"2/3 of the Muslim world under 30 yrs old"

[deziloooooo]

I have seen so many posters here post their disdain for Muslims in general, calling out, rightfully so in many cases, "Why no moderates, where are the moderates..are there any?"

Zakaria had a short interview with a author , Bruce Feiler, who has been involved with Muslims, especially the young ones since 9/11. He has written books on the subject, Muslims, the youth and has a new one just out and it seems he has found them, and they are in the 100's of millions, they are the youth , the young people, and they are just starting to be heard and gaining influence.

Possible this interview might answer some questions of readers here, "where are the moderate Muslims, are there any in important #'s out there ?"

It seems there are.
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ZAKARIA: This weekend in America, we celebrate our revolution, but this year, the world has watched the Arab revolutions in awe and wonder and sometimes horror. Perhaps the biggest questions surrounding the Arab Spring are what incited it, what will become of it?

My next guest, Bruce Feiler, says that one billion Muslims around the world under 30 years of age are the key drivers. In his new book he describes what he calls "Generation Freedom" as plentiful, plugged in and proactive. Feiler has been on "The New York Times" best-seller list with five books on religion and faith. He joins me now.

Bruce, good to have you.

BRUCE FEILER, AUTHOR, "GENERATION FREEDOM": Fareed, nice to have me. Nice to be here. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: You spent a lot of time during the -- the Arab Spring with the young people.

FEILER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: So is there any simple characterization one can make of them?

FEILER: I think and you just mentioned a bit in your introduction, I think we can look at them as being four things. First of all, they are plentiful, as you mentioned two-thirds of the Muslim world in general is under 30. That's a billion people around the world, 100 million people in the Middle East alone. So they are plentiful.

They're also pinched (ph), meaning they're much more educated I think than we give them credit. This term "Arab Street" has become very popular in the West, but that's inaccurate. Literacy rates are now 91 percent. We're seeing school attendance and the numbers we haven't seen since the Asian tigers of the 1980s. So there's a lot of them. They're better educated. They're coming out, there's no opportunity.

Enter the Internet. They're very plugged in. And particularly for women, the Internet has been this opportunity to enter society, enter the fray in a way they don't normally have.

But I think that most important thing, the "Generation Freedom" is -- is the last one and that is they are proactive. OK? So you've got their parents were largely passive recipients of this sort of deal that the dictators did, right?

ZAKARIA: Right.

FEILER: We'll subsidize your -- your food and your jobs and you wouldn't question our authority. Well, they don't have the jobs and they're saying, well, where's our end of the deal? And so they're pushing back.

I met this young woman I write about in my book. She's 23 years old. She tweets more than anybody I know. She wears a veil. She's written two books about Islam and she was on a reality TV show based on Donald Trump's "Apprentice."

And she said if I would put one word to our generation it would be "awakening." So they are standing up. And think about it. What is the word "Muslim" mean? It means one who submits. Now, we have a generation of Muslims who are proactive, who are pushing back. I mean, that's the core of the change.

ZAKARIA: And when you talk to them, do you have a sense as to what it is they want? Is it freedom? Is it jobs? Is it dignity?

FEILER: Certainly, in the -- in the Egyptian revolution, you would hear dignity was a huge word, social justice, freedom. But I think that what it is they want is some sort of sense that they are active participants in creating a better life for themselves. They are no longer prepared to be passive. I think that's what we saw -- we see in these revolutions is that there is action on their part.

And I think that, you know, to me, I look at this whole thing -- they -- they don't like the term Facebook revolution because they find Facebook as a western technology. They say, look, they use the fax in Tiananmen Square. No one calls that the fax revolution. All right. They used the telegraph back in Russia. No one calls that the telegraph revolution. We don't like to call it the Facebook revolution because it doesn't show that it was our creativity, initiative and efforts that really made it.

But within that, I actually think the whole thing is almost like a Facebook friend request. This is them reaching out to the West and saying we want to be friends. And as we know it, you don't have to be that close to your Facebook friends. But I think the question now is back on us, in that way that Facebook gives you the just, confirm or not now, the choice is ours and what do we want to do.

ZAKARIA: But do they want to be friends? Because, I mean, they sound quite anti-American. They feel like America supported these dictators. They're, you know -- in general, the attitude seems to be one of a great deal of defiance and hostility toward the West.

FEILER: I think that they don't want to be passive, submissive to the West. They certainly are concerned about the way we supported the dictators and even in the revolutions we've been very on the fence.

But I would draw distinction as we used to do back in the '80s between the foreign policy dimension of government-to-government, as we saw in the Soviet Union and the kind of people-to-people, governments aren't going to solve this. So we've been involved in four wars, as you know, far better than I. We've got the war in Iraq, muddled ending, war in Afghanistan, muddled ending. Iraq -- excuse me -- Libya, muddled middle. War on terror, muddled impact.

Guns are not going to solve this problem. The days of the Marshall Plan, the idea we're going to pour hundreds or millions or billions of dollars into growth, also not going to happen. It's going to take a different model here and I think it's going to be ultimately, as I say in my book, a kind of G to G movement, a generation to generation movement, realizing that there's change going on there. We're going to engage on a different level.

ZAKARIA: You think that what is going on here is the Arab world is catching up with the rest of the world? It's joining the modern world?

FEILER: I think that there is -- there's a lot of evidence that this is the beginning of that process. And I have ever since 9/11 been in the middle of this conversation about can we get along? And in every one of those conversations people say, where are the Muslim moderates? I don't hear that. Here they are. This is a group of people standing up.

It doesn't say that the fundamentalists -- I'm not saying the fundamentalists have gone away, because clearly they have not. They're in control of Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Wahhabis are still out there exporting (ph). But what we're seeing for the first time is the rise of this other story. And it's going to give people a clear choice."

[Deleted]

"2/3 of the Muslim world under 30 yrs old"

Horny lot aren't they?

[floridayankee]

"2/3 of the Muslim world under 30 yrs old"

Because they keep blowing themselves up?

[deziloooooo]

morning all..hope all had a good forth...

On the above guess no one read the article..oh well, [sigh]...

[ed1066]

I have seen so many posters here post their disdain for Muslims in general

Can you provide some examples? Because that's quite an accusation (ignored by the mods of course )...

[floridayankee]

Jul 5, 2011 14:13:38 GMT -5 @ed1066 said:

I have seen so many posters here post their disdain for Muslims in general

Can you provide some examples? Because that's quite an accusation (ignored by the mods of course )...

Look it up yourself. You'll find them just after the posts oozing disdain for Christians in general....