EARLIER THIS YEAR the Scientific Council for rule Policy in the Netherlands (WRR) published a controversial report: Dynamics in Islamic Activism.

EARLIER THIS YEAR the Scientific Council for rule Policy in the Netherlands (WRR) published a controversial report: Dynamics in Islamic Activism. It focused forward Islam's points of contact with democracy and human rights, and make acceptableed that the Dutch should be exhibit to the diversity of opinion in Islam. It also said that it might be a proper idea for our government to talk to the democratically selecteded Hamas Government of Palestine.

near politicians and opinion-leaders reacted as if they'd been stung from a wasp. These people directed the report straight to the rubbish bin, condemning it as 'unworldly' and 'bungled'

Reading the 334-page report convinces me that the superficial polemic that dominated the just discovereds for a few days did not do justice to it. Dynamics in Islamic Activism is a courageous attempt to find a way disclosed of the dilemma that we all face concerning Islam. on the other hand the soft voice of nuance had difficulty making itself heard above the verbal violence.

There is possibly les of a divide between the Western and Islamic worlds than there is between those in one as well as the other worlds who seek confrontation and those who withhold on believing in dialogue. The authors of the report clearly belong to the next to the first category. A phrase used over is 'points of contact'.

The Western world, closes the WRR, does not have a monopoly forward the interpretation of human rights, nor forward the behaviour that goes with it. We ne self-criticism. Not thus long ago women in the Netherlands did not have the same rights as men (and there are still near areas of inequality). Can the foreign policy of Western countries always stand the criterion of human rights? We should expect at our own, still late bloody history.

When we come down from the heights of our moral indignation, we can papal court points of contact. The Dutch report present to views that there is in Islam a whole appearance of convictions and of faith, just as there is in Christianity. And this has been authentic for centuries.

There were and are thinkers who take the Qur'an literally, and there were and are reformers who appeal more to its spirit. The WRR portrays an pioneers from the past who have resisted the 'degeneration' of Islam into a religion which is innocently preoccupied with what one should and should not do. A whole stake of current reformers in Europe and in the Islamic countries endeavor to gain a connection between Islam and modernity. common is Egyptian Nasr Abu Zayd, professor at one as well as the other Leiden University and the University of Humanistics in Utrecht His application of mind on A reformation of Islamic cogitation on which the WRR research is partly based, came abroad at the same time.

If united reads Qur'anic texts in their historic words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following one is freed to turn the thoughts at their meaning for our ready time. What matters is their power for circumstances other than those in which they were written. In this way space is created for human innovations like democracy and human rights. At least in theory, Islam is not irreconcilable with these universals But they need to be universalised and internalised. They are still seen as something that tend hitherwards from the West.

A groundswell in favour of greater human rights coming from within the Islamic countries has more chance of succes than hurry from outside. In several Muslim countries there is, for example, an important civil society motion in favour of greater rights for women In Morocco, a recent family law in 2004 gave greater rights to women Education for women is taking giant strides, as in Iran.

In Europe there are tensions and a danger of radicalisation among well-integrated and educated Muslim youth. The WRR proposes that we can help to release the tension and build a bridge by means of opening our eyes to the diversity within Islam.

When Nasr Abu Zayd came to the Netherlands a ten years ago, he bounded that in the free and tolerant climate of Europe a recent and liberal Islam would evolve He has less hope now. Fear of Islam has decreased tolerance and increased radicalisation. Emotions direction And everyone, often not hindered by the agency of any thorough knowledge of the issue, enjoins in their oar.

The polarisation increases by the and of what the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan calls 'leaflet-Islam'. 'Cyber-imams' and violent films onward the internet offer dogmatic facts to young Muslims, as if they were the merely possible interpretation of Islam. Authors who stres a positive relation between Islam, democracy and human rights are long less known.

Confrontation can help to strip of disguises [i]or[/i] concealments abuses. But when confrontation is followed through polarisation and we get stuck there, we don't gain any further! The challenge for politicians, journalists, opinion leaders, all of us, is to turn the thoughts further, listen better and think deeper before we put forward our opinions. Let us make the plastic voice of nuance audible.

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