BIODATA
Abdul Rahman al-Rashed is a senior columnist for Al-Madina and Al-Bilad, as well as the general manager of the television channel Al-ʿArabiyya. Al-Rashed was formerly editor-in-chief of Al-Sharq al-Awsat and Al-Majalla and until 1985 served as Al-Jazeera’s foreign correspondent in Washington, D.C. He holds a B.A. in Visual Media from the American University. Born in Saudi Arabia, he currently lives in Dubai, UAE.
SYNOPSIS
Al-Rashed has been a dynamic force in the promotion of an undeclared “liberal realism,” a position that expects and promotes compatibility between universally accepted liberal norms and the gradual evolution of the Arab political order. As an incrementalist, al-Rashed has been critical of revolutionary propositions of all types, from the Hamas- and Hizbullah-led confrontation with Israel to the dystopian vision of Al-Qaeda. A cautious critic of U.S. mistakes in Iraq and of the slips of the new Iraqi authorities, al-Rashed has consistently underlined the potential of the new Iraq to become a catalyst for change in the region. As general manager of Al-ʿArabiyya, al-Rashed has made space available for liberal voices, within the implicit constraints imposed on the station by its Saudi funding.
EXCERPT (Translated)
An advantage of extremism lies in its having served as a wake-up call for many individuals who then proceeded to criticize courageously the deteriorating situation, which had left all Muslim communities—whether modern or traditional, poor or wealthy, minority or majority—engulfed in flames. And with each such incident, many more became convinced of the fact that extremism is the result of crises of intellect and institutions, rather than of economic and sociological complications.
Today’s extremism is not the product of poverty, as was widely believed in the past, but the result of inaction amid a continual clash over modernization; a clash between the guardians of traditional Islam and those who yearn for a contemporary Islam that would remain valid for every place and time….
The Muslim world is crippled and requires rescue from the bloody altercations between tradition and modernity. It needs a modernization project whereby a tolerant Islam would embrace women’s human rights as well as new civil requirements, and would coexist with the rest of the world. Few are the Islamic scholars who have dared to promote effectively a moderate, tolerant and modernized Islam, because either their voices were drowned out by the extremists’ clamor or they had intermingled with the incentives of power.
– Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, "The Critique of Muslims by Muslims,"
Al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 2, 2008
EXCERPT (Original in Arabic- Link)
من حسنات التطرف انه ايقظ كثيرين، وقاد الى نقد الوضع المتردي وبشجاعة، بعد ان انتشرت الحرائق في كل المجتمعات المسلمة، الحديثة والمحافظة، الفقيرة منها والغنية، اقلية كانت او اغلبية. ومع تزايد الاحداث ازداد عدد المؤمنين بان التطرف نتيجة أزمة فكر، وازمة مؤسسات، وليس وليد مضاعفات اقتصادية او اجتماعية. التطرف اليوم ليس ابن الفقر كما كان يشاع، بل نتيجة عجز عن الحركة في الصدام المستمر حول التحديث. صدام بين الخائفين على الاسلام القديم ضد الراغبين في اسلام المكان والزمان الجديد، على اعتبار انه صالح لكل زمان ومكان.
[…]
فعالم المسلمين في حاجة الى من ينقذه من العجز ويفك الاشتباكات الدامية بين المحافظة والتحديث. يحتاج الى مشروع تحديثي فيه الاسلام المعتدل الذي يتبنى حقوق الانسان، والمرأة ضمنها، والمعاملات المدنية المستجدة، ويتعايش مع العالم حوله. هناك قلة من العلماء الاسلاميين تجرأت على الترويج للاسلام المعتدل المتسامح المتطور بقليل من التأثير اما لانها اختفت وسط ضجيج المتطرفين، او اندمجت مع اغراءات السلطة.
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