Noor denounces actions of Islamic extremists
BOGOTA -- Queen Noor of Jordan is urging Muslim moderates to speak out against the ''ranting" of extremists who use Islam to justify beheadings and suicide bombings against the United States and Westerners.
The American-born widow of King Hussein, who perhaps more than any other prominent figure represents a fusion of the United States and the Arab world, said in an interview that Washington should tone down its militaristic approach to the Middle East.
Noor denounced the twisting of Islam preached by extremists, who are waging what they say is a holy war against the West.
''What I believe are the vast majority of moderate Muslim clerics . . . do not at all subscribe to the distorted ranting of these militant extremist groups and abhor the form that their zealotry has taken in terms of beheadings and suicide bombings and the killings of innocents, because these are forbidden in Islam," the queen said Sunday in her hotel suite in Bogota, where she is campaigning against land mines.
Formerly known as Lisa Najeeb Halaby, the daughter of a former Pan American airlines chief executive converted to Islam after she met King Hussein, whom she married in 1978.
Noor, 54, said she is trying to encourage various communities ''to try to draw together and empower one another" to speak out against Muslim extremist violence.
''Extremist political movements [are] using the guise of religion to advance their political aims rather than aims consistent with the teachings of Islam," she said.
''It has been very hard, I think, for many in the Muslim world and the Muslim community and others to feel that they can speak up and speak out against these distortions. They felt very vulnerable and afraid that they might pay a heavy price for that."
Noor also said the United States and its allies should focus Middle East policy more on education and cross-cultural programs, and on aiding moderate emerging leaders.
''There are countries like the United States and others who can be focusing a lot more soft power resources on this kind of approach, that I think would have far greater results than the military face that the United States has really [imposed] in the region now for too long," she said.
Five years after the death of her husband, Noor is active in humanitarian causes. This week, she is trying to rid Colombia of land mines. Colombia has the fourth-largest number of land-mine victims in the world, after Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
