Just as dissidents living in the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites played a key role in bringing about the fall of Communism, so, too, writes Giulio Meotti, can Muslims who speak out against radical Islamism help bring about the victory of democratic liberalism. Meotti describes some of the most prominent of these brave individuals:
Many of these dissidents are women. Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan politician and journalist, declared war on Islamic fundamentalists after the Taliban’s religious police beat her for daring to walk without a male escort. A suicide bomber blew himself up near her car, killing three. Kadra Yusuf, a Somali journalist, infiltrated Oslo’s mosques to denounce the imams, especially regarding female genital mutilation, which is not even required by the Quran or the hadith (post-Quranic traditions). . . .
[I]n France, Hassen Chalghoumi, the courageous imam of Drancy, preaches while wearing a bullet-proof vest. When he goes out on the street, he is accompanied by five police officers with semiautomatic weapons. This is not outside Baghdad’s Green Zone; this is in the heart of Paris. Chalghoumi backed the ban on burkas, made an unprecedented visit to Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial, paid tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo killings, and favored a dialogue with French Jews. . . .
In Italy, an Egyptian-born writer, Magdi Cristiano Allam, is protected by bodyguards for having criticized political Islam. As the deputy editor of Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Mr. Allam published a book whose title alone was enough to endanger his life: Viva Israele. . . .
The Palestinian blogger Walid Husayin is also a rarity. Jailed for “satirizing the Quran,” he recently published a book in France about his experience in the Palestinian territories, where his “atheism” nearly cost him his life.
Read more on Gatestone: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8227/muslim-dissidents