The Missing Moderate Muslims

[Booklover]

“I am already against the next war,” read the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. I long to tell the driver: the next war is already here; Islamists are waging it in every corner of the globe and the “moderate Muslims” are either actively supporting them, placing the blame on the West, or simply looking the other way. This war aims to wipe out everything that free people cherish, including the right of expressing their sentiments. Banishing war has been the perennial dream of mankind’s best, while its worst have been frustrating its realization. To renouncewar unilaterally and unconditionally is surrender and death.

Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential of inflicting more suffering and destroying more lives than any before it. Ruthless Islamic forces are advancing rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom are acquiescing and retreating. Before long, Islamism is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal of cleansing the earth of all non-Muslims. Any and all means and weapons are to be enlisted in the service of this final holy war that aims to establish the Islamic Ummeh.

But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racist, bigot, hatemonger and much more.

But where are all the peace-loving moderate Muslims that supposedly are in great majority? The Muslims who are neither jihadists themselves, nor do they support them? I and others, time and again, have been calling upon them to stand up and show the world that they oppose the fanatical Islamists. It is small comfort even if the vast majority of Muslims are not fanatic radicals, when they do nothing to demonstrate their position. It is instructive to recall that it is invariably a minority, and more often than not a very small minority, that launches a campaign of death and destruction.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of the non-Muslims to believe that one can be a Muslim moderate, given that Islam is radical at its very core. To be a moderate Muslim demands that the person explicitly renounce much of the violent, exclusionary, and radical teachings of the Quran. By so doing, the individual issues his own death warrant in Islamic countries, is condemned as apostate if he lives in a non-Islamic land and may even earn a fatwa on his head.

cont.

 

[Booklover]

cont.
It is deadly, in any confrontation, to assess the adversary through one’s own mental template, because the two templates can be vastly different from each other. People in the West are accustomed in relativistic rather than absolutistic thinking. To Westerners, just about all matters range from black to white with an array of gray shades between the two poles. To Muslims, by contrast, nearly everything is in black and white and with virtually no shades of gray. The former type of thinking is typical of more mature minds, while the latter is that of young children and the less-enlightened.

This absolutist thinking is enshrined in the Quran itself. When the starting point for a Muslim is the explicit fanatical words of Allah in the Quran, then the faithful are left with no choice other than literally obeying its dictates or even taking it to the next level of fanaticism. Good Muslims, for instance, do not shake hands with women, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it. Although the Quran stipulates that men are rulers over women, good Muslim men take it upon themselves to rule women not much better than they treat their domesticated animals.
All extreme systems operate outside of the constraints of checks-and-balances and according to the principle of negative feedback loop. That is, once it starts, the extreme becomes more and more extreme until self-destructs and takes the larger system down with it. Cancer is a case in point. It begins with only a few cells. Left unchecked, the few cells continue expanding and stop only with the death of the host.

Fanatical Islam may indeed be a minority. Yet it is a deadly cancer that has metastasized throughout the body of the world. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off.

Dozens of Islamist shooting wars of lesser and greater bloodletting are presently raging in the world, aided and abetted by the “moderate Muslim” majority. The so called moderate Muslims, even if they exist, are complicit in the crimes of the radicals either by providing them with funds, logistics, and new recruits or by simply failing to actively confront and unequivocally renounce them.

As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.

In Germany of the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hot-headed fools. Before long, the hot-headed few cowed in the dismissive masses and as a result millions lost their lives.

The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt with its large block of representatives in the parliament, but also wages its deadly campaign through its hundreds of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.

The Wahabis finance thousands of madressehs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical footsoldiers for the Petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.

The end-of-the-world believers of the bomb-aspiring Iran’s Khomeinism are busy establishing the Shia hegemony in an arc extending from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea.

cont.

 

[Booklover]

cont.
The Al Queda and dozens of its like-minded jihadists relentlessly carry their barbaric campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union republics, the Russian federation, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe, as well as other lands.

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

Is “moderate Muslims” an illusion? The only viable alternative for peaceful people of Islamic background, therefore, is to leave the bondage of violent Islam altogether and join ranks with humanity’s free.

The selected puppet president Ahamadinejad boasts that Iran’s mullahs’ nuclear train has no reverse gear and lacks brakes. He should harbor no illusions. The non-Islamist masses of Iranians will not docilely submit to the mullahs’ maniacal plans. It is the unmatched force of freedom that has no reverse gear and it is the force fully capable and determined to bring the mullahs’ train to a screeching halt before it is armed with the Armageddon nuclear weapons they so doggedly

news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1221

 

[Contarini]

Your posts are incoherent. You say that “fanatical” as opposed to “moderate” Muslims are a “malignant minority,” but then you suggest that it’s wishful thinking to believe that Muslims can be moderate. Make up your mind as to what you are claiming before you expect people to take you seriously.

And I do not understand these calls for “moderate” Muslims to “stand up.” Stand up and do what exactly? There have been plenty of statements condemning the 9/11 attacks. I and others have pointed to these statements over and over.

Finally, the moderate/radical dichotomy is unrealistic. Muslims cover a huge spectrum. Bin Laden is at one end, and liberal Muslims who reject any militaristic interpretation of jihad altogether are at the other. Most Muslims are somewhere in between. By jumping to the conclusion that bin Laden represents “real” Islam in some sense (as if non-Muslims could even make such a determination, any more than non-Christians could decide what “real” Christianity was), you do your best to strengthen the hand of the radicals.

Edwin

 

[jack_hawkins]

I can only speak of the UK and esp Birmingham, but the sad truth is that radicalism is more widespread than we have been led to believe. The supposedly moderate chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque denies that al-Qaeda exists and has called Britain a police state and that terror suspects have been targetted just because they are Muslims. The Muslim Council of Britain turned out to be a lot less moderate than they represented themselves, so the govt had to ditch them! The guy who spent 3 years in Guantanamo Bay who was supposedly innocent of all wrongdoing attended an al-Qaeda training camp and part-owns a bookshop full of Islamist propaganda. Sadly in the UK many Islamic centres, bookshops etc are funded by Saudi money so get inoculated with Wahhabism.
Different parts of the world have Muslims from different cultures who are not so radical, but in the UK we have a real problem with home-grown terrorists now - despite being historically one of the most tolerant countries for Muslims to live in.

 

[Booklover]

Your posts are incoherent. You say that “fanatical” as opposed to “moderate” Muslims are a “malignant minority,” but then you suggest that it’s wishful thinking to believe that Muslims can be moderate. Make up your mind as to what you are claiming before you expect people to take you seriously.

Did you even bother to read the whole article? If you had, you would have seen that I posted it from another source! The article was written by ex-muslim Amil Imani. You can take up your complaints with him! Just click on the link, email him and you’ll get a reply. The article is very well written and makes sense. Sorry that it does not meet with your standards!

You may be very knowledgeable, but I think ex-Muslims probably know the real Islam better than you do.

Can you really believe that there is such a thing as 'moderate Muslims" whent the Quran explicitly teaches hatred, intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims? They would have to get rid of parts of the Quran, and since Muslims believe it to be the words of God that can’t happen!

nd I do not understand these calls for “moderate” Muslims to “stand up.” Stand up and do what exactly? There have been plenty of statements condemning the 9/11 attacks. I and others have pointed to these statements over and over.

Oh, yes, you and people like Pro!

Finally, the moderate/radical dichotomy is unrealistic. Muslims cover a huge spectrum. Bin Laden is at one end, and liberal Muslims who reject any militaristic interpretation of jihad altogether are at the other. Most Muslims are somewhere in between. By jumping to the conclusion that bin Laden represents “real” Islam in some sense (as if non-Muslims could even make such a determination, any more than non-Christians could decide what “real” Christianity was), you do your best to strengthen the hand of the radicals.

Edwin

I do my best to strengthen the radicals?? Excuse me!

"But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racist, bigot, hatemonger and much more."

Now who’s playing the part of the “useful idiot”?

Vickie

 

[Contarini]

Did you even bother to read the whole article?

You didn’t even say that the link was to the article you were citing. Why should I read it? I read what was here. If what was here did not make the authorship clear, that is your fault and not mine.

If you had, you would have seen that I posted it from another source! The article was written by ex-muslim Amil Imani. You can take up your complaints with him!

Why? Can’t you defend your own opinions?

You may be very knowledgeable, but I think ex-Muslims probably know the real Islam better than you do.

Do you trust ex-Catholics to characterize Catholicism fairly?

Can you really believe that there is such a thing as 'moderate Muslims" whent the Quran explicitly teaches hatred, intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims? They would have to get rid of parts of the Quran, and since Muslims believe it to be the words of God that can’t happen!

No, they just have to interpret the Qur’an differently than you do! Why do you think that is so unbelievable? Plenty of Muslims obviously do it. They may be wrong in terms of the original, historical meaning of the Qur’an. But no religion is based on the original historical meaning of its sacred texts. Muslims interpret the Qur’an as the Word of God, as you point out. That means that they are not reading it through the lens of historical scholarship.

We could argue over whether your reading of the Qur’an is really the most accurate one historically. More to the point, you and I have no reason to suppose that the Qur’an has a single view on these issues. We have no reason to argue over whether the earlier surahs are abrogated by the later ones. That’s not a meaningful issue for us, except insofar as it has historical interest. What Muslims believe about that subject, of course, has very practical relevance. But you and I don’t get to decide what the *Islamic *reading of the Qur’an is!

I do my best to strengthen the radicals?? Excuse me!

"But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racist, bigot, hatemonger and much more."

Now who’s playing the part of the “useful idiot”?

Vickie

You are. So are the people you attack, but differently. They say that there’s nothing to worry about, and you say that Islam as a whole is the enemy. The complacent politically correct folks strengthen the Islamist goal of taking over the non-Islamic world, and you strengthen their (even more important) goal of taking over Islam! You do this by influencing Westerners to treat all Muslims as the enemy, and thus behave in exactly the way that the radicals claim Westerners behave. If the radicals ever do unite much of the Islamic world under a new caliphate with imperialistic aspirations, people like you will deserve much of the credit.

Edwin

 

[manualman]

Good points Edwin, but the article makes a good point that must be noted.

From 1930 to 1945, there never was a point where the majority of Germans joined the Nazi party. Interesting, no? So the Nazis were a minority, but the majority of Germans were too inactive, to indecisive to stop them from plunging the entire world into war.

I believe it is the same with Islam. The majority are decent human beings. But they far too often have a misguided sentiment for their fellow nominal muslims even when those fellow muslims have embraced the sick vision of jihadism. Just like Germans who bristled at foreign denunciations of their country in the late 30’s, but weren’t really loving the nazi vision either.

We face a tough challenge. The jihadis DO pose a real danger that is not just going to go away if we ignore it. How DO we open peoples eyes to the danger of the spreading of jihadism without contributing to the conversion of decent muslims into jihadis?

To me, it is an ominous indicator that nobody ever learned how to stop the Nazis without fighting the German people as a whole…

 

[StMarkEofE]

Good points Edwin, but the article makes a good point that must be noted.

From 1930 to 1945, there never was a point where the majority of Germans joined the Nazi party. Interesting, no? So the Nazis were a minority, but the majority of Germans were too inactive, to indecisive to stop them from plunging the entire world into war.

I believe it is the same with Islam. The majority are decent human beings. But they far too often have a misguided sentiment for their fellow nominal muslims even when those fellow muslims have embraced the sick vision of jihadism. Just like Germans who bristled at foreign denunciations of their country in the late 30’s, but weren’t really loving the nazi vision either.

We face a tough challenge. The jihadis DO pose a real danger that is not just going to go away if we ignore it. How DO we open peoples eyes to the danger of the spreading of jihadism without contributing to the conversion of decent muslims into jihadis?

To me, it is an ominous indicator that nobody ever learned how to stop the Nazis without fighting the German people as a whole…

Lets face it folks, any moderate Muslim condemning the acts of mindless Islamic fanatics will only place him or herself in mortal danger. These moderat Muslims are scared as hell in some areas of the world to come out against violence by their more radical brothers. It is understandable as to why we dont see demonstrations of Muslims against the terrorists and terror inflicted upon non-Muslim countrymen. They literally hide their heads in the sand when it comes to rebelling against this type of hostility.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Greetings and peace be with you all

President Bush called for a Crusade against terror, then he invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We all know the meaning of the word crusade, and Muslims throughout the world could take this as a war against Islam.

Tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqi people have been killed unjustly in this conflict. How many of those killed had anything to do with 9 / 11?

All those people killed had family and friends, how is an Iraqi going to get justice if his son and wife have been killed? Are they just going to sit back and say it was fine for America to invade and kill my family?

I believe that the policies of America and Britain have created a new generation of terrorists. We are just living in fear of the repercussions of an unjust war.

In the spirit of praying for peace on Earth

Eric

 

[MelanieAnne]

Dear Eric,

My son’s name is Erik so the name, in whatever form, is rather special to me.

And so I say to you, Peace Be with You. I will pray for you Eric. I am so sorry that you are troubled. I will pray that you will have peace.

I totally disagree with your politics and beliefs as espoused in your posting. I will not pray for you to agree with me But I will pray that you will have Peace of Mind.

Love, Melanie

 

[Delta2]

The Quran has 2 parts :

Mecca Suras and Medina Suras

Mecca suras messages are quite peaceful and tolerant to any religion

Medina suras messages is a calling for war in order to defend and support islam, they are not tolerant and not peaceful

The west follows the Mecca suras, and the middle-east follows the medina suras.

The qu’ran is a text without context, a set of suras mixed up without a historical context

Moderated muslims focus their message in Mecca suras, but because of progressive revelation of the Qu’ran…they are confused, and their faith swings back and forward without a solid foundation

I wonder what will happen when middle-east oil wells runs dry

A cataclysm

 

[manualman]

Eric, your argument might have had merit if you had only mentioned Iraq. People of goodwill and honest researchers can make a reasoned argument that the US actions in Iraq are unjust.

Afghanistan is entirely different. The fact that you lump them together as the same betrays either ignorance or dishonesty on your part. The Taliban supported AlQaeda and Osama 100%. They were a sick, degenerate mobs of monsters whose behavior towards Afghans AND the west was a violation of ALL standards of human decency (including muslim standards).

If there has been ANY just war in this century, it is the one that took place to dislodge the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Greetings and peace be with you Melanie;

Thank you for your kind prayers, but the people who really need all our prayers are those who actually live in war torn countries. I live in a peaceful part of the UK and I can live at peace with those around me.

In the spirit of praying for peace on Earth

Eric

 

[Booklover]

You didn’t even say that the link was to the article you were citing. Why should I read it? I read what was here. If what was here did not make the authorship clear, that is your fault and not mine.

When I posted this thread I never dreamed that I would get a reaction such as yours. After your outburst claiming that what I’d posted was incoherent and couldn’t be taken seriously, I reread it to see if I had missed something or misunderstood something. It made as much sense the second time as the first.

Why? Can’t you defend your own opinions?

So I posted someone else’s words rather than my own. There’s nothing in the forum rules that states that one cannot post articles written by someone else. I didn’t take credit for it, I posted the link. I’m sorry if what I wrote was so offensive to you and disagreed with your perception of Islam and Muslims.

You want my opinion? Okay, I’ll give it. I think if there are any moderate Muslims they would be those who only pay lip service to Islam and are not well versed in the Quran. I cannot see how anyone who follows the radical teachings of the Quran could be moderate or peaceful any more than anyone who goes by what’s in Mein Kampf!

Do you trust ex-Catholics to characterize Catholicism fairly?

Why don’t you go to a site like faithfreedom.org and check out the testimonials of those who’ve left Islam before asking something like the above.

No, they just have to interpret the Qur’an differently than you do! Why do you think that is so unbelievable? Plenty of Muslims obviously do it. They may be wrong in terms of the original, historical meaning of the Qur’an. But no religion is based on the original historical meaning of its sacred texts. Muslims interpret the Qur’an as the Word of God, as you point out. That means that they are not reading it through the lens of historical scholarship.

Really? Are you implying that all those intolerant verses in the Quran are being misinterpreted by us and they actually mean something totally different? You can’t be serious.

e could argue over whether your reading of the Qur’an is really the most accurate one historically. More to the point, you and I have no reason to suppose that the Qur’an has a single view on these issues. We have no reason to argue over whether the earlier surahs are abrogated by the later ones. That’s not a meaningful issue for us, except insofar as it has historical interest. What Muslims believe about that subject, of course, has very practical relevance. But you and I don’t get to decide what the *Islamic *reading of the Qur’an is!

Now you’re claiming that only a Muslim can interpret what the Quran means. I suppose it’s okay for them to twist the meanings of verses in the Bible when it suits their agenda.

You are. So are the people you attack, but differently. They say that there’s nothing to worry about, and you say that Islam as a whole is the enemy. The complacent politically correct folks strengthen the Islamist goal of taking over the non-Islamic world, and you strengthen their (even more important) goal of taking over Islam! You do this by influencing Westerners to treat all Muslims as the enemy, and thus behave in exactly the way that the radicals claim Westerners behave. If the radicals ever do unite much of the Islamic world under a new caliphate with imperialistic aspirations, people like you will deserve much of the credit.

Edwin

You claim that what I posted was incoherent! As far as this final rant of yours goes, it does not even deserve a reply!

Vickie

 

[Contarini]

When I posted this thread I never dreamed that I would get a reaction such as yours.

You should get out more. I am hardly pro-Islamic; I’m actually quite hostile to Islam. But I believe in being rational about it.

So I posted someone else’s words rather than my own. There’s nothing in the forum rules that states that one cannot post articles written by someone else. I didn’t take credit for it, I posted the link.

My assumption in seeing a post apparently yours followed by a link would be that the link corroborated the post, not that the post was taken from the link. It would have been clearer if you had stated at the beginning that you were citing from someone else, or at least put his name at the end. However, I’m not criticizing you for this–I was simply explaining why I took the words for yours. If you post something without comment, it is natural to assume that you endorse it. You should not then shunt critics off on the original author–if you endorse it, you should be able to defend it.

I’m sorry if what I wrote was so offensive to you and disagreed with your perception of Islam and Muslims.

Please don’t insult me with this PC nonsense. I’m not interested in whether what you say is offensive or not. I’m interested in whether it is true. Obviously, when you make harsh accusations against millions of your fellow-human beings and thus contribute further to bringing about the “clash of civilizations,” you’d better be extra careful that you are right. But that is the only way in which the offensive nature of what you said is relevant. If it’s true, obviously it needs to be said. But you’d better be darn sure it’s true.

You want my opinion? Okay, I’ll give it. I think if there are any moderate Muslims they would be those who only pay lip service to Islam and are not well versed in the Quran. I cannot see how anyone who follows the radical teachings of the Quran could be moderate or peaceful any more than anyone who goes by what’s in Mein Kampf!

For this even to be a claim worth debating, you would need to have spent years studying the Qur’an in the original language. As far as I know you have not done this. So you are in no position to assume that just because Muslims interpret the Qur’an differently from you therefore they must not really have studied it.

Furthermore, such claims are suspect because you are assuming that Muslims read the Qur’an with the same assumptions you do. Obviously they don’t. Perhaps “moderate” Muslims (however we define them) come to different conclusions about the Qur’an than you do because they read it as God’s word, through the lens of Islamic tradition, their own moral sense, etc., while you are reading it through a different lens. To say that they must be differing from you because they haven’t really studied it is incredibly arrogant and presumptuous. It’s no different from the silly Protestant fundamentalists who think there is only one way to read the Bible. In fact they are in a much stronger position, because they are at least Christians themselves, while you are not a Muslim. You are more like Sam Harris, who says that the Bible supports slavery and therefore Christians who oppose slavery can’t be getting their ideas from the Bible. This *is *an offensive procedure, simply because it’s unjust and without any basis in reason.

Why don’t you go to a site like faithfreedom.org and check out the testimonials of those who’ve left Islam before asking something like the above.

Why is that relevant to my question? Are you seriously suggesting that ex-Catholics are all fools and liars while ex-Muslims are all trustworthy witnesses? If so, then you are so steeped in prejudice that further discussion is pointless. You are simply going to rule out any evidence that goes against your prejudices.

Why do ex-Catholics distort Catholicism? Not because they are all fools and liars, but because they read Catholicism through their own embittered memories. They often have very real grievances, and they make these grievances the lens through which they interpret Catholicism. So with ex-Muslims or ex-Mormons or anything. One can’t simply dismiss what they say, but generally it shouldn’t be given a lot of weight–certainly it should be carefully compared with other evidence.

 

[Contarini]

Really? Are you implying that all those intolerant verses in the Quran are being misinterpreted by us and they actually mean something totally different? You can’t be serious.

No, I’m saying that viewed historically they mean something about Muhammad’s attitude to his opponents in his own day. If they have any neutral meaning accessible to outsiders, it’s that. But this is irrelevant–Muslims do not read the Qur’an as a historical document, but as the Word of God. They are not reading it through the lens of modern historical scholarship (neither, I suspect, are you–but that’s a separate issue).

For instance, it’s perfectly reasonable for Muslims to say that the “verses of the sword” refer to wicked people of Muhammad’s day who violently resisted Muhammad’s teachings, etc. That may not be what an outside historian would conclude–but outside historians similarly conclude that people vilified in the Bible probably weren’t as bad as they are painted. The point is that Muslims may choose to apply this in all sorts of ways to contemporary circumstances.

Now you’re claiming that only a Muslim can interpret what the Quran means. I suppose it’s okay for them to twist the meanings of verses in the Bible when it suits their agenda.

This is completely illogical. I made it clear that I am making a general point about “outsiders” interpreting a sacred text. Since it is not a sacred text for us, we are never going to interpret it the way “insiders” do. It’s not about “right” or “wrong.” Historically, Muslims of all persuasions are probably wrong in how they interpret the Qur’an. But of course I think this largely because I do not believe Islam to be the true religion. Therefore, it is meaningless for me to say that one Islamic group has a more “authentic” interpretation of the Qur’an than another. I think they are all wrong, because they think it is the literal Word of God, which it isn’t. Presumably you agree with me on this point So it’s downright silly for you to say what the Qur’an as literal Word of God means. You and I don’t think it is the Word of God in the first place! We can only speak of it as a historical document.

You claim that what I posted was incoherent! As far as this final rant of yours goes, it does not even deserve a reply!

If I was not clear enough, here is the logical progression I’m asserting:

1. You and other Westerners accept the claim of the radicals to be “real” Islam.
2. You influence Western nations to act with hostility toward Islam as a whole on the basis of this belief.
3. Therefore, more and more Muslims rally behind the radicals, because they perceive the radicals to be correct about the West’s intentions toward Islam.

Where is my reasoning at fault here?

Of course, if all Muslims are already on board with the radical agenda in the first place, then this is irrelevant. But surely even you will not claim this to be true. Rather, you claim that those Muslims who are not are not really “good” Muslims. I’ve shown above that this is an incoherent claim to make–if you don’t believe the Qur’an to be the Word of God, you have nothing to say about what it means as the Word of God, only about what it means as a historical document, which is irrelevant for Muslims. This is the real issue. The practical argument I have outlined is, I think, irrefutable, but I understand and respect the fact that truth for you comes before utility (as it does for me). So my first argument is not that by calling the radicals the “real” Muslims you will strengthen their position (though I think this is indisputably true), but that you have no business doing this in the first place. It’s a nonsensical claim coming from an outsider to the tradition.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

The Quran has 2 parts :

Mecca Suras and Medina Suras

Mecca suras messages are quite peaceful and tolerant to any religion

Medina suras messages is a calling for war in order to defend and support islam, they are not tolerant and not peaceful

It’s not that simple. The Mecca suras actually are harsher about the eternal fate of those who reject Muhammad’s teaching–Surah 2 (the Cow–the longest and fullest of the surahs) explicitly says that those who live righteously will be saved even among Jews, Christians, and “Sabaeans.” But you’re right of course that the Medina suras were written in the context of violent conflict and reflect that, while the Meccan suras are written from the standpoint of a prophetic ministry.

The west follows the Mecca suras, and the middle-east follows the medina suras.

I don’t think it’s that simple.

Edwin