Central Asia Is "Muslim Firewall to Expansion of Extremism", Jewish Leader Says

Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations of America, visited Kazakhstan in mid-February at the head of the large delegation for the International Conference on Peace and Harmony. In a recent TV appearance, he shared his reflections on the role and attitude of Muslims of Central Asia toward the West.

WASHINGTON, DC, March 6 - The moderate Islamic cultures of Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations represent a "Muslim firewall to the expansion of the extremism that we see in the Middle East", Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations of America, said on NBC lately.

Zuckerman, who headed the delegation of the American and Israeli Jewish leaders for the International Conference on Peace and Harmony in Kazakhstan last month (see Kazakhstan News bulletin, February 13), spoke on the NBC's McLaughlin Group Show Feb. 22.

He said the U.S. public tends to "oversimplify the problem" of trends within Islam and its relations with the West, thinking of it purely along the lines of Arab Muslim world.

"I was in Kazakhstan. And that is an indication of how we oversimplify the problem, because the Central Asian Republics, along with Indonesia and Turkey, represent moderate Muslim countries," Zuckerman noted. "There are 130 million Muslims there, and they were there at a conference to do one thing, to say we're opposed to militant extremism, we're opposed to terrorism, and we want to have a dialogue of civilizations, by which they meant a dialogue with the Christian and Jewish communities."

He acknowledged that this does not represent the Arab Muslim world, but said it represents "the Central Asian Muslim world, that's a Muslim firewall to the expansion of the extremism that we see in the Middle East." He said it was "good to have them on our side and to know that the governments there are really helping out."

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