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More Muslim Groups Voice Willingness To Combat Extremism In Their Faith

Mohamed Magid, imam with the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, speaks during in September during an anti-extremism news conference. He says that if someone with dangerous views comes to his mosque, he first tries to correct them, but reports them to authorities if necessary.
Michael Reynolds
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EPA/Landov
Mohamed Magid, imam with the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, speaks during in September during an anti-extremism news conference. He says that if someone with dangerous views comes to his mosque, he first tries to correct them, but reports them to authorities if necessary.

The reluctance of President Obama and others to link Middle East terrorism explicitly to Islam at this week's "Countering Violent Extremism" summit exposed them to withering criticism, and not entirely from conservatives. Some Muslim reformers who have been struggling to combat radicalism in their mosques and communities have been willing to talk about the extremist ideologies they encounter.

"I think it's very important to be clear about this message, and to name it," says Zainab Al-Suwaij, the executive director of the American Islamic Congress. "When we talk about radical Islam, it does exist, and I don't need to be diplomatic [about it]. I think the message should be loud and clear, and this is not going to harm anyone.

"We are Muslims, we're feeling it — we're the first victims of it. I want the whole world to hear about it."

Many other Muslim leaders, however, push back against any portrayal of the terrorism problem that suggests any ties to Islam.

Even though the Obama administration chose words carefully in describing the White House summit, several Muslim American organizations declined to attend, saying they objected to its nearly exclusive focus on Muslim communities; such an approach, they said in a joint statement, "sets American Muslim communities apart as inherently suspect."

A tweet during the conference by Iyad Ameen Madani, secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, even stirred some controversy.

"One of the most important challenges we face is from within," Madani said. "The [Islamic] faith is being hijacked by extremists."

Nihad Awad, Executive Director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations speaks to the media in January about how Muslims might react to the new Charlie Hebdo edition in France featuring a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover. The group declined to participate in this week's summit on preventing violent extremism; some felt it unfairly targeted Muslims.
Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA/Landov
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EPA/Landov
Nihad Awad, Executive Director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations speaks to the media in January about how Muslims might react to the new Charlie Hebdo edition in France featuring a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover. The group declined to participate in this week's summit on preventing violent extremism; some felt it unfairly targeted Muslims.

The comment brought a retort from Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the organizations that declined to participate in the summit.

"I don't think the faith is hijacked," Awad said. "The grievances have been hijacked, but not the faith itself. No one can hijack my faith — people can misinterpret it, but they cannot hijack it."

Such varying perspectives highlight a debate taking place within Muslim circles in the United States on whether any ideological reformation is needed in Islam. For Zainab Al-Suwaij, the problems began after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Muslims in America came under fierce scrutiny.

"The message was very defensive — 'stop profiling us' — but no one was really looking into the extremism, the ideology that has been spread in our community, directly or indirectly," she said. "They don't tell you to go kill someone or explode this or that, but there are always these embedded messages about the West, how everyone is out to get Islam. There is always that background. And people start reacting to this, because they feel they've been discriminated [against]. They feel they are victimized, so they need to take revenge."

One Muslim leader who says he has confronted such attitudes is Mohamed Magid, chief imam at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Northern Virginia.

"If a young man walks into my mosque and has an ideology about Islam that is distorted, my responsibility as an imam, I try to correct his idea," Magid says. "If I find him to be a person who might pose a danger to my community by trying to recruit others, then I have to exclude him from the community. ... And we have to report him — if you have an idea to commit harm to America, we will report him to the authorities."

The debatable question is what such dangerous ideology should be called.

"There's no such thing as radical Islam," Awad said. "There's no violent extremist ideology within Islam. Islam is one. Some people become extremists, but it's not because of the religion — it's because of themselves as individuals. I think people get entangled in terminology when, in fact, we are dealing with criminality. Criminals are criminals."

One problem for Muslim leaders is that the most violent terrorists in the world today have named their organization the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL).

Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America speaks in January 2013 during a press conference at the United Methodist Building. He says that groups like the Islamic State deliberately misuse the Quran and Islamic traditions, requiring other Muslims to speak up.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP/Getty Images
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AFP/Getty Images
Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America speaks in January 2013 during a press conference at the United Methodist Building. He says that groups like the Islamic State deliberately misuse the Quran and Islamic traditions, requiring other Muslims to speak up.

"We wish that the name Islam was not associated with this phenomenon, we would just say that there is terrorism," says Sayyid Syeed, interfaith and community alliances director of the Islamic Society of North America. "But since they are deliberately using the Quran, misquoting the Quran, going to the [Islamic] traditions, we will have to say something."

Asked what he and other Muslims can call the group, Syeed laughs.

"Daesh!" he says. The word in Arabic stands for "ISIL" — but because it is only an acronym, it lets Muslims avoid saying the group is Islamic.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tom Gjelten reports on religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and conflict arising from religious differences. His reporting draws on his many years covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world.