A Not-in my-name movement is needed
There are about one and a half billion muslims in the world. Most of them are nice good guys like you and me. A very small minority is not. If we hypthetically say that one in a hundred thousand are violent islamists, it would make fifteen thousand of that kind and that is a massive critical mass. The very small minority (in percentage terms but not in consequence terms) taints the name of the others. Violent crimes in the name of Islam happens and it threatens us every day and it causes a lot of inconvenience in airports. It can not be rasonable to urge us non-muslims to keep silent about the sad facts of islamic violence. In open societies we must have the right to talk and write about it and in other ways comment on it. The Danish paper Jyllandposten commented on it by the use of Muhammed cartoons. They were in their full right to do so as we all have our right to comment on anything that we are concerned about. If we say that freedom of speach allways must be respectful, it would be the end of freedom of speach. Critique sometimes hurts and that is part of the game. The cartoons stirred up a lot of anger in the Muslim world. The anger was turned in the wrong direction. It was directed to the commentators of islamic vilolence, not against the perpertrators of islamic vilolence. If the good guys who are Muslims want to clean their names from the connection of vilolence to Islam, they should have told the violent jihadist movements to stop tainting the name of Muslims. The right answer would have been a strong Not-in-my-name movement to isolate the vilolent groups from the peacefull mainstream Muslim majority. I think that the day when the majority of Muslim good guys establish a strong worldwide Not-in-my-name movement, the tensions between Muslims and others will easen a lot. I think it would be one of the most productive ways of establishing moore peaceful living togeather on earth. So go on, start a Not-in-my-name movement now!
All the best to all of you
Göran Linde
