Muslim Reform Movement Decries Radical Islam, Calls For Equality

It takes courage to stand up publicly to radical Islam, even if you’re Muslim. Maybe especially if you’re Muslim.

Ask Asra Nomani. On Friday [Dec. 4th] she and a dozen of her fellow Muslims went to the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and posted a declaration on the door denouncing violent jihad, rejecting Islamic statism and opposing the “ideology of violent Islamic extremism.”

The declaration announced the formation of the Muslim Reform Movement, an international organization aimed at countering the beliefs of Middle East terrorist groups like Islamic State in what the document describes as a “battle for the soul of Islam.”

Was Ms. Nomani nervous? No doubt. But the recent bloodshed in Paris and San Bernardino, California, spurred by radical Islam has convinced her the Muslim community needs to confront frankly the connection between terrorism and religion, not deny that it exists.

“Ultimately, the reason why we, as Muslims, stood on Friday and went to the mosque and took the risks on our own lives, is because we’ve had enough,” Ms. Nomani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think the world has had enough.”

Her message comes with others scrambling to place the post-San Bernardino focus on anything but radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations held a press conference Friday to denounce “rising Islamophobia in America” and called for a hate crimes investigation into a threat against a Virginia mosque.

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Related article: The Muslim Reform Movement-- Fighting Islamism