Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer whose work on young Muslims navigating into and out of political Islam was awarded the 2007 Allen & Unwin Iremonger Award for public affairs writing.
Writing in The Age in a piece "Guantanamo policy is winning few friends in the Muslim world" he reflects on a visit to Indonesia and how Muslims, in general, view the West:
"What do Indonesian and other non-Western Muslims think of the West? In their recently published book Who Speaks for Islam?: What A Billion Muslims Really Think, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed analysed data from a mammoth multi-year Gallup study surveying a sample of tens of thousands of Muslims from more than 35 countries and representing more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.
Their study found that non-Western Muslims tend not to see the West as a monolith, and Muslims criticised or praised Western countries based on their politics and not on culture and religion. By and large, non-Western Muslims respected and wished to enjoy the benefits of Western-style democracy and the rule of law.
Indonesian media aren't rabidly anti-American. But the Indonesians from all walks of life I met in 2006 were united in their condemnation of one American policy: the continued detainment, often without charge, of hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay."
Writing in The Age in a piece "Guantanamo policy is winning few friends in the Muslim world" he reflects on a visit to Indonesia and how Muslims, in general, view the West:
"What do Indonesian and other non-Western Muslims think of the West? In their recently published book Who Speaks for Islam?: What A Billion Muslims Really Think, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed analysed data from a mammoth multi-year Gallup study surveying a sample of tens of thousands of Muslims from more than 35 countries and representing more than 90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.
Their study found that non-Western Muslims tend not to see the West as a monolith, and Muslims criticised or praised Western countries based on their politics and not on culture and religion. By and large, non-Western Muslims respected and wished to enjoy the benefits of Western-style democracy and the rule of law.
Indonesian media aren't rabidly anti-American. But the Indonesians from all walks of life I met in 2006 were united in their condemnation of one American policy: the continued detainment, often without charge, of hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay."
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