SILENT MAJORITY

Two visions of faith collide (Charles A. Radin, May 8, 2005, Boston Globe)

First of three parts

NORTHWEST PUNJAB PROVINCE, Pakistan: [...]

Sameen rounds a curve and sees a woman in head-to-toe black veils shuffling slowly across the busy highway. Even her eyes are hidden. He slams on the brakes and swerves to the right, narrowly avoiding her.

''This is not Islam, this is nonsense!" he snaps at her shrouded form, receding in the rear view mirror. ''The Koran says nothing about this!"

For Sameen and hundreds of millions of other moderate Muslims, Islam is not about cloistered women, global jihad, or living by a literal interpretation of the Koran. It is about self-improvement and tolerance. About modesty and propriety, though not pressed to the fully veiled extreme. And about finding the peaceful nexus between an ancient faith and modern ways.

From Indonesia and Malaysia to Turkey and Morocco, the Islamic world teems with people like Sameen who differ sharply, on almost every issue, with the militant fundamentalists who dominate the international image of the faith. They are, by any measure, the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims -- a quiet, nervous majority -- and hold in their hands the balance of power in the Muslim world and, with it, the fate of the Bush administration's push for democratization in the Middle East.

And the Reformation is rolling from that outer perimeter inwards.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2005 11:12 AM