Which Islamists to talk to

Marc Lynch takes up US-Israeli academic Martin Kramer’s analysis of which Islamists are worth talking to and which aren’t.

“I would differ with Kramer’s assertion that dialogue advocates do not discriminate among different Islamist groups – I haven’t seen many calls for a dialogue with al-Qaeda, for example, and I at least have been all about making distinctions. It is conservatives who lump all Islamists together as ‘Islamofascists’, in my experience – and attack people like me for making distinctions between, say, Qaradawi and Bin Laden. But set that aside, because there are some really interesting moves here. First, simply admitting that there are politically meaningful distinctions among Islamist groups is an important step forward for folks on Kramer’s side of the aisle. Not all Islamists are the enemy anymore….”

Abu Aardvark blog, 24 October 2005