Tuesday, June 01, 2004
In his A Plea for Enlightened Moderation, Pervez Musharraf offers a reminder of why the U.S. continues to see him as the best of all possible alternatives in Pakistan. To be sure, he hasn't yet matched this lofty rhetoric, and his revolving door policy toward militants is troubling. But Muslim leaders willing to make statements like these are uncommon (and no, Paul Krugman, Mahathir isn't among them). Whatever his flaws, one does wish that there could be more leaders who see the problem like he does:
I say to my brother Muslims: The time for renaissance has come. The way forward is through enlightenment. We must concentrate on human resource development through the alleviation of poverty and through education, health care and social justice. If this is our direction, it cannot be achieved through confrontation. We must adopt a path of moderation and a conciliatory approach to fight the common belief that Islam is a religion of militancy in conflict with modernization, democracy and secularism. All this must be done with a realization that, in the world we live in, fairness does not always rule.
