Why ‘Moderate Islam’ Is Doomed

Posted on | August 5, 2012 | 19 Comments

Moderation is not a fighting creed. Voices of compromise and tolerance can never prevail in a culture that permits militant radicals to resort to intimidation and violence to achieve their ends. David Herzenhorn of the New York Times reports a brutal lesson from Russia:

MOSCOW — A self-described guerrilla fighter urging strict adherence to Islamic law has claimed responsibility for the killing last month of one Muslim leader and the attempted murder of another, in Tatarstan, a region in central Russia that prides itself on a tradition of religious tolerance.
“On July 19, 2012, on my orders an operation was conducted against the enemies of Allah,” the guerrilla fighter, who identified himself as Muhammad, emir of the mujahedeen of Tatarstan, said in a video posted on an Islamist Internet site that focuses on the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region, including Chechnya.
In the video, he is shown sitting in the woods, with an automatic rifle propped against one knee. He specifically named the victims of the attack last month: Valiulla Yakupov, the cleric in charge of Islamic education in Tatarstan, who was shot and killed outside his home in Kazan, the regional capital; and Ildus Faizov, the chief mufti in the region, who survived a car-bomb attack less than an hour later.
“All praise Allah,” the jihadist, Muhammad, said in the video. “We believe the operation was a success.” He also warned of further violence against Muslim leaders who do not adhere to Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran.
“If any of the imams do not want or cannot carry out the points established by Shariah, they should leave their posts,” he said. “That way, you will be protected from the mujahedeen.”

(Via Memeorandum.) It is useless, as a counter-argument, to point out that the vast majority of Muslims are not violent terrorists, when any who do not share the ideology of the radicals are denounced as “the enemies of Allah” and regarded as acceptable targets for assassination.

In all likelihood, the clerics targeted by “the emir of the mujahedeen” shared their killer’s ultimate goal — the Islamicization of Russia — but were killed because they did not endorse his proposed means of achieving that goal, i.e., an immediate violent uprising. And the profoundly troubling aspect of this, as any objective student of Islamic history must agree, is that the assassin’s co-religionists can scarcely claim that his acts are incompatible with their faith. Islam’s founder was a warrior, who spread his beliefs by the sword, and the Prophet’s successors took up that sword to expand their religious dominion by violent conquest. No matter how sincerely “fundamentalist” a Muslim leader may be, he is vulnerable to the accusation of apostasy if he rejects violent jihad as a means of achieving worldwide Islamic supremacy.

It has become unfortunately fashionable in the West, even among some soi-dissant conservatives, to ignore this unfortunate reality and to denounce as advocates of “Islamophobia” anyone who dares call attention to the dangerous truth about radical Islam.

Witness how the Left greeted Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in Stockholm and witness, alas, how little notice conservatives give to the battle that Geller and Spencer have so courageously fought.

Hundreds turn out to hear American conservatives speak in Sweden, they are greeted with vitriolic hate by Swedish leftists and — despite the genuinely newsworthy nature of this occasion — where is the Army of Breitbarts to cheer on the conservative heroes?

Robert Spencer mocks the idea that violent Islamic jihadists misunderstand their own religion. His good humor disproves the assertions of his critics that Spencer is a grim hateful fanatic, although Spencer is nevertheless serious about the grim hateful fanaticism of his antagonists, both among the radical jihadists and the radical leftists who side with “the emir of the mujahedeen” against the West.

The Left would have you believe that the danger free people face is not from radical Islam, but from “extremists” like Geller and Spencer. In fact, the danger is from those foolish enough to think that the war against “the enemies of Allah,” which brings death to Muslims in faraway Tatarstan, has ceased to be a danger to America, merely because the jihadis have not recently committed any headline-grabbing terrorist atrocities here. Leftists dishonestly inflame suspicion of the Tea Party, attempting to blame them for the Aurora massacre. (Tucson killer Jared Loughner will plead guilty for his crimes, although the liberal media already convicted Sarah Palin.) Meanwhile, the menace of Islamic extremism remains, waging a worldwide war that we seldom seem to notice anymore.

We are seeing a re-enactment of a familiar theme: The confusion caused by those who insist that we should not fear our enemy, but rather fear those who warn against the enemy. In England during the ’30s, the advocates of appeasement insisted that Churchill was a greater danger than Hitler. More recently, during the Cold War, there were those who claimed that anti-Communist “extremists” like Ronald Reagan were a greater danger than the Communists themselves. And now we find that many fools have been persuaded by those who say that “Islamophobia” is a greater danger than Islam.

Will we be deceived? I am not, although I seldom write on this topic, on which others have far more expertise. My accustomed silence, however, should not be confused with neutrality or indifference. In the aftermath of 9/11, many Americans wrung their hands in perplexity, thinking that somehow our nation had brought this evil upon ourselves.

The liberals asked, “Why do they hate us?” And the eloquent answer came from a Lebanese woman, Brigitte Gabriel: Because They Hate.

There is no safety in cowardly silence. No one deserves to be the victim of terrorism, and the killers alone are responsible for their crimes. Yet we have a duty to defend the innocent against evil and, if we fail in that duty, our failure carried its own burden of guilt.

Those who have the courage to speak out against the danger — including not only Geller and Spencer, but also such witnesses as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali — deserve our support. We cannot rely on “moderate Muslims” to restrain the danger, because if proponents of radical Islam cannot terrorize the moderate “enemies of Allah” into silence, they will kill them. How many more “moderates” will have to die before we admit the radical truth?

Category: Atlas Shrugs, Culture, Islam, Russia, Sweden, Terrorism

Comments

19 Responses to “Why ‘Moderate Islam’ Is Doomed”

DaveO
August 5th, 2012 @ 12:26 pm

You or your readers may know the answer to this:

A common charge made by [immoderate] American Muslims is the implacable hate they face as a result of 9/11.

So: true or false: Immediately following 9/11, there were a number (upwards of dozens) of Moderate American Muslims who were killed, had family members killed, or face physical, religious, and economic persecution from other, immoderate American Muslims.

Since then, using honor killings, and the aforesaid persecution by their co-religionists, Moderate American Muslims are as elusive as Sasquatch.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 5th, 2012 @ 12:32 pm

Christianity went through a few hundred years of hard core infighting and reformation. I think Islam will do essentiality the same. Not sure the outcome will be good, however.
Stogie Chomper
August 5th, 2012 @ 1:17 pm

Bravo! R.S. McCain finally joins the fight. Welcome, Stacy. This article is excellent and I will link and excerpt it. Yes, Islam is radical in itself, so the term “radical Islam” is somewhat redundant. I have studied the religion (read 18 books including the Koran, including 4 by Spencer) and it is clear that a key pillar of Islam is violent aggression against people of other faiths or no faith. They particularly hate Jews, and anti-Semitism is built in to their religion. You cannot refrain from hating Jews and be a true Muslim.

Islam is violence and hatred. Its chief ally is the Left, who always side with evil in all its forms. The only workable strategy in dealing with Islam is to isolate it so it cannot harm us. This means we must achieve energy independence and stop all Islamic immigration into the West.

Keep writing, Stacy.
Adobe_Walls
August 5th, 2012 @ 1:27 pm

It will not. Christianity at it’s fundamentals is based on personal salvation through a relationship with God. Islam at it’s fundamental is personal submission and obedience to Allah, in short slavery. One can only repudiate Islam or attempt to enslave all to it.
Zilla of the Resistance
August 5th, 2012 @ 2:17 pm

Stacy has long been on the right side in the fight, even if he doesn’t blog it often, you can find a lot of support for Pamela and other anti-jihad bloggers and also posts against jihad and islamization in his archives.
Kristi
August 5th, 2012 @ 2:27 pm

You say the moderate Muslim is doomed — I say he never existed in the first place.

I’ve known and lived around a goodly number of Muslims, including Westernized Muslims who have adopted at least a convincing semblance of our cultural mores. Even the average “moderate” Muslim is bigoted by normal Western standards.
Adjoran
August 5th, 2012 @ 2:51 pm

But there IS NO battle going on for the soul of islam. The “moderates” just run and hide.

This is no “religion” as the term is commonly understood. No religion preaches violent conquest, murder, and subjugation. All this is specified in their main source and verified by all scholars.

No, islam is no religion, it is a violent barbaric death cult.
SignPainterGuy
August 5th, 2012 @ 3:08 pm

False !! As pointed out by imams, there is no moderate islam; islam is islam !
SignPainterGuy
August 5th, 2012 @ 3:11 pm

This points out that there is no peace in islam, the “False” Religion of Peace. Even if islamics achieved their goal of eradicating all vestiges of every other religion, there still would be no peace, for then there would be the cleansing of all forms of islam that weren`t islamic enough !

Islam, the Religion of Pieces !
Shawny Lee
August 5th, 2012 @ 4:33 pm

Islam is the poster child for intolerance even within their own culture. The Sunni and Shia Muslim factions have been at war with each other for centuries. At best their radical, violent, totalitarian ideology demands conquest, destruction, subversion of any other culture. At worst, should we continue to allow it, they will populate western cultures with their generations of hatred toward anyone who disagrees with them, including their own, to carry on their historic, barbaric fight. If they conquered the entire world today, they would still destroy it and each other. That is why they must be purged from civil societies and sent back to wage their own private war against each other.
Wombat_socho
August 5th, 2012 @ 4:35 pm

I am confused as to how this is all tied up with the Flemish Menace.
Mike Tuggle
August 5th, 2012 @ 4:48 pm

I’m with you, Stogie!

I will never understand those who claim we must spend X billions on establishing a doomed democracy is lower Crapistan while at the same time ENCOURAGING mass immigration from Muslim countries.

Worse, the “democracy crusades” end up with even more Muslim immigration in the form of special visas to US collaborators. “They’ll be killed if they stay at home!” To which I’d respond, “Then you’re admitting your attempt to export democracy was a failure!”
Bob Belvedere
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:02 pm

Unlike The Bible [in both it’s Jewish and Christian forms], The Koran cannot be reinterpreted. The hwole of it is the word of Allah and therefore is perfect and contains no flaws.

Most Christians and Jews understand that the Bible was composed by men and, therefore, is subject to being flawed. It can be reinterpreted and discussed and debated. God inspired it’s writing, but it is understood that it is the work of non-perfect Mankind.

Islam allows for none of this.
Bob Belvedere
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:05 pm

Well put, Stogie, except for the reasons Zilla writes of.

It was because of Stacy’s steller defence of Mrs. Geller and Mr. Spencer that I began following and reading them.
K-Bob
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:08 pm

You missed the memo on the secret branch of the Masons started in Belgium? They call their chapters by Arabic names and refer to something called a Shrine Circus, which I believe is like Stonehenge or something.
K-Bob
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:16 pm

Stacy, you amaze me with your ability to crank out articles like this in the midst of all the other stuff you are working on.

Kudos for mentioning all of the leading jihad-watch type writers and speakers, like Spencer, Geller, & Darwish, who are mostly avoided in mainstream “Conservative” publications and programs. (Not totally ignored, thankfully, but I can tell that a lot of major right-side bloggers like to keep a polite “distance” from those folks.)

David Horowitz is kind of treated similarly.
K-Bob
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:23 pm

You hit on a point I keep making. Our First Amendment should require certain standards for what is and isn’t a “religion.”

They don’t need to be real detailed, either. For a start, any creed or teaching, expressing that it is permissible or required to conquer or harm other humans should be disqualified from FA protection due to conflict with the Unalienable Rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
The Intolerance of Islam | Roderic Deane
August 5th, 2012 @ 5:51 pm

[…] Stacy McCain’s excellent post titled Why ‘Moderate Islam’ Is Doomed, he cites a recent, brutal event in Russia: MOSCOW — A self-described guerrilla fighter urging […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 6th, 2012 @ 1:18 am

You are probably right. Islam did have its brief period of tolerance but that ended pretty quickly. When the religion started it was somewhat liberal compared to the norms of 7th Century Arabia (for example, it was progressive to not kill female children). But it is locked into that century and without change things die. But the Wahabbis are well funded and absolutely intend to implement not only the Koran, but the Haddiths, to the letter. The Koran is actually a fairly tolerant tale…like an ad man’s pitch, until you read the owner’s manual, which is the Haddiths. It is after the deal is closed you find out how fucked you are.

Christianity (despite leftist claims) was actually far more pro women. Christianity’s appeal was sanctifying marriage and giving women stability in that honorable institution. But the secularist are doing a good job ruining that here in the West.