Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

UNTANGLING THE FICTION THAT "MODERATE ISLAMISTS" EXIST

Few write more insightfully and authoritatively on Islam and Islamists than Andrew C. McCarthy, the man who led the 1995 terrorist prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others.  The  defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against  New York City landmarks.  [Wikipedia links]

Observers will note that the Obama administration has decided to create a fiction that there are "moderate Islamists," a falsehood examined and dissected by McCarthy in two recent articles, one published last week in "It's Not a Misnomer: The Islamic State has everything to do with Islam" and the second in a follow-up article published today, "In Search of the 'Moderate Islamist.'"

In addition to being in control of historical and contemporary facts (including Muslim theology) and the tricky use of language employed by Islamist apologists, McCarthy has the virtue of writing excellent, readable prose.  He is the author of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.  

RAYMOND IBRAHIM - WHY "MODERATE ISLAM" IS AN OXYMORON

 

 Some excerpts from Ibrahim's article:  

 . . . just the other day, a Kenyan mosque leader said that the Westgate massacre, where Islamic gunmen slaughtered some 67 people, “was justified. As per the Koran, as per the religion of Islam, Westgate was 100 percent justified.” Then he said: “Radical Islam is a creation of people who do not believe in Islam. We don’t have radical Islam, we don’t have moderates, we don’t have extremists. Islam is one religion following the Koran and the Sunna” [emphasis added].

Note his point that “Radical Islam is a creation of people who do not believe in Islam,” a clear reference to the West which coined the phrase “radical Islam.” Ironically, the secular West, which relegates religious truths to the realm of “personal experience,” feels qualified to decide what is and is not “radical” about Islam.

Consider one example: Allah commands Muslims to “Fight those among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [i.e., Islam], until they pay the jizya [tribute] with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” [Koran 9:29].

How can one interpret this verse to mean anything other than what it plainly says? Wherein lies the ambiguity, the room for interpretation? Of course there are other teachings and allusions in the Koran that by necessity lend themselves over to the fine arts of interpretation, or ijtihad. But surely the commands of Koran 9:29 are completely straightforward?

In fact, Muhammad’s 7^th century followers literally acted on this and similar verses (e.g., 9:5), launching the first Muslim conquests, which saw the subjugation of millions of Christians, Jews, and others, and the creation of the “Muslim world.” Such jihadi expansion continued until Islam was beaten on the battlefield by a resurgent West some two or three centuries ago.

MUSLIM DOUBLE-TALK: "WE DON'T SUPPORT TERRORISM" - "UMMM, NO, WE WON'T CONDEMN HAMAS"

Andrew C. McCarthy writes:  (my emphases)

Last night, I was on David Asman’s Fox Business Channel show, Scoreboard, debating Imam Dawoud Kringle of the New York State prison system, a GZ mosque supporter. Imam Kringle, who seems like a nice enough fellow, reeled off the usual talking points about how Islam forbids terrorism and, therefore, if someone commits an act of terrorism that act is, by definition, un-Islamic.

Then came the moment of truth: the very simple question, “Is Hamas a terrorist organization?” Have a look at the YouTube clip below. Like his friend Imam Feisal Rauf, Imam Kringle won’t answer the question. I pressed him, pointing out that it is a very simple question. And it is: Quite apart from the fact that Hamas is formally designated as a terrorist organization under U.S. law, Hamas’s own charter makes abundantly clear — indeed, wears like a badge of honor — that Hamas exists solely for the purpose of driving Israel out of Palestine by violent jihad. Yet the imam cannot bring himself to say Hamas is a terrorist organization.

This is a game that sharia-promoting Islamists like Feisal Rauf have raised to an art form. As I explain in the debate, it is why they can look you in they eye, claim in all apparent earnestness that they condemn “terrorism,” and yet excuse Hamas, call for the “one-state solution” for Israel, and support the Iranian theocracy — the leading terrorist state in the world. They do not consider the killing of non-Muslims whom they portray as opposing Islam to be terrorism — they call that “resistance.” They know if they merely say they deplore “terrorism,” the media and the Left will swoon and call them “moderates.” But what you think you’re hearing, and what they’re actually saying, are two very different things.

CAN ISLAM MORPH INTO MODERATE ISLAM?

Not without a major reform movement.   We in the free West need to wake up to that reality sooner  rather than later, and quit kidding ourselves.  That said, what kind of game plan should the Free West employ?  Andy McCarthy offers comments in his post, "Islamophobia" Or Empowering Pro-Western Muslims?:

My column today addresses what I think is the real battle for religious liberty in the Ground Zero mosque controversy. The question is whether, wittingly or unwittingly, we are going to keep supporting authoritarian Islam – the mainstream, sharia-promoting Islam of the Middle East — or expose and marginalize Islamist ideology, in the hope that a real reformist, pro-Western Islam can emerge.

Having worked for a very long time with moderate Muslims, I can tell you it’s disheartening to be called an Islamophobe. Not by the CAIR types — who cares what they say? No, it’s when the charge (or at least the whiff of it) comes from thoughtful people, people like Ron Radosh, whom I admire. When that sort of thing happens, it tells me two things: first, the smear tactics of the CAIR types work; second, maybe I haven’t been clear enough — although God knows I have tried to be — about my position.

I have long argued that: (1) Islam is not a moderate doctrine; (2) Islamists who practice terror and are otherwise aggressive toward non-Muslims (and toward Muslims who disagree with them) are not twisting or perverting Islam; (3) this does not mean that the Islamist interpretation of Islam is the only possible viable interpretation; but (4) a concrete theology of “moderate Islam” does not exist (even though there are plenty of moderate Muslims) and therefore it will have to be created; and (5) because it will have to be non-literal and reformist, it will have a tough time competing with Islamist ideology which, however noxious it may be, has the advantage of being firmly rooted in Islamic scripture. Nevertheless, (6) Islamist ideology is anti-constitutional and anti-freedom in many of its core particulars, so that (7) if, instead of letting them pretend to be “moderates,” we force Islamists to defend their beliefs, we will marginalize them — at least in our society, which (8) will empower true moderate Muslim reformers and — maybe — give them the space they need to solidify a coherent, moderate Islam that embraces the West, and in particular the separation of secular public life from privately held religious beliefs.

There is more to say about all this, not least to observe that we may be arriving at a juncture at which most people of good will agree that Islam as-is is problematic, that promoting real moderate Islam (meaning reformist Islam) is vital, and that our real difference of opinion is how to do it: Do we expose and confront the Islamists, or do we embrace them — as long as they seem not to be terrorists themselves — and hope that we can co-opt them before they co-opt us?

On that point, and many others, I commend readers to Roger Kimball’s stellar response to Ron Radosh’s thoughtful essay. As usual, Roger says a lot of what I want to say — except better than I could say it.

Me: The Roger Kimball post mentioned above is MUST READING

"ISLAM" VS. "ISLAMISM" - IS THERE REALLY A DIFFERENCE? ANDY McCARTHY RESPONDS

Andy McCarthy concludes a substantial post on the ideological position of lawyers in the Department of Justice and related matters and says, [my emphases]

Jonah [Goldberg] says he thinks Charles Krauthammer's distinction between Islam and Islamism is not only a practical necessity but "valid on the merits." Respectfully, I don't think either Dr. K or Jonah has made a case for how Islam and Islamism differ on the merits. I think they are making a deductive case that (a) because Islamists include terrorists and (b) because most Muslims are not terrorists, (c) Islam must therefore be different from Islamism. But that doesn't tell us how the tenets of Islamism supposedly differ from those of Islam. And although one need not be a Muslim to study and understand Islam, it's worth pointing out that while Charles and Jonah are not Muslims, many of the world's leading Islamists are Muslims graduated with doctorates in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni learning. I think non-Muslims who propose that the true Islam is different on the merits from the belief system espoused by scholars who have been steeped in Islam for their entire adult lives have a very steep mountain to climb. That we want Islam and Islamism to be different — and I do — does not make it so.

Earlier in his post, McCarthy makes another important point:

UNLIKE MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY, A REFORMATION IS NOT WHAT ISLAM NEEDS

One of the great needs today is to know a lot more history and a lot more about religion than we do.  This article by Mark Durie makes essential clarifications.  [my emphases]

On Dec. 1, 2009, Wafa Sultan and Daniel Pipes debated whether and to what extent a "moderate" Islam is possible. Although both are opponents of Islamic radicalism, on this question they did not agree.

Wafa Sultan argued that Islam is Islam, pure and simple, and there can never be such a thing as "moderate Islam." Daniel Pipes argued that the answer to radical Islam must be moderate Islam: Islam can be moderated, and the effort to support Muslim moderates is both necessary and worthwhile.

The ex-Muslim Sultan is undoubtedly a powerful voice in her native Arabic, and even in English she is impassioned and 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks "Where are the Muslim Moderates?"

Amazingly, today the New York Times published Ayaan Hirsi Ali's op-ed, "Islam's Silent Moderates."  Good for them!  Also amazing is the courage of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but we've become used to it.  She begins her op-ed with a quote from the Koran

The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (Koran 24:2)

And continues:

IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror. . .  [She relates the incidents]

But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now. . .

But take a look at the verse above: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme. . .

If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, [earlier described] then what exactly makes them so moderate?

Moderate Muslims Begin to Pipe Up

Daniel Pipes surveys developments in Turkey and Pakistan and concludes:

Is it not telling that great numbers of moderate Muslims see danger where so many non-Muslims are blind? Do developments in Pakistan and Turkey not confirm my oft-repeated point that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution? And do they not suggest that ignorant non-Muslim busybodies should get out of the way of those moderate Muslims determined to relegate Islamism to its rightful place in the dustbin of history?

Muslims Against Jihad: Muslim Moderates Meet in Florida

Professor Walid Phares reports on a meeting of Muslim moderates taking place right now:

Where are the Muslim moderates?

That is a question that many in the West have been asking in recent years. Now it’s possible to provide an answer: They’re in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Between March 4 and March 7, the city is hosting the first ever Secular Islam Summit. Organized by the Center for Inquiry Transnational, an organization that promotes “science, reason, free inquiry,” as well as countless activists, the conference features more than two dozen speakers and about two hundred participants with varying religious and political backgrounds and nationalities. It is among the first conferences to bring together Muslim intellectuals for the purpose of discussing the threat of Islamic jihadism and finding secular and liberal expressions of Islam.  (more)

 

Phyllis Chesler, who chaired the opening meeting of the Summit, published an article today telling her experience of being married to a Muslim man she had met at an American college.  She thought him charming and Westernised but all that changed when she went to Afghanistan to be his wife.  Her experience of living in Aghanistan is definitely worth reading.

In the same article she reported the following on the Florida Summit, together with her own conclusions: