (even a majority) are Al-Qaeda sympathisers or fundamentalists. That's not my impression. What is frequently not realised that South Asia and Indonesia account for 650-700 million (or about 2/3) muslims in the world. AQ does not have any mass base in these regions. I suppose for Tariq Ali the Muslim World = the Middle East + North Africa.

Ulhas



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