The West's Muslim Liberals Respond to Gaza

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If the United States is losing Mustafa Akyol, it may be losing the world. If you don't know Mustafa Akyol, he has long been a leading proponent of liberalizing Islam. He's a senior fellow at the Cato Institute think tank. He's been a contributing New York Times columnist in recent years and he focuses on what he calls Islam and modernity.

For example, his book published in 2021 was called Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance. You get the idea. A decade earlier, he wrote one called Islam Without Extremes, and he's got one coming out later this year called The Islamic Moses: How the Prophet Inspired Jews and Muslims to Flourish Together and Change the World.

Now, as the Gaza death toll approaches 30,000 in the response to October 7th and President Biden refuses to place any conditions on military aid to Israel as he presses Congress for billions more for them, Mustafa Akyol has an analysis in Foreign Policy magazine called The West is Losing Liberal Islam. Mustafa Akyol joins me now. Thanks very much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Mustafa Akyol: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can you first let our listeners get to know you and your work a little bit more? Your book seemed to argue, as a publisher's note puts it, that values often associated with Western enlightenment, freedom, reason, tolerance, and appreciation of science had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views often for political ends. That's a quote. Can you give us a brief synopsis of what your aims have been in writing your books?

Mustafa Akyol: Sure, Brian. I'm originally from Turkey. I used to be a journalist, author, academic there. I switched to the US side in the past six years, found a home at the Cato Institute to work on these ideas of freedom and toleration and pluralism in Islam. These days, in the past couple of decades especially, people look into the Muslim world. They see the Taliban, the Iranian regime, militant groups like Hamas.

They generally get a dark picture, but this is a crisis in the Islamic civilization as I call it. There were long centuries where the Islamic civilization were only more tolerant than the West. When Jews were persecuted in Spain, they found a safe home in the Ottoman Empire. Islam was the place where philosophy flourished and new inventions came 1,000 years ago, so there was this Golden Age.

What was the value behind that? I think there are roots in Islam to advocate for individual freedom, for freedom of conscience. A lot of Muslims intuitively already believe in these values, but my work is about finding those roots within the Islamic tradition for toleration, freedom, for an open society, and criticize, of course, more theocratic and militant and hateful views.

A part of that has been actually bridging Muslims and Jews because I believe Islam and Judaism are very similar religions. People speak of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is true, but I also speak about the Judeo-Islamic tradition. Actually, it's a part of my forthcoming book, The Islamic Moses. Actually, until this conflict in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims did pretty well in history compared to the Christian story because of the anti-Semitism in Europe and all that.

Brian Lehrer: When you say until this current conflict, do you mean the last 100 years of Zionism and the Arab response to it?

Mustafa Akyol: Yes, I mean the last 100 years. Of course, the escalation in October 7 was particularly horrific. I was appalled to see innocent Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7 and I said it out loud. There were other Muslims who said that in Islam, yes, there's the idea of even a holy war, but it never involves attacking directly innocent civilians. Yes, this is an escalation in something that's going on. I see the problem is nationalism here, right?

There are two nationalisms claiming the same land. It's inevitable that there will be a conflict, but we can try to find a solution by curbing maximalists on both sides and making two people somehow share the land and live together. I'm not the person to propose its formula. I'm not Arab. I'm not Jew. As someone who sympathizes with the stories of both sides, I think that's what we should do. However, in the past three months, October 7 was horrific. It had to be condemned.

Israel had the right to respond. I accept that. The nature of the response, the indiscriminate bombing, the colossal destruction of the whole Gaza Strip almost, 30,000-almost people killed, that is unacceptable. That is outrageous as well. The fact that Western governments seem to support this, especially in the United States, is having profound consequences in the Muslim psychology across the world. My article in Foreign Policy was a warning about that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go into some specifics there. Your headline on that article in Foreign Policy again is The West is Losing Liberal Islam. You cite as an example, the Pakistani diplomat, Hina Rabbani Khar, who you described as a liberal Muslim who became the first female foreign affairs minister of Pakistan in 2011. What is her background in liberalization and what is she saying today?

Mustafa Akyol: Well, she was hailed as the first female prime minister in Pakistan, which is a country with patriarchal--

Brian Lehrer: Or foreign minister, right?

Mustafa Akyol: Yes, first foreign minister. She's been active on civil society and doing some good work there. She's just one example. Maybe I should, Brian, explain what do I mean by liberal Muslims.

Brian Lehrer: Please.

Mustafa Akyol: I would call myself a Muslim liberal or a liberal Muslim. That means I believe in liberal democracy. I don't think Islam comes with a package of a theocratic government as the Iranian state would believe or the Taliban would believe. I think Muslims are better off in a society where they are not coerced to practice Islam. They practice it willingly and I'm very respectful to that. I'm myself a Muslim.

I believe in values like elections and freedom of speech and expression. People should be able to criticize religion. It's better for a religion. That's my approach. There are a lot of Muslims who believe in these values. They've typically, for 200 years almost by now, looked at Western societies generally as a source of inspiration. You see, in America, they have freedom of religion and that's great for everybody. You can wear your headscarf. You don't have to. It's better. Everybody can say their opinions.

There are a lot of things these values typically admired in Western societies. However, there's another part of the picture, which is Western colonialism. These societies also come and occupy you. These societies come with their drones, with their military intervention. That has been the darker side of the story in the past 200 years. I think the escalation in Gaza, the destruction in Gaza is just adding a terrible, terrible new chapter to that dilemma where Muslims like many things, these liberal Muslims, many things in liberal societies.

Then they see double standards. They see hypocrisies. They see indifference to their own lives and their suffering, which pushes people off. It will help more illiberal forces. It will help militant forces in the Muslim world. It will help Iran, Russia, and China. If the West, even just for strategic reasons, is thinking about these things, they should immediately head for peace and de-escalation.

Brian Lehrer: You cite that Pakistani diplomat Hina Rabbani Khar and some of the things she's saying. As an example, you cite Turkish journalist Nihal Bengisu Karaca, if I'm saying that right, who wrote a lamentation called Suicide of the West. You cite a Pakistani journalist, Umar Farooq, who wrote, "The war in Gaza is changing the Muslim world and not in a good way," you write. Would you tell us more about what Farooq wrote? Maybe that's a weigh-in to a further description of what you're saying.

Mustafa Akyol: Yes, definitely. Among the people you listed, Nihal Bengisu Karaca, the Turkish journalist, she's a friend of mine. I think her column was very powerful and I quoted that. Others, I just read online in the past couple of months. The Pakistani journalist, Umar Farooq, was saying that people look into what's happening, right? Maybe it's not full-on CNN 24 hours. On Al Jazeera, on social media, people are constantly seeing the children being killed by bombs and even sometimes siblings shot to death.

Thousands and thousands and more is coming every day. People are grossed out and enraged that this is happening and the US is supporting this, the US is allowing this, and US is giving military support, and all that. It is turning into anti-Americanism. It's turning into anti-Westernism. He was saying these feelings will be there and they will have deep impact. It will further empower militant groups, groups like al-Qaeda, groups like ISIS that we all hate and we all see as the problem is a threat to all of us.

If you look into the propaganda of those groups, Hamas is one of them, of course. More regional. All their propaganda is about Muslims being persecuted by these evil powers, so they should fight against these evil powers. Of course, they do it in a very inhumane way with terroristic methods and that's all wrong, but they serve on a certain psychology. That psychology has been exacerbated by this current conflict.

He was saying that this will incubate new groups, maybe new even militant groups across the Muslim world. On the other hand, strategically, people will not believe in the Western norms anymore. China will, I think, gain some prestige undeservedly so because China is a big persecutor of Muslims. I actually call it the main Islamophobic state in the world. The persecution of Uyghurs that China has been carrying out for decades and more intensely in the past few years, it is there.

When you look at Gaza, even China sounds more humane and caring about Palestinian civilians, although probably hypocritically. Muslim societies will be losing fate. Liberals who believe in values that we see in the West will have less authority to speak out. That was what Nihal Bengisu Karaca was saying. She was saying, "Who will be able to speak about Western values or liberal democracy ideas in this part of the world anymore? Nobody will listen to them." That is one consequence of this trouble, bloodshed.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your calls are welcome and your texts for Mustafa Akyol, author of Reopening Muslim Minds among other books, a Cato Institute senior fellow. Now, the author of the article in Foreign Policy magazine, The West is Losing Liberal Islam. Listeners, are you what you would consider a liberal Muslim who identifies with what he's saying or maybe does not? Anyone else may call with questions and thoughts or text. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I know you're not a military expert, but could it have been different? Supporters of this Israeli response argue that Hamas has promised more October 7th-style attacks on Israel if it can pull them off, daring Israel to come get them as Hamas embeds its fighters among civilians making this kind of carnage inevitable if Israel is going to mount an effective preventive defense against Hamas' military capabilities. To what degree, if any, do the liberal Muslims you're writing about see Hamas as pulling this response on purpose and blame them too? Not let Israel off the hook necessarily, but blame Hamas too. The liberalism you generally write about could view Hamas as one of the extremist groups to be rejected for its core views and actions.

Mustafa Akyol: Definitely, Hamas is a huge problem. It's a terrorist group. It has made this Palestinian-Israeli conflict much less resolvable, first of all, because of the violence it has justified against civilians. It began in the, especially, early 2000s with Hamas suicide attacks in Tel Aviv or other Israeli cities. That has been a major shift. Actually, in classical Islam, there's this idea of jihad. Yes, holy war, it was there. It could mean war. It could mean also spiritual struggle too.

In classical Islam, war never meant you go and directly kill innocent civilians. Actually, there was concern against that. There's a famous hadith or saying of Prophet Muhammad, which says, "Do not kill women, children, elderly in war, and don't attack monks and religious people." There was that concern typically, but that was cast aside by militant groups in the '70s and '80s. Hamas went that way.

Also, by not accepting Israel in a two-state solution, which I think should be the ultimate solution, but by saying, "We will take it all. We will just uproot Israel," Hamas made also chances of peace minimal. Yes, Hamas is a big part of the problem, but how do you deal with a group like Hamas? I'm not a military expert, but I've been following what military experts have been saying. Hamas doesn't just come out of nothing.

Since 1967, there's occupation of Palestinian lands. Israelis pulled back from Gaza in early 2000s. Still, it was blockaded. Still, East Jerusalem, West Bank are occupied. Israelis are building more settlements. Prime Minister Netanyahu just showed the map of Israel, which gets all the land, all of it, "from the river to the sea." Israel is claiming these things. These kind of developments are empowering groups like Hamas, making them more fanatic, making them more ferocious.

People have said that, for example, some of the Hamas terrorists who did October 7, they were the children of people who were killed in previous bombings of Gaza by the Israeli forces because carpet bombing, all those campaigns before this one, smaller scale. The thing is, yes, Hamas is a trouble, but this trouble comes out of a desperation of the people. I know this from Turkey. My country, Turkey, has a long trouble with "Kurdish terrorists" or Kurdish nationalist terrorists. The PKK is typical example.

I've long argued that, yes, Turkey can fight the PKK in the military means, but there will be never a military solution because the PKK is coming out of desperation of the Kurdish people in Turkey, which don't have the equal rights that they deserve. That is despite the fact that, actually, it's a much less intense conflict compared to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, on what Israel should technically have done, there are people who have written saying that the war could be much more targeted.

It could be a bit more long-term. There could be more emphasis in saving the hostages through negotiations, which is actually almost the only way that has been successful in saving the hostages. Just yesterday, Zack Beauchamp in Vox magazine has an article, How Israelis Went Wrong, and he says he spoke to military experts. It could have been much more different, much more pointed, not this ferocious and not this harmful.

Again, I'm not a military expert. A lot of military experts have said that this was not the only way and this is too indiscriminate and too catastrophic. I just believe in them. I see the impact of this. The more destruction comes in and Hamas will actually become more popular because some people will blame Hamas rightly so for bringing this help, bringing destruction. Other will say Israel is such a ferocious oppressor that you need tough guys against Israel. Hamas will begin to surf on that.

Maybe not in Gaza Strip, but maybe somewhere else. The conflict will go on. I think the only way is to disarm this conflict as much as we can do. That means a ceasefire, a very urgent relief. People are suffering. People are starving in Gaza right now because of Israel limitations and the war situation. Kids are looking for food in trash cans and people are seeing this all across the world. Israel could have done much at a more humane campaign with more care for innocent lives. That's not the case as far as I can see.

Brian Lehrer: When you talk about ceasefire, I don't know if you can get into the weeds at this level, but we've been hearing in the news this morning, the latest on the diplomatic end that the United States stood basically alone against the world yesterday in vetoing a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council proposed by Algeria. The vote was 13-1. The US was the one. There was one country that abstained, the UK, but 13-1 means the US was isolated from allies, including Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and France, who were among the 13.

However, the US does have an alternative ceasefire resolution that, from the way I read it, is more temporary and, in a way, more specific. It calls for both the release by Hamas of all the Israeli hostages and the lifting by Israel of any limits on the delivery of humanitarian aid. The US position is that the version that the UN voted on is too permanent in a way that would benefit Hamas militarily too much. I wonder how you view all of that, the 13-1 alignment, whether the US position has merits as the moderate position on what kind of ceasefire or you're not in the weeds of the TikTok of the news in that way.

Mustafa Akyol: Well, I think those 13 countries were more on the right side of history compared to the US if you ask me. I thought the same thing for other ceasefire resolutions in the past couple of months. I think it's notable that not just Muslim-majority countries like Morocco or Algeria or other Arab countries are just calling for a ceasefire, but also European countries, including France as you mentioned. Belgium and Spain have been also vocal about the unacceptable nature of this very destructive, indiscriminate campaign.

Yes, US stands alone and some Americans may be proud of that, but I would tell them, "Well, why is it that the whole world think that all this destruction is unacceptable and only the US goes through a certain direction?" I think maybe Americans are not feeling exactly what's going on in that part of the world. It's too distant. Maybe they're just too focused on "destroying Hamas." Destroying Hamas would be a legitimate goal, but at what cost?

You can nuke a place and, yes, the terrorists in it will be destroyed, but then you will be killing a million, two million innocent civilians. Now, is that the world that we want to go back? Do you want to go back to pre-Geneva Convention world? Some Israelis actually called for that after October 7th. I was deeply worried about that. I think this fixation on destroying Hamas "with whatever cost is there," I think that's the wrong strategy.

It will not even destroy Hamas. Hamas will move on somewhere else. Hamas militants will maybe move out of Gaza. Already some of them are out in other places. There will be Hamas 2.0 in somewhere else to take the revenge. This again reminds me of Turkey's very militant-blind, anti-terrorism campaigns. Turkey has been fighting PKK for a long time. Once, a Turkish general said, "We finished off PKK five times."

He meant that Turkey has been able to kill some 30,000 PKK militants over the years. That was like PKK had maybe 7,000 terrorists or militants in one situation, so you did it several times. The new guys come up. Why? Because they want to take revenge of their nephew. While you're killing the PKK people, you actually hurt so many innocent people, innocent villagers, and so on and so forth.

Those stories are not forgotten. You call them out collateral damage. These things happen in war or the people whose children have been killed and whose villages have been destroyed. That's not a mere collateral damage. That's the worst thing that happened to them. It leads to more radicalization. I believe instead of just this continued campaign until you claim a victory, I think the victory would be to saving the hostages. That would be the most, I think, important thing. People can see, "Who are you to advise Israel?"

I'm not Israeli. Well, there are Israeli scholars or journalists or statesmen already saying these things that this campaign is destructive in newspaper Haaretz that many of us probably read. I've been following what people are saying. I quoted Daniel Levy, Israeli journalist, on that. He's saying this war is morally wrong and it's actually going to help Hamas delegitimize Israel's standing internationally. There are other Israelis saying that what will give Israel security is peace.

Unless you make a peace with this kind of constant military deterrence and show of force, you'll be always on the edge because the lack of peace will create militancy on the other side. They will come after you and the vicious cycle will go on, which is happening for already decades. It's just getting worse. I don't see a good end to this vicious cycle. I think we all should aim for ending the vicious cycle in a way that Arabs and Jews, the two peoples in that holy land, and that much troubled holy land find a way to live together in peace.

Brian Lehrer: When you write about the Israeli journalists who see this as a dead-end as you quoted one of them writing or Levy in Haaretz as you were just describing, I wonder--

Mustafa Akyol: Gideon Levy. Sorry, I just confused him. There's also Daniel Levy too, but I think Gideon, yes.

Brian Lehrer: If you see a similar alienation among liberal Jews in this country, a kind of losing the diaspora to any degree, I hear it on the phones on the show to some degree, admittedly, a self-selecting unscientific sample. Let's say Jews who had not been involved with Israel but definitely supportive of Israel as a Jewish state that is constantly subject to terrorism and violent Hamas rejectionism and they still support Israel's existence as a Jewish state, not like "river to the sea" as in some of the protests, but are now thinking, "What kind of horror is that government committing in my name in a way as American Jew that's going to increase anti-Semitism and tarnish the way Israel appears for a long time to come?"

It's certainly happening among younger Jews who don't have the personal memory of the years right after the Holocaust when that country was created as a safe haven. We see that generational difference in the polls. I wonder if you've been writing or thinking about potential consequences for Israel of doing this in this way for what's been very important historically and that is the support of American Jews.

Mustafa Akyol: Well, I'm really happy to see all those peaceniks, peace promoters, liberals, human rights defenders on the Israeli side or within the Jewish community in the West, including the United States. I think they're doing a great service to all of us by calling for a more humane and realistic solution to this very bloody conflict. On our side, I would say Muslims, we have to and we are doing the same thing.

I myself have been trying to argue with Muslim communities in the past couple of decades for many things, including human rights, freedom, and toleration, and all that, but in particular, Israel and Palestine, I myself have criticized what I would call the maximalist idea, "from the river to the sea," claiming all Palestine because that will be perceived by Israelis as their self-destruction and they will not allow it. It'll make them only more hardliner, which is what's happening.

I think in every community, we need people who can stand up against tribalism, who can try to understand what the people on the other side are going through. I understand the story. For 2,000 years, they were minorities persecuted in different parts of the world. Finally, they were able to get their own country. I understand that. I sympathize with this story in there. I sympathize with the feeling of being safe. The downside of that is that country was harping on other people.

It was not a land without people as there was a slogan about it. Palestinians were living there. You cannot just not see the tragedy that the Palestinians had in the past 70 years. They lost what used to be their country. I think our best hope is people among Muslims, among Jews, among Arabs, among Americans who really aspire to universal values that unite all of us, we all want to raise our kids in safety. We all want to have our own country in which we can be safe. We can say, "This is my land and this is my home and I can build on it."

Yes, there are militants who want more, who want conflict, but those militants are on both sides. Let's not forget that. One thing that has been really disturbing in the past couple of months is to see some people in the Israeli cabinet, far-right members of the cabinet openly calling for ethnic cleansing to say, "Let's bomb them as much as we can and let them all go to another country. Let's take all Gaza without any remorse, without any mercy for women and children."

I heard the biblical reference to biblical tribe Amalek, which is a disturbing part in the Bible being coded by Israeli Prime Minister. Those are also very radical and disturbing views. I think in situations like this, we need peacemakers on both sides. I'm very happy and I'm optimistic to see Jewish people who love Israel as they should but also can say, "Well, I love my country, but here, it's doing something wrong and we have to correct it." Those are the true patriots, I think, in any society.

Brian Lehrer: Janet in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Mustafa Akyol, author of Reopening Muslim Minds among other books, and now the writer of the article in Foreign Policy magazine, The West is Losing Liberal Islam. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Good morning. I feel that enough is enough. I understand Israel's need to respond. Too many people have been killed. Also, I'm a little bit of a student of history. Most of the times, the Arabs have attacked. They haven't won. That is the reality of history of most of the wars between the Arabs and the Jews. I want women, especially women, to sit down. Because I think if the Hamas had asked the women, I don't think the Palestinian women said, "Yes, let's go ahead and do that." I agree with the gentleman that's speaking. We need peacekeepers to really sit down. I also realized, Hamas has been just giving up in the Israelis bombing them. Hamas is fighting back. We need to sit down with the peacekeepers with a lot of women involved. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Janet. Phillip in Princeton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Phillip.

Phillip: Oh, hold on. I'm sorry. I have that on the headphones. Just a second.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Phillip: Can you hear me, guys?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we can hear you just fine.

Phillip: Appreciation. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mustafa. I agree with everything what you say right now. The analysis, it's always very deep. I'm really thankful for that with only one important premise. The religion have to be separated from the state. Otherwise, the democracy doesn't work and the state always going to go into totalitarianism. If we don't actually have this, there is no point to talk internal about anybody else. If any religion people, whatever they call themselves, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, think they have something to say to the state politics, they are wrong because that's not how actually democracy works. That's my opinion.

Brian Lehrer: You're saying that religion is important to inform civic society, state society, no matter which religion in different countries?

Phillip: No, I just think every time in the human history, when the religion actually gets involved in the state structure in any kind of involvement, it's always in cleaning the way of thinking about itself. It's the only one changing the structure to its favor. As you can see over here with the Christian fundamental--

Brian Lehrer: I see, yes. You're saying the opposite of what I originally heard you are saying. We could go down a whole rabbit hole, Mustafa, on how this is a religious conflict, but not really a religious conflict. It's really a political and national conflict but informed by religion. How would you put it?

Mustafa Akyol: This is a political conflict in the sense that this is not a conflict or whether Islam and Judaism are the true religion and they're fighting each other because they happen to be infidels or stuff like that. It's not about that. Actually, Islam and Judaism are pretty compatible religions. They're both staunchly monotheistic. Historically, Muslims and Jews lived in similar neighborhoods and next to each other.

It's a national conflict. There are Israelis. It's not about Jews as such. It's Israelis, the people who come and live there as Israelis. Some Palestinians are not Muslim. Some of them are Christian, but there's a minority Christian population there, which is being bombed in Gaza, which has also suffered pretty badly during this campaign. There has been Palestinian nationalist groups, which are not Islamic at all. Some were Marxist nationalist groups.

Religion entered into the conflict sometimes as an exacerbating force. In Israel, you had the rise of what people call the radical rights, especially since this '67 war. They believe that Judea and Samaria, as they call it, the West Bank is being given them by God. They have to build these settlements. They don't care what will this do to the prospects of peace. They think this is what they have to do. On the other side--

Brian Lehrer: Religious nationalist component to be sure of that part.

Mustafa Akyol: If religion becomes mixed with nationalism, it becomes a very deadly mix. We see this all over the world. We see this in India these days. We see this in Pakistan for sure, even in Turkey. My country, there is a very, let's say, disturbing populism in the past 10 years. It is a mixture of religion and nationalism. In Israel and Palestine, you certainly have those forces today. I think that's still precisely why we should work within religious worldviews for peace, moderation, and toleration too. That's mostly actually what my work is mostly about.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Nofar in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Nofar.

Nofar: Hi. Am I coming through okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you.

Nofar: All right. My thoughts are not solution-focused. They're not ones that I imagine people enjoy, but it's the trauma-informed perspective, acknowledging our evolutionary history. When people are put in a situation where they are only thinking about survival, there is no logic. It's not that the discussion isn't important. Of course, we should keep having the discussion. The death tolls are terrifying numbers to see. At the same time, acknowledging that these are two sides with the traumatic history that are not going to come meet at the table, that are not thinking logically about right or wrong.

Even if they are bringing the religious component as a right or wrong, they're bringing it from a point of fear. What we have to do as a society in the Western world because we have that privilege is acknowledging how terrifying, hopeless, helpless this situation is and that the journey to coming up with a solution is long and not promised and will have to accommodate the reality that this war will be endless, I'm not sure how long, but for a pretty prolonged period of time.

Brian Lehrer: Nofar, thank you very much. I think, Mustafa, that she makes a very important point. I wonder what you were thinking as you were listening to Nofar, troubling as she says. Both sides as in many conflicts are coming from a place of fear as she says. I think both sides think they're playing defense, which leads to all this horrible offense on a certain level, if you agree.

Mustafa Akyol: I totally agree. That is precisely why third parties like the US government, like Western governments, or let's say the "West" broadly as a civilization should try to de-flame the conflict and disarm it and find a peaceful way out instead of just siding with one of those very alarmed camps and saying that, "Yes, do whatever you want against the others. We're with you." That becomes a very destructive conflict.

Iran does it on the Palestinian side for sure, saying, "Yes, go fight all the time and we'll give you all the weapons and arms." Iran itself is safe out there, but it's throwing sometimes Palestinians cease-fire. That's precisely why I think the Western world should understand this as not black-and-white story, our guys versus the bad ones. This is a very terrible conflict that is hurting a lot of people there and actually putting the whole world in danger.

This is Jerusalem involved. This is so symbolically important for billions of people out there in the world. This is a very deep conflict. The people who will help are people who will understand the pain of both sides and respect the pain of both sides. My piece was a criticism of those people in the West who don't seem to do that, who just only seem to see one story. With that, they cannot help it.

Brian Lehrer: Mustafa Akyol's article in Foreign Policy magazine is called The West is Losing Liberal Islam. Thank you so much for having this conversation with us.

Mustafa Akyol: Thank you so much for, Brian, having me. Let's hope for peace and reconciliation.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We turn the page. Much more to come.

 

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