veiled4allah: virtual caliphate?

Via Abu Aardvark, an interesting article about efforts by moderate Muslims to create their own transnational networks to promote their ideas as an alternative to more radical ones: Toward a Virtual Caliphate. Some highlights:

While many hold up the specter of al-Qaida as a de-territorialized "brand name" seeking to rally the masses of the umma (the world community of Muslims) around militant religious radicalism, al-Qaida is not the only game in town in terms of the transnational forces competing for Muslim hearts and minds. Indeed, it is possible today to point to an emerging infrastructure – on the internet and satellite television, in widely-circulated books, through major international conferences and research centers – of a countervailing effort by mainstream Islamic scholars to challenge al-Qaida's global rhetoric... ...For this group, the caliphate is not so much a political institution attached to sovereign territory, but rather an ideal of pan-Islamic ecumenicism – a moderate and relatively inclusive form of lowest-common-denominator orthodoxy. In their minds, this community of shared knowledge and religious interpretation is explicitly designed as an antidote to bin Laden and the radical jihadis. Given the means of its establishment and propagation, such a tendency might perhaps best be thought of as a "virtual caliphate."

The figure at the forefront of this movement is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Egyptian religious scholar who trained at the venerable institution of Al-Azhar in Cairo – the Oxford of the Islamic religious sciences. In recent years, he has sought to articulate a more cosmopolitan understanding of Islam that speaks to the unique problems of the modern world while remaining firmly grounded in the traditions of Islamic law and scholarship.

Qaradawi is a figure of some controversy, something that the author of this, Peter Mandaville, discusses:

And it is here that many of his critics would claim that Qaradawi and his associates do not go far enough. They want to see, for example, stronger denunciation of terrorism and the rejection of threats against Jews and non-Muslims – and perhaps also a stronger emphasis on the need for Muslims to co-operate with the West. In doing so, however, they miss the point. The simple fact is that policymakers in the West – and progressive liberals more generally – are not always going to agree with the opinions of Qaradawi et al. Even very open-minded followers of orthodox scripturalism in Islam will often tend toward social conservatism, meaning that there will continue to be tensions regarding homosexuality and the role of women. It will also be difficult to find complete agreement with the West on more immediate political and security issues. While Qaradawi has strongly and consistently condemned bin Laden and Al-Qaida terrorism, his pronouncements on the insurgency in Iraq and the use of violence by Palestinians have certainly been at odds with Washington. That said, however, perhaps the worst thing the West could do is to cast figures such as Qaradawi as part of the problem simply because his views don't precisely correspond with US goals. Since 9/11, the United States has appeared to want to do business only with hand picked and officially approved "good Muslims" – that is, to work with Muslims who fit US requirements as to what Islam should be. The problem, of course, is that the figures and groups who carry Washington's seal of approval often have little to no legitimacy among the constituencies the US wants to influence.

Viewed in the big picture and over the longer term, one has to wonder whether US goals and those of the emergent "virtual caliphate" might not overlap more than they diverge. After all, a vote for Qaradawi is a vote against Zarqawi. While increased recruitment into the Qaradawi camp will not by any means produce a generation of Muslims favorably predisposed to US foreign policy, it will represent a consolidated, critical mass of influential and respected Muslims with whom meaningful dialogue with the hope of tangible progress can take place.

This is a good point and one that I think Americans would do well to think on.

Unrelated: First Center for Domestic Violence Launched in Saudi Arabia. Good to see some steps being taken in this direction.