SALAM AL-MARAYATI AND THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL ISLAM IN AMERICA

I finally got to put a face and voice to the name tonight - Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Counsel was a "guest" on Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. With the topic "Did Arafat Dupe Colin Powell?" it was not exactly the friendliest forum for Al-Marayati, who wanted to talk instead of the "war crimes" committed by Israel and contextualize Palestinian terror. Still, Al-Marayati was remarkably cool and articulate, despite the berating he took from a paticularly manic Keyes.

Unfortunately, al-Marayati's moderate temperment was not matched by any moderation in his views. There is only one villain in the Arab-Israeli conflict - Israel. Sharon is as bad as Milosevic. Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians are justified resistance, Israeli responses are a war against civilians. It is not surprising, therefore that al-Marayati uttered the heinous statement in the aftermath of 9/11 that we could not rule out the possibility that the attack on the World Trade Center was committed by Israel.

To understand my deep disappointment with Salam al-Marayati, I have to go back almost three years to the controversy over his appointment to the anti-terror commission. Jewish organizations, led by the hard-line Zionist Organization of America had engaged in a campaign to block al-Marayati's nomination based on statements he had made that appeared to "understand" Palestinian terror. At the time I was working for the Interfaith Alliance with a former associate of al-Marayati's, Amber Khan. After talking with her, and researching the issue independently, I became convinced that the ZOA had done a hack job on al-Marayati, and had duped the more mainstream organizations into following along. (For perspective, the ZOA condemned fellow Jewish organizations that honored Thomas Friedman) After all, here was a Muslim leader truly committed to interfaith dialogue, who had reached out to the ADL in his home city of Los Angeles. Here was a Muslim leader whose wife was a leading Islamic feminist, and who was fighting to create an tolerant, progressive Islam to meet the needs of the growing numbers of American Muslims who were rejecting the domination of established Islamic institutions by traditionalists and fundamentalists.

The tragedy is that Morton Klein and his band of zealots were right, and I was wrong. When it comes to Israel, al-Marayati, has a pathological hatred, a special blind spot that makes him incapable of condemning actions and views that derive from the very interpretation of Islam that he rejects. I do not begrudge American Muslims sympathy for the plight of fellow Muslims, and a revulsion to Ariel Sharon. I do regret that they are unable to see past the victimization of the Palestinians to the larger context of the conflict. Jews are dying, and that should be a tragedy for them.. Islam is being perverted, and that should be a tragedy for them. Arafat and his cronies have no intention of granting human rights should they ever get a state, and that should be a tragedy for them as well.

In the long run, however, liberal Muslims and liberal Jews need each other. For American Muslims yearning to find a middle ground where they can hold on to their traditions and yet embrace tolerance, gender equality and modernity, American Jewry offers a model of how to sustain a pluralistic community. American Muslim leaders will emerge that will be able to get past their views of the Middle East and engage in constructive dialogue with the Jewish community. Someday, maybe Salam al-Marayati will once again be one of them.