CNA Staff, Jul 17, 2020 / 15:42 pm
The leader of the largest independent Muslim organization in the world says that a resurgence of fundamentalist Islam threatens not only non-Muslim minorities, but feeds a cycle of retaliatory violence against Muslims.
Sheikh Yahya Cholil Staquf warned of a "political weaponization of fundamentalist Islam," in an essay published in The Public Discourse on July 11. He said that religious minorities around the world "from sub-Saharan Africa to South and Southeast Asia" are discriminated against and attacked for their beliefs.
At issue, he said, is "a supremacist, ultraconservative interpretation of Islam" pushed even by U.S. allies including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
This resurgence of theocracies and sectarian violence around the world, he said, most notably manifested by the rise of the terror group ISIS in 2014, is actually the historical norm.