An interview with Fareena Alam, editor of Q-News, by the New Statesman is doing the rounds. It is worth putting it up here too.
An excerpt or two:
The only way to counter extremism, she believes, is with more religion, not less: by promoting an Islam she characterises not as "moderate" but as "fundamentalist". She argues: "Mercy and patience are the fundamental values of Islam. This is not a watered-down version of religion." Her conviction worries more secular Muslims, who perceive the group around Q-News as "odd", "crazy" or "Islamists by another name" - and so, perhaps, does her language. "I know people have trouble with the promotion of religion, and that's a legitimate concern," counters Alam. "But we cannot run away from the fact that religion is important to these young people. The 7/7 bombers didn't come on the platform of secularism, they came on the platform of being bearded, praying-five-times-a-day Muslim guys. We have to talk to people on their own level."
[...]
In the scramble for influence, the best-funded (and loudest) voices are likely to prevail. "The petrodollar-funded literalists think that their version of Islam is the real Islam, and they've had the money to promote it around the world," explains Alam. "I'm for an Islam that is very at home in Britain: I don't want a foreign religion." The Radical Middle Way project attempts to bolster moderate Islam in Britain by promoting traditional scholars, such as Shaykh Abdallah bin Bayyah of Mauritania and Habib Ali of Yemen, "whose learning and authority are undeniable".
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