Muqtedar Khan Says Muslim Scholars Must 'Break the Theological Claims of Extremism'; So Must He

by Winfield Myers • Oct 10, 2014 at 10:51 am

http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2014/10/muqtedar-khan-says-muslim-scholars-must-break

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Muqtedar Khan

In "Muslim Scholars Must Break the Theological Claims of Extremism," an October 7 entry to the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, University of Delaware political scientist Muqtedar Khan states the obvious: "Muslims have an extremism problem." So, in fact, does Khan.
He writes:
Many Islamic groups condemned both Boko Haram and ISIS as un-Islamic. This is a welcome development. But they did not also condemn the Salafi theology that underpins the literal and shallow understanding of Islamic principles that inform groups such as ISIS.
And:
The work of Islamic scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Syed Qutb and Abdul Wahhab, those who inspire the extremists, must be deconstructed and contextualized.
Intellectually eviscerated and utterly discredited would be better, but at least he sees these authors as problems.
But will he apply these criticisms to himself and rein in his own extremism, as illustrated in the following examples? In 2007, Khan refused to serve on a student-organized panel on "Anti-Americanism in the Middle East" with a veteran of the Israeli Defense Force who had served in the West Bank because, he wrote:
I am also not sure how I feel about being on the same panel with an Israeli soldier who was stationed in West Bank. Some people see IDF as an occupying force in the West Bank. I am not sure that I will be comfortable occupying the same space with him. It is not fair to spring this surprise on me at the last moment.
The IDF veteran was disinvited from the panel and invited to appear at a later date, an invitation he declined.
In the aftermath of the 2009 Ft. Hood massacre by Maj. Nidal Hasan, Khan--far from condemning the mass murderer--offered this apologia:
[Hasan] was in an army that was at war with his co-religionists and he had difficulty dealing with that. He was frequently taunted and harassed for being a Muslim by his own colleagues. After years in the military and after years of caring for soldiers as a doctor, he did not feel as if he belonged and perhaps that was the key to why he could turn on his own.
At a 2010 panel, Khan issued this thinly veiled excuse for Palestinian terrorism against Jews:
How can we ask [the Palestinians] to forgive the Jews for what they have done? You cannot. There must be justice first.
Khan's campaign to whitewash radical Islam while posing as a moderate has a long history. It's past time for him to apply his criticism of extremism in others to himself.

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