Reception
The summit was described by Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal as "a landmark." Yvonne Haddad of Georgetown University questioned whether the summit was nonpartisan, saying many summit speakers were known for condemning Islam. Michael Ledeen of the politically conservative American magazine National Review, who attended the summit, described the participants as ex-Muslims and believers, adding, "I think it is no longer possible for people to say there are no reformist (or “moderate”) Muslims." Arnold Trebach, a professor emeritus of American University's Department of Justice, Law and Society, also mentioned the summit in the Washington Times as "a tiny spark of hope and reason," saying that all must try to protect the lives of the speakers.
On the same weekend as the summit, the south Florida office of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, met in Fort Lauderdale. Attendees of the two meetings denounced each other; Ahmed Bedier, who serves as CAIR's Tampa chapter's executive director, dismissed the summit speakers as "atheists and non-Muslims" hostile to Islam. In contrast, speakers of the summit characterizing CAIR as Saudi-funded Islamists "hypersensitive to any criticism of Muslims" and "too quick to declare who is, or who is not, a true Muslim." CAIR elaborated on their criticism of the summit, referring to Haddad's comments on the speakers' extremism and stating that the summit was wrong in promoting the idea that only former Muslims who disdained Islam, rather than Muslims who desired reform, could bring effective change. They attributed to growing Islamophobia the idea of "reforming" Islam by converting Muslims. Investor's Business Daily, in an op-ed titled "What is CAIR Afraid Of?", described CAIR as a bullying Islamist group and stated that "... the Secular Islam Summit offers a ray of hope," envisioning a larger number of moderate Muslims further discomfiting the civil rights group.
Read more about this topic: Secular Islam Summit
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