Special to WorldTribune.com

After San Bernardino, American Muslims have to come to terms with an ever more apparent truth: that we, and our mainstream Muslim brethren, are the only ones who can lead a winning fight against the radicalism crippling our faith. …

Attacks like last week’s underscore the importance of countering extremist propaganda. … A propaganda war must be waged on radical Islam, and American Muslims have to be on the front lines for it to be credible.

It isn’t enough to condemn radicalism—we must actively engage in counter-extremism messaging. We must build an intellectual and theological case against radicalism. Our religious leaders must educate and warn our youth about the dangers of searching for spiritual guidance on the Internet. And we have to be vigilant. When someone stops coming to mosque and disappears from a community, abruptly after marrying a Pakistani woman in Saudi Arabia whom he met online, it shouldn’t take two years and 35 Americans getting shot (including one from that very congregation) before we notice. …

In order to lead this fight with unified support, certain things will have to change. We can’t call out prejudice against our faith without also calling out the gender inequality and homophobia that we find in some of our communities. We can’t be champions of our own religious freedom without also championing the rights of all traditions across the globe that wish to peacefully practice, including other Muslim sects we may disagree with doctrinally. We have to change the way we think about Islamic law and vilify the medieval judicial practices that persist in the Middle East. And we must have uncomfortable but necessary conversations about where much of the funding for this cancerous supremacist ideology is coming from — Saudi Arabia.

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  LIFE, Time for American Muslims to step up, WorldTribune.com