Ali Eteraz on “reformed extremists”
An interesting article on the celebrity ex-extremists the media have recently been parading in front of us; not only "Ed" Husain and Hassan Butt in the UK but Tawfik Hamid in the USA. As he points out, the alternatives to the radical world-view have been around for years, and were being advanced at precisely the time when these individuals were active in the radical or terrorist groups, a fact not readily acknowledged by the media who have suddenly discovered them now:
For the most part, however, this alternative discourse took the form of every day Muslims, like those that play cricket for their nations, who do comedy, and set up magazines and websites discussing the precise theological issues that Hamid and Butt didn't know how to address once, and wish to be spokesmen for now. I do take umbrage in the fact that back when these easily duped figures like Butt and Hussain and Hamid were agitating for Global Caliphates, my friends and I would confront them at various Islamic conventions and call them traitors to the Islamic tradition and yet now the WSJ and Observer are parading these figures around as talking heads, while not acknowledging the existent discourse among Muslim communities that challenged them previously.
