An unholy alliance of far leftists and fundamental Islamists is undermining the principle values of the United States, warned Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and advocate for reform in Islam.
“There’s a war for the values of classical liberalism,” Nomani told host Jan Jekielek in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
“To me, they are simple ideas like individual freedom, free speech, the actual value of family, and something also really important to me—a sense of equality, a sense that there is no hierarchy of human value.”
Nomani is a co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, an international organization fighting to counter the ideology that fostered and nurtured terrorist groups like ISIS.
A Muslim herself, she has long been arguing that the Muslim community needs to confront, not deny, the existence of elements of their religion that are not compatible with the principal values of the free world.
An Ethical Incongruity
Born in India and then migrating to the United States when she was four, Nomani described an “ethical incongruity” she felt in an upbringing shaped by both Islamic and classical liberal values.
“Women’s rights, equality, free speech—these were just joyful experiences that I had as a young girl growing up in the United States,” she said. “But I was feeling incongruous with some of the ideas that were actually embedded inside of me, being a Muslim.”
“Inside of the very traditional and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, you are denied principles like free speech because you are ruled in by laws of blasphemy,” she continued.
“You are denied individual rights because you are defined by the collective sense of what you’re supposed to live, how you’re supposed to marry, where you’re supposed to travel, and what you’re supposed to do for a living.”
By Jan Jekielek and Bill Pan
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