Moderate Muslims

Here's a question that comes up in conservative circles. Where are the moderate Muslims? If Islam is a religion of peace, where are those who would speak out against extremist violence?

Two points I found interesting.

The first was in an article in this mornings New York Times about a forward thinking mosque in San Francisco.

"At the Darussalam mosque, the dispute over the wall was just one skirmish in a larger battle over the entire tenor of the mosque. Mr. Ghali and other leaders at the mosque fired an imam they deemed overly militant, not least because he wanted to make the barrier between the sexes even more pronounced. The imam went to court, winning more than $400,000 in a wrongful dismissal suit, and then opened a competing mosque around the corner, where the women still worship behind a wall."

There you go! Do the right thing and get spanked to the tune of 400 large!

Next was out on Yahoo news.

Why, then, the public silence?

"For some of the more than five dozen Muslims interviewed for this story in Amsterdam, Paris and London, it's a sense of shame, or even guilt, that innocents have been killed in the name of Islam; they say those feelings make them seek to be "invisible." For those lucky enough to have jobs, there is little time to protest or even write letters to newspapers. For others, there is fear of being branded anti-Islam in their communities."

I don't think that's a good enough answer. But since I perceive Yahoo to be left leaning, I'm impressed they are asking the question.