The Rand Report

On March 18th, 2004, The Rand Corporation released a report titled

"Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies"

From their web site:

"The study calls for a strategy that can distinguish between Muslims with whom peaceful relationships and dialogue are possible, and extremist Muslims whose values are fundamentally incompatible with democracy and the contemporary international order."

Many Muslims saw this report as yet another attempt by the US to engage in "religion building" and creating divisions based on who the United States government preceives to be the "good guys" within the Muslim community.

Again from their web site:

Support the modernists first.

Support the traditionalists against the fundamentalists

Confront and oppose the fundamentalists.

Selectively support secularists.


The debate on NPM began with a member asking the following question:

Do you all remember the Rand report that came out several months ago about how to make a more western friendly islam by subsidizing/promoting/ supporting the work of 'modernists' and 'secularists'.

Well that has been something that we have talked about here in our meetup group and now it is being brought up within the greater muslim community here (that we are part of this orchestrated attempt to define islam by the U.S.) and elsewhere from what i gather.

Do people see MWU! and PMU as falling in line with the U.S. agenda? I seems to be going that way from what I can tell, whether intentional or not. Just wondered what other thought.

trish