Andrew Sullivan reports that the planned Gay Pride march in Moscow has been cancelled after threats from the Russian Muslim community:
Earlier this week Chief Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin warned that Russia’s Muslims would stage violent protests if the march went ahead. “If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that – Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike” … The cleric said the Koran taught that homosexuals should be killed because their lifestyle spells the extinction of the human race and said that gays had no human rights.
If this represents mainstream Muslim thinking, then a “clash of civilizations” is inevitable. If not, it is the responsibility of moderate Muslims to take back their faith from the extremists. I really don’t see any alternative. But the most depressing thing about this choice is that the Chief Mufti claims to speak for the Russian Muslim community as a whole. He, like Sistani, is supposed to be a moderate.
UPDATE: In today’s L.A.Times, Mansoor Ijaz tries to have it both ways: to argue that on the one hand the extremists do not represent Islam, while asserting that there is no such thing as a “moderate Muslim”:
You either believe in the oneness of God or you don’t. You either believe in the teachings of his prophet or you don’t. You either learn those teachings and apply them to the circumstances of life in the country you have chosen to live in, or you shouldn’t live there.
But this is simply disingenuous: it assumes that there is only one possible interpretation of those “teachings”, and that there is only one way to “apply them to the circumstances of life”. Admit that neither is true, and his entire thesis falls apart.