There is such a thing as a different kind of Islam. Dr. Qanta Ahmed, a student of pluralistic Islam, is a British physician specializing in sleep disorders. She is also an author, a newspaper columnist and an associate professor of medicine at the State University of New York. Her paper on “The psychological manipulation of Islam in the service of terror focusing on the cultural phenomenon of suicide bombing,” made her the first physician and first Muslim woman to be selected as a 2010 Templeton-Cambridge Fellow in Journalism at the University of Cambridge.

Ahmed arrived in Israel last week to attend the 13th International Counterterrorism Conference, hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where we met. For us, who are accustomed to anti-Israeli positions, her sympathetic views on Israel breed hope that there is such a thing as a different kind of Islam.

But she is in the minority, and she says that the Arab world is in turmoil while Israel thrives. Arab leaders cannot offer their people the solutions they seek, which only increases their hate of Israel. According to Ahmed, if the Arabs managed to convert their hate and incitement into a collaboration with Israel, the nations of the region would enjoy the same freedom and prosperity.

Ahmed confessed that she feels “right at home” in Israel, given the freedom and civil rights individuals enjoy — a pattern of normalcy that is unfamiliar in Arab countries. She further said that true Islam does not preach anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism or even violent jihad.

This brave Islamic voice, heard loud in the midst of the jihadist chaos that is raging around us, fascinated the conference’s visitors. “I refuse to let Islam fall captive to the Islamists,” she stated.

The distinction between Islam and its followers and its Islamist enemies — those who interpret its teachings in a radical way — is at the core of the secular philosophy voiced by this outspoken Muslim woman.

The power of slogans

According to Ahmed, many Muslims share her opinions, but Islam is threatened from within, as only a few are brave enough to demand that the Islamists explain their narrative. She further claimed that the U.S. has failed to understand the difference between true Islam and its political counterpart and that the Islamists strive to exercise Islam’s domination over the world by shrouding their totalitarian ideology with the appearance of religious faith.

The way to overcome the Islamists is to let the masses be disappointed with them after they are elected via a democratic process, she said. Reality will prove that their slogan only work from the benches of the opposition and that they have no way of solving society’s problems. She, rather naively, believes that the masses will topple the Islamists, but she paid little attention to the fact that the Islamists might burn the ladder which enabled them to climb to the seat of power — as they did in Iran and in Turkey

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself called democracy “a train you take where you have to go, and then you get off.” So far, it does not look like the masses will be able to topple his regime. The same goes for Iran.

The West’s mistake

According to Ahmed, Islamists are oppressing Christians in Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan, and they may soon target Muslims who are not Islamists. Those who claim that the events of the Middle East are independent of Islam are dishonest, she said, as it is a de facto fight to the death between moderate Islam and radical political Islam.

She further urges against showing any leniency toward the Islamist threat, saying it should be disarmed and denounced as a negative offshoot of Islam, and stressing that it does not define Islamist communities worldwide.

The West, which views Islam as a complex problem, is hostile to it and is therefore unwilling to properly explore the jihadist ideology. Moreover, the need to be politically correct in the face of claims of Islamophobia has diminished public discourse that criticizes Islamists, who, for their part, employ scare tactics to silence their opponents.

Ahmed maintains that the West, and especially the U.S., is making one mistake after another and is in fact — in an serpentine way — lending financial assistance to Islamic nations that support terror, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Menacing manipulations

Political Islam is manipulative, Ahmed explained. Those who interpret it use only specific verses from the Koran and neutralize them from any meaning that may contradict their purpose, deriving religious rulings that condone the killing of seculars, women and children. They seek absolute power over the West as well, she said, a fact that the world has yet to fully understand.

Ahmed is convinced that only the Muslims themselves could be the answer to the “Islamists” and that the moderate Muslims must find the resources to counter what she called the “multi-head Medusa.”

“Only if we tell ourselves the truth, that the Islamists are a threat within us, can we confront them. The chasm between Muslims and Islamists is a deep one,” she said.

According to Ahmed, Iran and Syria are at “Islamic risk,” as we are now approaching the critical stage in the West’s decision-making process. She claims that the ayatollahs’ regime, which has been developing — unchallenged — for the past 35 years, has become a global threat, and given that the Iranian ideology has been fully developed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s red line was drawn too late.

The Iranian example has bred Turkey, Mohammed Morsi’s Egypt, Hamas in Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, she said.

Canary in the coal mine

Ahmed believes that the Arab monarchies still enjoy a unique and traditional bond with their people, bolstered by their ancient genealogy, but warns that given the failures of the Obama administration vis-à-vis Syria and Iran, the remnants of this link may soon disintegrate as well, given the loss of American deterrence.

The West must deal with political Islam or it will soon find itself dealing with more radical Islamist nations that would strive to follow Pakistan’s lead and acquire nuclear weapons, she cautioned. Pakistan is the world’s “canary in the coal mine” and will warn of the nearing rise in the Islamic threat, she said.

The results of the Islamic-Arab awakening can be predicted, Ahmed said. Pakistan, for example, is not a democracy but a totalitarian state. According to her, Pakistan is the best example of a pseudo-Islamic state, with the attributes of a democracy which is lacking any backbone. Such a regime is bound to collapse, she said, adding that for the time being, there is no Arab Middle East nation that is striving to implement a secular democracy.

According to Ahmed, Islamists will use the wheels of democracy to urge for “mujahideen” under the pretext of the “official position of Islam.” She repeatedly scoffed at the West’s distinction between political Islam and jihad, and quoted an Islamic poem Erdogan used during his campaign: “One day, the mosques will be our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

This quote reminded me of “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more [Isaiah 2:4]” and of “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion [Isaiah 11:6].” At the End of Days, we would be best to choose the role of the wolf or the lion. Just in case.