Moderate Muslim Quotes

Bashir paused to watch a live CNN feed... Bashir was struck silent by the images of wailing Iraqi women carrying children's bodies out of the rubble of a bombed building. As he studied the screen, Bashir's bullish shoulders slumped. "People like me are America's best friends in the region," Bashir said at last shaking his head ruefully, "I'm a moderate Msulim, an educated man. But watching this, even I could become a jihadi. How can Americans say they are making themselves safer?" Bashir asked, struggling not to direct his anger toward the large American target on the other side of the desk. "Your president Bush had done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next two hundred years.

Ayub’s pro- Western outlook, moderate views, and fair complexion, which made him look more British than the British, confirmed his selection as commander- in- chief in January 1951.

The only saving I need is from those who are trying very hard to be saved.

...Where are these so-called moderate Muslims one always hears about in the press? Do they exist or are they merely figments of our imagination? If one insults the Prophet Muhammad, our Muslim countrymen pour into the streets in a sacred rage and threaten us with beheading. But when one of them commits murder in the Prophet's name..." "The silence is deafening.

Too often the meaning of the hijab is taken as clear and unequivocal, like an on-off switch, a neat binary code. A Muslim woman is “traditional” if she wears one, “modern” if she doesn’t. “Oppressed” if she wears one, “liberated” if not. Scarf on: “devout.” Scarfless: “moderate,” or, who knows? Perhaps even “secular.

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates.

The battle is not between Islam and the West; the real battle is between the extremists and moderates on both sides.

And while it’s nice of you to want to call us ‘modern’ or ‘moderate,’ we’ll do without the redundancy. Islam is by definition moderate, so the more strictly we adhere to its fundamentals — the more moderate we’ll be. And Islam is by nature timeless and universal, so if we’re truly Islamic — we’ll always be modern. We’re not ‘Progressives’; we’re not ‘Conservatives’. We’re not ‘neo-Salafi’; we’re not ‘Islamists’. We’re not ‘Traditionalists’; we’re not ‘Wahabis’. We’re not ‘Immigrants’ and we’re not ‘Indigenous’. Thanks, but we’ll do without your prefix. We’re just Muslim.

If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we have failed to make our case to the great moderate mass of peace-loving people at the heart of the Muslim world, we need to listen to Greg Mortenson. I did, and it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Many ex-Muslims do have lifelong Muslim friends and family who are supportive, moderate, or liberal, even if they disagree. This was a common theme in the #ExMuslimBecause tweets: most participants, while certainly unreserved in their criticism of the faith, made it a point to differentiate between criticizing Islam (an idea) and demonizing Muslims (a people). Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. Ideas, books, and beliefs don’t, and aren’t.

The truth was, when it came to Islam, it had been violent since its inception. Its clearly stated goal was worldwide conquest. It was a mandate handed down in all of its religious texts. And while Harvath believed there were peaceful and moderate Muslims, he knew from studying the religion that there was no such thing as peaceful and moderate Islam.

For the Muslims, I’m too worldly. For other groups, I’m too religious. For militants, I’m too moderate. For moderates, I’m too militant. I feel like I’m on a tightrope.

Muslim Girlhood I never found myself in a pink aisle. There was no box for me with glossy cellophane like heat and a neat packet of instructions in six languages. Evenings, I watched TV like a religion I moderately believed. I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the other - no laugh track in my living room, no tidy and punctual resolution waiting. I took tests in which Jane & William had so many apples. I fasted through birthday parties and Christmas parties and ate leftover tajine at plastic lunch tables, picked at pepperoni from slices like blemishes and tried not to complain. I prayed at the wrong times in the wrong tongue. I hungered for Jell-O & Starburts & margarine; could read mono- and diglycerides by five, knew what gelatin meant, and where it came from.

There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. The radicals are estimated to be between 15-25%, according to all intelligence services around the world. That leaves 75% of them - peaceful people. But when you look at 15-25% of the world Muslim population, you're looking at 180 million to 300 million people dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization. That is as big as the United States. So why should we worry about the radical 15-25%? Because it is the radicals that kill. Because it is the radicals that behead and massacre. When you look throughout history, when you look at all the lessons of history, most Germans were peaceful. Yet the Nazis drove the agenda. And as a result, 60 million people died, almost 14 million in concentration camps. 6 million were Jews. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at Russia, most Russians were peaceful as well. Yet the Russians were able to kill 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at China for example, most Chinese were peaceful as well. Yet the Chinese were able to kill 70 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at Japan prior to World War II, most Japanese were peaceful as well. Yet, Japan was able to butcher its way across Southeast Asia, killing 12 million people, mostly killed by bayonets and shovels. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. On September 11th in the United States we had 2.3 million Arab Muslims living in the United States. It took 19 hijackers - 19 radicals - to bring America down to its knees, destroy the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon and kill almost 3000 Americans that day. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. So for all our power of reason, and for all us talking about moderate and peaceful Muslims, I'm glad you're here. But where are the others speaking out? And since you are the only Muslim representative in here, you took the limelight instead of speaking about why our government - I assume you're an American (the Muslim says yes) - As an American citizen, you sat in this room, and instead of standing up and saying a question, or asking something about our four Americans that died and what our government is doing to correct the problem, you stood there to make a point about peaceful, moderate Muslims. I wish you had brought ten with you to question about how we could hold our government responsible. It is time we take political correctness and throw it in the garbage where it belongs.” - Brigette Gabriel (transcript from Benghazi Accountability Coalition - Heritage Foundation)

Eating disorders and body dissatisfaction are reaching epidemic proportions in the West, yet this is possible only in a culture that no longer believes that God causes all things, including one's body shape...The Qur'an's message is to be happy and content with one's body because God created our shapes: "He it is Who shapes you in the wombs as He pleases (3:6);" and He created us "in the best of moulds" (95:4). The Prophet used to advise people to be healthy and consume and exercise in moderation.

The West is courting its own destruction, but this is in line with Barack Obama’s consistent position. He has said repeatedly that “as Americans, we are not and never will be at war with Islam” – even though a large part of Islam has declared war on us. He has cultivated ties with Muslim individuals and groups deemed “moderate,” including the Brotherhood itself.75 In his Cairo speech in 2009, Obama echoed the Brotherhood’s anti-free-speech agenda: “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereo-types of Islam wherever they appear.”76

I’m well aware that millions of nominally Muslim freethinkers are in hiding out of necessity. This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam—especially the pernicious meme “Islamophobia,” by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. What worries me is that so many moderate Muslims believe that “Islamophobia” is a bigger problem than literalist Islam is. They seem more outraged that someone like me would equate jihad with holy war than that millions of their co-religionists do this and commit atrocities as a result.

I want to be clear that when I used terms such as “pretense” and “intellectual dishonesty” when we first met, I wasn’t casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate’s dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I’m not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen. We can’t say, “Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interests of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we’re going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go … Don’t you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?” However, that’s really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. Again, this problem confronts religious moderates everywhere, but it’s an excruciating problem for Muslims.

So when you say that no religion is intrinsically peaceful or warlike, and that every scripture must be interpreted, I think you run into problems, because many of these texts aren’t all that elastic. They aren’t susceptible to just any interpretation, and they commit their adherents to specific beliefs and practices. You can’t say, for instance, that Islam recommends eating bacon and drinking alcohol. And even if you could find some way of reading the Qur’an that would permit those things, you can’t say that its central message is that a devout Muslim should consume as much bacon and alcohol as humanly possible. Nor can one say that the central message of Islam is pacifism. (However, one can say that about Jainism. All religions are not the same.) One simply cannot say that the central message of the Qur’an is respect for women as the moral and political equals of men. To the contrary, one can say that under Islam, the central message is that women are second-class citizens and the property of the men in their lives. I want to be clear that when I used terms such as “pretense” and “intellectual dishonesty” when we first met, I wasn’t casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate’s dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I’m not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen.

How would a restored Islamic world order relate to the modern international system, built around states? A true Muslim’s loyalty, al-Banna argued, was to multiple, overlapping spheres, at the apex of which stood a unified Islamic system whose purview would eventually embrace the entire world. His homeland was first a “particular country”; “then it extends to the other Islamic countries, for all of them are a fatherland and an abode for the Muslim”; then it proceeds to an “Islamic Empire” on the model of that erected by the pious ancestors, for “the Muslim will be asked before God” what he had done “to restore it.” The final circle was global: “Then the fatherland of the Muslim expands to encompass the entire world. Do you not hear the words of God (Blessed and Almighty is He!): ‘Fight them until there is no more persecution, and worship is devoted to God’?” Where possible, this fight would be gradualist and peaceful. Toward non-Muslims, so long as they did not oppose the movement and paid it adequate respect, the early Muslim Brotherhood counseled “protection,” “moderation and deep-rooted equity.” Foreigners were to be treated with “peacefulness and sympathy, so long as they behave with rectitude and sincerity.” Therefore, it was “pure fantasy” to suggest that the implementation of “Islamic institutions in our modern life would create estrangement between us and the Western nations.

Radicals have value, at least; they can move the center. On a scale of 1 to 5, 3 is moderate, 1 and 5 the hardliners. But if a good radical takes it up to 9, then 5 becomes the new center. I already saw it working in the American Muslim community. For years women were neglected in mosques, denied entrance to the main prayer halls and relegated to poorly maintained balconies and basements. It was only after a handdful of Muslim feminists raised "lunatic fringe" demands like mixed-gender prayers with men and women standing together and even women imams giving sermons and leading men in prayer that major organizations such as ISNA and CAIR began to recognize the "moderate" concerns and deal with the issue of women in mosques. I've taken part in the woman-led prayer movement, both as a writer and as a man who prays behind women, happy to be the extremist who makes moderate reform seem less threatening. Insha'Allah, what's extreme today will not be extreme tomorrow.

The cultural barrier between the Christian and the Muslim world still irritates the approach of Americans to the whole issue considerably; Americans tend to widen the circle of involvement to catch the largest possible numbers of Muslims. They always speak about the Big Conspiracy against the U.S. I personally had been interrogated about people who just practiced the basics of the religion and sympathized with Islamic movements; I was asked to provide every detail about Islamic movements, no matter how moderate. That’s amazing in a country like the U.S., where Christian terrorist organizations such as Nazis and White Supremacists have the freedom to express themselves and recruit people openly and nobody can bother them. But as a Muslim, if you sympathize with the political views of an Islamic organization you’re in big trouble. Even attending the same mosque as a suspect is big trouble. I mean this fact is clear for everybody who understands the ABCs of American policy toward so-called Islamic Terrorism.

The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamental- ist" in the Western sense of the word—in that even "moderate" approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and inerrant word of the one true God. The difference between funda- mentalists and moderates—and certainly the difference between all "extremists" and moderates—is the degree to which they see political and military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In any case, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension of human existence, including politics and law, are now generally called not "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists.

Muslims in the West regularly refer to Islam as the “religion of peace.” Yet of the roughly 400 recognized terrorist groups in the world, over 90 percent are Islamist groups. Over 90 percent of the current world-fighting involves Islamist terror movements.120 The endless goal of moderate Muslim apologists is to make the claim that the radical terrorist groups are not behaving in an Islamic way. While many nominal and liberal Muslims have a strong disdain for the murderous behavior of many of the most violent groups, the terrorists are actually carrying out a very legitimate aspect of Islam as defined by Islam’s sacred texts, scholars, and representatives. They are indeed behaving in an Islamic way. They are behaving like Mohammed and his successors. While it is often said that the terrorists have high-jacked Islam, in reality it is the so-called moderate Muslims who are trying to change the true teachings of Islam. Many in the West today are calling for a “reformation” within Islam. The problem is that this reformation has already happened and the most radical forms of Islam that we are seeing today are the result—violent Islam is true Islam. Yet few have the courage to declare the obvious. The Bible warns us that in the Last-Days, the Antichrist would be given power, “over all peoples, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7) Today throughout the world, Islam is pushing for precisely that. In the days to come, it appears as if, although for a very short time, the Muslim Antichrist will come very close to accomplishing this goal.

Rather, the issue is whether it is right to have a mosque and Islamic center in virtually the exact spot where so many Americans were killed in the name of Islamic holy war. I don’t think it is right, any more than I would support the idea of a neo-Nazi recruiting center at Auschwitz. My sympathies in this case are not with religiously deprived Muslims, but rather with Debra Burlingame, a spokesperson for a 9/11 victims group. “Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago,” she said.5 Some supporters of the mosque, such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, clearly missed the distinction being made here between the right to worship and how and where that right is exercised. Fareed Zakaria, writer and CNN host, recognizes the distinction; even so, he argues in favor of the mosque on the grounds that the folks building it are traditional Muslims who have condemned terrorism.6 Still, it’s not clear why these moderate Muslims disregarded the sentiments of the 9/11 victims’ families and decided on a site so close to Ground Zero. Undoubtedly radical Muslims around the world will view the mosque as a kind of triumphal monument. There is historical precedent for this. Muslims have a long tradition of building monuments to commemorate triumphs over adversaries, as when they built the Dome of the Rock on the site of Solomon’s Temple, or when Mehmet the Conqueror rode his horse into the Byzantine church Hagia Sophia and declared that it would be turned into a mosque. Many Americans may not know this history, but the radical Muslims do, and Obama does as well. The radical Muslims would like the Ground Zero mosque built so it can stand as an enduring symbol of resistance to American power, and President Obama evidently agrees with them.

If we analyze white supremacy from the philosophical lens of Star Wars, then it is all the Sith Lords, the Empire, and the First Order commanded by the Dark Side of the Force. It wants to dominate and impose its will on all galaxies, even those far, far away. Let’s just call this insidious force THE WHITENESS. The Whiteness’s ability to inspire fear and anger is so strong that it corrupted many well-​intentioned people, including people of color, to vote for an incompetent vulgarian in 2016 and 2020. It deludes many liberal and “moderate” whites into believing that they are the “good” ones who are committed to social justice as they talk about white privilege but never actually give up any of it. Still, they’ll have these discussions about racial equality with their white friends in establishments with white patrons from white neighborhoods—​without including the rest of us. The Whiteness has always played for all the marbles. It’s not interested in diplomacy, a representative government, free and fair elections, equitable pay, and a delicious buffet of meals from a multitude of countries. It needs a border wall, a Muslim Ban, and affirmative action for wealthy white students at Yale University. It’s a system, a structure, a paradigm, an ideology whose ultimate goal is domination and submission by any means necessary.

There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. The radicals are estimated to be between 15-25%, according to all intelligence services around the world. That leaves 75% of them - peaceful people. But when you look at 15-25% of the world Muslim population, you're looking at 180 million to 300 million people dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization. That is as big as the United States. So why should we worry about the radical 15-25%? Because it is the radicals that kill. Because it is the radicals that behead and massacre. When you look throughout history, when you look at all the lessons of history, most Germans were peaceful. Yet the Nazis drove the agenda. And as a result, 60 million people died, almost 14 million in concentration camps. 6 million were Jews. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at Russia, most Russians were peaceful as well. Yet the Russians were able to kill 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at China for example, most Chinese were peaceful as well. Yet the Chinese were able to kill 70 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. When you look at Japan prior to World War II, most Japanese were peaceful as well. Yet, Japan was able to butcher its way across Southeast Asia, killing 12 million people, mostly killed by bayonets and shovels. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. On September 11th in the United States we had 2.3 million Arab Muslims living in the United States. It took 19 hijackers - 19 radicals - to bring America down to its knees, destroy the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon and kill almost 3000 Americans that day. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. So for all our power of reason, and for all us talking about moderate and peaceful Muslims, I'm glad you're here. But where are the others speaking out? And since you are the only Muslim representative in here, you took the limelight instead of speaking about why our government - I assume you're an American (the Muslim says yes) - As an American citizen, you sat in this room, and instead of standing up and saying a question, or asking something about our four Americans that died and what our government is doing to correct the problem, you stood there to make a point about peaceful, moderate Muslims. I wish you had brought ten with you to question about how we could hold our government responsible. It is time we take political correctness and throw it in the garbage where it belongs.” - Brigette Gabriel (transcript from Benghazi Accountability Coalition - Heritage Foundation)                              

Westerners do not understand that when it comes to the Muslim world, even the most “moderate” of Muslims, if they are religious, all believe in the coming of the Mahdi and the establishment of the Caliphate to rule the entire Globe by changing world laws to adapt the Islamic Sharia. The coming of the Mahdi to religious Muslims is as holy of a belief as the coming of Messiah is to Christians and Jews.

Society wont be affected by the actions of lone radical Muslims, but will bleed by the apathy of moderate Muslims.

fact is that moderate Islamism is a myth. There are, to be sure, more than a billion moderate Muslims—people who pray five times a day or not, fast during Ramadan or not, perhaps entertain harmless superstitions about pork, the devil, or the conduct of the birds vis-à-vis the Kaaba, or indeed seek by painstaking study of the Quran and the hadith to reconcile the basic values of their religion with modern life and the discoveries of science. But Islamism is a political ideology that takes a literal, fundamentalist interpretation of the Quran as a master plan for society: Islamic law, the segregation of the sexes, the subjugation of women, the submission of the masses to clerical authority. You are either an Islamist or you are not, in the same way that you cannot be a little bit pregnant.

In this sense, Islamism in Turkey was at least partly an unintended consequence of Kemalism. The latter’s zeal against Ottoman tradition impoverished Islamic thought, suppressed even its most moderate proponents (such as the Nur movement), and created a vacuum that a radical Islamism of a foreign origin could fill. The 1960 coup contributed to this void by destroying the Democrat Party, whose center-right umbrella had been uniting nearly the entire Islamic camp. Had Menderes survived, politically and literally, Erbakan and his Milli Görüş probably would not have found an audience. That’s why Turkish historian Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, a respected expert on Turkish Islam, thinks that the country’s radical Islamists can well be regarded as the “illegitimate sons” of its radical secularists. The Turkish Herodians, in other words, unintentionally helped create Turkish zealots.

Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together.

The pseudonymous apostate Ibn Warraq makes an important distinction: there are moderate Muslims, but no moderate Islam. Millions of Muslims just want to get on with their lives, and there are--or were--remote corners of the world where, far from Mecca, Muslim practices reached accommodation with local customs. But all of the official schools of Islamic jurisprudence commend sharia and violent jihad. So a "moderate Muslim" can find no formal authority to support his moderation. And to be a "moderate Muslim" publicly means standing up to the leaders of your community, to men like Shaker Elsayed, leader of the Dar al Hijrah, one of America's largest mosques, who has told his core-ligionists in blunt terms: "The call to reform Islam is an alien call.

Hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims and Christians claim that their sacred texts are perfect and complete without ever confronting what that actually means: that slavery, sexual slavery, torture and genocide can, under the right circumstances, be holy. That women and children are property of men. That the Golden Rule doesn’t apply to nonbelievers. And that blasphemy is a greater sin than killing the blasphemer.

The Koran calls upon all Muslims to convert or conquer unbelievers. For those who take the Koran seriously, there is no room for moderation or tolerance.

It would be bad for Lebanon and for the Middle East if the U.S. withdraws from the region. We will face a different Arab and Muslim world. It is very strange and ironic that even the pro-Iranians in Iraq are asking the Americans to stay. You could write a theater about it. Making the Americans totally withdraw from the Arab world would be a mistake, would be a disaster for the moderates in the Arab world. The radicals and the Iranians would win.

The very suffering of our persecuted brothers and sisters is creating a deep hunger for the truth of Jesus among many moderate Muslims who express deep hurt, regret, and even anger concerning the atrocities in Iraq. Some even say, “We’ve read the Quran and know that Muhammad himself committed such atrocities. Now we want to learn about Christianity—about Jesus, about the Bible. Please tell us more.

This is our world today: divided, contemptuous, hateful, and polarized. More and more, it’s becoming a world of Muslims versus non-Muslims. That is not to say that all Muslims are anti-Semitic, or that anti-Semitism only flourishes in Muslim countries. But from the perspective of this New Yorker, the moderate voices within the Muslim world seem to be shrinking and the radical voices seem to be growing. What happens when the radical voices within the Muslim world reach out and influence those outside the Muslim world? Is this our future?

There had already been one attempt to form an Islamic party, the French Muslim Party, but it soon fell apart over the embarrassing anti-Semitism of its leader--so extreme that it drove him into an alliance with the far right. The Muslim Brotherhood learned its lesson and was careful to take a moderate line.

The majority of Muslims who are moderates are caught in between (1) their sympathy for and identification with the Palestinians and anger against the Israelis, and (2) their desire for a peaceful life of growth and progress. To resolve the problem of terrorism, the U.S. and others must support the tolerant non-militant Muslims so that they will prevail.

It was an incredible speech,” Mortenson says. “And by the time Syed Abbas had finished he had the entire crowd in tears. I wish all the Americans who think ‘Muslim’ is just another way of saying ‘terrorist’ could have been there that day. The true core tenants of Islam are justice, tolerance, and charity, and Syed Abbas represented the moderate center of Muslim faith eloquently.

In Great Britain, the bastion of Islamism in Europe, a figure of ‘British Islam’, Abu Hamza al-Masri,[71] who, according to the Americans, is linked to terrorist networks, is the guru of the Grand Mosque (with a seating capacity of 1,500) in Finsbury Park in north-central London. He openly preaches jihad, and his Friday sermons are sold on cassettes and transmitted into every Muslim country through the Internet. Here are examples of some of his remarks: ‘It is the duty of every Muslim to fight every law that is not inspired by God [therefore only shariah is valid, not European law]; we must fight every kuffar [non-Muslim], without distinction, and there will be a special reward and a privileged place in paradise for those who volunteer to fight, while Muslims who stay at home without fighting will have only a small place.’ This information, which is in perfect agreement with the Qur’an, pulverises the belief in a difference between a ‘peaceful’ Islam and an ‘aggressive Islamism’. The following comes from other speeches by Abu Hamza: ‘I do not preach Islam as the West would like it to be, but as God wants it to be. Some imams want to “moderate” Islam in order to please the West, but not me. I expound Islam as it is, that is, fighting against the West. . . . I do not belong to Bin Laden’s networks, but I share some of their views. My sympathies and my prayers go to the Taliban and that is not a crime.’[72

The greatest mistake you can make is to assume all Muslims are the same. They are not simply fundamentalist jihadist extremists or moderates. One difference between moderates and jihadists is patience. They both desire Sharia to be imposed around the world; they simply seek different means to achieve this same end. Moderates are distinct from reformers as well. Reformers recognize the West views Islam as dangerous, that Sharia is politically incompatible and should therefore not be imposed everywhere on everyone. Even with these distinctions, it’s important to note that the greatest historical divide within the Muslim community is between Sunnis and Shiites. Although the Muslim ummah is bound by its Islamic identity, it is not absolutely free from internal strife. In fact, from the faith’s inception, strife within the Muslim community has resulted in civil wars, the formation of terrorist organizations, and so much more. The ummah bond is probably the weakest regarding who is the leader of the Islamic world. The approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world1 are divided primarily into two large groups, Sunnis and Shiites. Prior to his death in AD 632, Muhammad had not designated a successor to lead the Muslim ummah. As a result, Muhammad’s death caused a split among his followers concerning who should be Muhammad’s rightful successor, which in turn led to the creation of these two sects. Both Sunnis and Shiites consider adherents of the other sect to be heretical. Their rivalry continues to this day and often results in attacks on the members of the opposing sect, including civil wars and battles that rip nations apart and have destabilized the Middle East.

However, not all Muslims have always believed that the Koran is eternal and uncreated—a fact that has important implications for modern-day hopes for the emergence of a moderate brand of Islam. The reformist Mu’tazilite movement swept through the Islamic world in the ninth century, becoming the state religion of the Abbasid Caliphate (Islamic empire). The Mu’tazilites (“Separated Ones,” or “Those Who Have Withdrawn”) held that reason rather than simply blind faith in the Koran must play a role in a Muslim’s encounter with Allah. Accordingly, Mu’tazilite theologians were uncomfortable with literal interpretations of some Koranic passages, and even declared that the book itself was created.

The debate over whether the sacred book was created or existed eternally had enormous practical implications. The Mu’tazilites developed a method of Koranic interpretation that was freer from the literal meaning of the text than most Muslim divines dared to venture. For example, they reinterpreted the injunction that Allah “leads the wrongdoers astray” (14:27) so as to reject predestination; they simply denied that Allah would lead people astray and condemn them to Hell. The caliph (Islamic emperor) Ja’far al-Mutawakkil (847–861), however, crushed the Mu’tazilite movement and branded it a heresy. Asserting that the Koran was created became a crime punishable by death. And to this day, the marginalization and discrediting of the Mu’tazilites casts a long shadow over “moderate Islam.” If today’s moderates stray too far from a literal reading of the Koran (including its ferocity toward unbelievers), they risk being accused of advocating long-discredited heresies. The Mu’tazilite experience provides ample historical precedent and a ready methodology that literalists use to cast suspicion on any reading of the Koran that doesn’t take all its words at face value.

Moderate’ Muslims, and apologists and propagandists for Islam, will attempt to deny or obscure the real meaning, nature, and intent of jihad. Some will say that jihad means only a Muslim’s ‘inner struggle’ to be a better person, and that jihad has no military meaning whatever. Others will acknowledge that Muslims have a religious duty to spread Islam throughout the world, but insist that it is to be spread only peacefully, through dawah—literally ‘the call’— meaning persuasion and reasoning. Finally, some will go so far as to admit that it can also mean warfare, but insist that in Islam, warfare is allowed only in self-defense or against oppression. However, all of these assertions are examples of a tactic that Islam encourages in waging jihad: taqiyya or Kithman—‘lying,’ ‘deception,’ ‘deceit.’ Muslims are encouraged to lie if, in the opinion of the liar, telling the lie will be ‘good’ for Islam. This is a documented fact according to both ancient and modern scholars of Islam.

Meanwhile, Facebook censors Palestinian groups so often that they have created their own hashtag, #FBCensorsPalestine. That the groups have become prominent matters little: in 2016, Facebook blocked accounts belonging to editors at the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency in the West Bank; it later apologized and restored the accounts.30 The following year, it did the same to the official account of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.31 A year after Facebook’s relationship with the Israelis was formalized, the Guardian released a set of leaked documents exposing the ways the company’s moderation policy discriminates against Palestinians and other groups. Published in a series called “The Facebook Files,” the documents contained slides from manuals used to train content moderators. On the whole, the leaks paint a picture of a disjointed and disorganized company where the community standards are expanded piecemeal, and little attention is given to their consequences. Anna, the former Facebook operations specialist I spoke with, agrees: “There’s no ownership of processes from beginning to end.” One set of documents demonstrate with precision the imbalance on the platform between Palestinians and Israelis (and the supporters of both). In a slide deck entitled “Credible Violence: Abuse Standards,” one slide lists global and local “vulnerable” groups; alongside “foreigners” and “homeless people” is “Zionists.”32 Interestingly, while Zionists are protected as a special category, “migrants,” as ProPublica has reported, are only “quasi-protected” and “Black children” aren’t protected at all.33 In trying to understand how such a decision came about, I reached out to numerous contacts, but only one spoke about it on the record. Maria, who worked in community operations until 2017, told me that she spoke up against the categorization when it was proposed. “We’d say, ‘Being a Zionist isn’t like being a Hindu or Muslim or white or Black—it’s like being a revolutionary socialist, it’s an ideology,’” she told me. “And now, almost everything related to Palestine is getting deleted.

I know you believe that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim.

For example, “according to the Maldives Religious Unity Regulations, it is illegal in the Maldives to propagate any faith other than Islam or to engage in any effort to convert anyone to any religion other than Islam. It is also illegal to display in public any symbols or slogans belonging to any religion other than Islam, or creating interest in such articles.”16 Violating the Religious Unity Act carries stiff penalties—fines and imprisonment for two to five years. This is the position of a modern and moderate Muslim nation.

Many American Muslims tend to cringe when people refer to us as “moderate Muslims” in everyday conversations. We prefer the term “mainstream Muslims” because the term “moderate Muslims” is viewed by many people in our community pejoratively as “acceptable” or “satisfactory” Muslims, as opposed to “mainstream Muslims,” which more accurately defines the majority of the Muslim community around the world.

Ḥamās sketches out an ideological alternative to the PLO’s new moderate position by defending with religious arguments the uncompromising attitude taken up by the PLO for so long. It rejects the PLO’s secular vision of statehood and opposes it with a nationalist ideology supposedly based on traditional Islam.

In proficient English, Samira explained that her current job for the United Nations was to represent women who had been raped by Taliban militia. The leaders of the militia wanted to kill Samira because of her faith in Christ and because of her attempts to hold them accountable in a United Nations court of law. She had personally led more than thirty women to Christ, baptized them, and was now discipling them. She had done all of this in an environment nearly devoid of male believers who might be able to lend her protection. I listened in amazement as she shared the story of her own spiritual pilgrimage. The Lord was obviously using her in a powerful way. By the time she and I met, Samira’s superiors were already seeking to extradite Samira to the United States—for her own protection. I begged her to stay among her own people because I couldn’t see how God could replace this young woman of faith in such a dark and difficult place. However, the slow-grinding, irreversible gears of international diplomacy had already been set in motion. Samira was whisked out of Central Asia and flown immediately to the American Midwest where she began to make a new life. When I arrived home from my trip, I told Ruth all about this remarkable young woman. We arranged to fly her from her new home to Kentucky for a visit. She spent a week in our home. We took Samira to a moderate-sized church in central Kentucky for Sunday morning worship. It just so happened that there was a baptism service scheduled for that morning; an entire family—mother, father, and two children—were to be baptized. As their baptism progressed—with this young lady believer from a Muslim background sitting in the pew between Ruth and me—I noticed Samira beginning to fidget, twisting, turning, and rocking backward and forward. It was as if she was having an anxiety attack. In a quiet whisper, I asked her if there was something wrong. Samira tugged on the sleeve of my jacket. She whispered forcefully in my ear: “I cannot believe this! I cannot believe that I have lived long enough to see people being baptized in public. An entire family together! No one is shooting at them, no one is threatening them, no one will go to prison, no one will be tortured, and no one will be killed. And they are being openly and freely baptized as a family! I never dreamed that God could do such things! I never believed that I would live to see a miracle like this.

In his early days as a prophet in Mecca, Mohammed had not been violent at all. His teachings were religious and confined to threats in the afterlife. By this stage however, his hatred of those who refused to believe in him could be described as inhuman. His personality is described by psychiatrists as narcissistic. He demanded adoration from others and showed a psychopathic hatred of those who would not give him the status he demanded. At its core, these are the values on which Islam is founded. Muslims believe that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his final Prophet. Mohammed is believed to be perfect and the Koran tells Muslims repeatedly to emulate his behaviour. As we already know, Muslims can choose to follow Mohammed’s Meccan example, as most of them do or follow the Medina example as the Jihadists do. Since earlier verses are abrogated by later ones, the Medinan Koran is better, but since the Koran is perfect the Meccan Koran is also valid. To a Western mind this is very confusing. By our logic, if two things contradict each other then at least one must be wrong. Western logic is founded on truth and only one thing can be true. In Islamic logic, “truth” is anything which advances Islam. Two things therefore can contradict one another and yet both are “true”. The confusion this causes is deliberate and Islam often uses it to its own advantage. Its hard (Medinan) side hides behind its softer (Meccan) side. This is one reason why “moderate” Muslims may complain about Jihadists to Kaffirs, but will never confront the Jihadists themselves. They know that the Medina example is the better one.

As for changing the laws, Muslims, even moderates, are today pushing for Sharia law in nations where they are a growing portion of the population. A poll, by the Guardian newspaper in London, found that about two-thirds of British Muslims want to be governed by Sharia law, which has been implemented in Muslim-dominated areas of Great Britain.

The usual result of excessiveness is its antithesis. A society that starts out with extreme Puritanical ethics may turn into one of overindulgence and licentiousness. On an individual level, the experience is similar. It is a principal feature of the Islamic faith that the “middle way” be the path that Muslims adhere to. The Qur’an itself calls the believers a “middle nation,” which commentators say includes moderation, which leads to a consistency of worship and conduct that one can carry on throughout his or her life. It is said that the Judaic legal tradition is based on stern justice, while at the foundation of the Christian phenomena is the idea of categorical mercy where everybody should be forgiven no matter what. With Islam, a balance is struck suitable for the complex societies that have spread across the face of the earth, a balance between avoiding God’s ghaḍab (wrath and stern justice) and hoping for God’s raḥmah (mercy). To take the straight way, one must have both, the law and the spirit of the law, the sharīʿah and the ḥaqīqah. The law consists of rules, and the spirit of the law is mercy. God sent down the shariah as a mercy, and the Prophet himself is “a mercy to the worlds” (QUR’AN , 21:107).

For weeks I read round the clock. I entered the warp of the world of the imagination. Chapter numbers became the enumerations by which I measured hours.

It is certain that there are genuinely moderate Muslims, perhaps a substantial number, who do not seek to impose Islam on this country and the world through violent jihad. However, they are conspicuous by their silence regarding the more problematic doctrines of Islam. To the extent that Muslim ‘leaders’ and lobbying organizations in the United States even address the issue, they offer nothing more than vague, tepid condemnations of terrorist violence and heated denials that the behavior of Islamic terrorists has any connection with Islam. Where is the Muslim outrage in this country over the supposed few who hijacked their religion? Where is the Million Muslim March on the Mall in Washington, D.C., sending a message to all Muslims in the Arabic world condemning the killing of human beings in the name of Allah? Where is the cry to raise the consciousness of the rest of the Muslim world about their hijacked religion?

Islam means “submission.”1 The faith teaches that Muslims must submit to the will of Allah2 and prepare themselves for the final judgment in order to be able to enter paradise.3 Muslims believe that Allah revealed his will through Sharia, which literally means “path” but is generally translated as “Islamic law.”4 Unlike the traditional Western legal system, which is limited to basic civil and criminal elements, Sharia covers everything from religious rituals and private hygiene to principles of conducting business, criminal punishments, and more. Sharia prescribes, for example, how many times a Muslim must pray, how husbands should treat their wives, and what punishments are to be given for different crimes. It mandates flogging for consuming alcohol,5 stoning adulterers to death,6 cutting off a thief’s limbs,7 and executing apostates and blasphemers.8 Many Muslims around the world do not adhere to the jihadist ideology of terrorists. Most Muslims are moderate, peaceful people who, while following their religious traditions and rituals—attending mosques for worship, fasting, witnessing to others—reasonably coexist with followers of other religions. They do not impose their beliefs on others. They have non-Muslim friends, neighbors, and coworkers with whom they socialize on a daily basis. To these Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. A small but increasingly significant segment of Muslims (some estimate its size as between 10 and 20 percent),9 however, believe in the supremacy of Islam and Sharia law over any other religion or law and feel obligated to force such beliefs on everybody. This

The idea and principle of religious tolerance, based on the Christian virtue of charity and its “neutral principles of law” approach to religious law, is so inimical to Sharia because religious tolerance prohibits discrimination in favor of Islam. Islam traditionally eschews missionary work of conversion by persuasion and ultimately resorts to the sword. It does not hesitate to destroy the symbols of other religions, like Buddhist statues in Afghanistan198 or Catholic monasteries in Iraq,199 regardless of historical importance or present-day practice. The killing and harassment of religious minorities in Muslim lands are well documented. Moderate Muslims claim that Islam is a religion of peace. Yet historically Islam has never spread into a nation peacefully, but only by the sword.200 This religious conversion by the sword is called jihad. As Andrew McCarthy points out, We still don’t get what jihad is. Jihad, whether it is done through violence, or whether it is done by stealthier measures, is always and everywhere about Sharia. It is about the implementation of Sharia, the spread of Sharia, and the defense of Sharia. Sharia is the Islamic legal and political framework. We would like to think of Islam as just another religion, just a set of religious principles that’s separate from our secular or societal life. It’s anything but. It is a full service, comprehensive, political, social, and economic system—a military system—that happens to have some spiritual elements. But its ambitions are actually authoritarian in the sense that you have a central Islamic state that controls everything, and it’s totalitarian in the sense that it really does want to control everything, every aspect. Jihad leads to implementation of Sharia law in all lands for all people. That’s what makes Sharia so dangerous. The two are inextricably intertwined. You can’t combat one of these without combatting both of them.

Let’s look at your average American Muslim, someone like Siraj Wahaj, the recipient of the American Muslim community’s highest honors. Mr. Wahaj had the privilege in June of 1991 of becoming the first Muslim to deliver a daily prayer before the U.S. House of Representatives. In his prayer he recited from the Koran and appealed to almighty God to guide America’s leaders ‘and grant them righteousness and wisdom.’ The same Wahaj spoke to a Muslim audience a year later in New Jersey. This time Wahaj was singing a different tune to a different audience, and his words were far from his moderate ones in front of the U.S. House of Representatives. ‘If only Muslims were more clever politically,’ he told his New Jersey listeners, ‘they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him. . . . [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us." If Wahaj is the example of the American Muslim community and the receiver of its highest honors, who needs enemies? If this is whom our government calls a ‘moderate’ and invites to deliver a prayer before the House of Representatives, we have ignorant elected officials sitting in our capital running our country. Do you feel safer now knowing that not all Muslims are plane-flying, bomb-wearing, or car-driving terrorists? Talking about overthrowing our government and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate is terrorism of a different kind, but it is still terrorism. This is the more dangerous kind, the kind that circles you slowly, so that by the time you realize you are about to be killed, it’s already too late to do anything about it. Where is the outrage? Have we lost our sense of patriotism and loyalty to America? Do you consider this ‘moderation’? A highly respected, award-winning Muslim from the Islamic American community calling to overthrow the United States government?

I see a swirl in the core. There is a pilgrimage in my glass. They bang their beers. They say things with I’s and S’s and I’s and S’s. They say 9s and 11s and Bins and Ladins. They say bombs and attacks and terrors and terrorism. They say there’s a glass in your hand, you must be one of the ‘moderates’. They say, but I have been. I have been to Mecca. I have seen Muslims. I have felt Muslim. I have felt Muslim in Mecca. I have felt Muslim in bars. I have felt Muslim in bed with her. I have felt Muslim everywhere. I have felt human everywhere. I am a human.

While it is often said that the terrorists have “hijacked” Islam, judging by what Islam really teaches, in reality it is the so-called moderate Muslims who are misrepresenting the true teachings of Islam.

Extreme Salafi beliefs reject any moderation or innovation in Islam. They condemn not only Shiites (members of the sect most common in Iran and the eastern part of Saudi Arabia) but millions of other Sunni believers as well. (Salafis are Sunni Muslims, but the overwhelming majority of Sunnis are not Salafis.) Salafis are confident that only they and they alone will survive the time of judgment. They also believe that they are the true warriors against a centuries-old conspiracy to corrupt and destroy Islam.

Moderate Islam is a Western fantasy. As Turkey’s then-Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in 2007: ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.’ And while there are moderate and more secular Muslims, I am hardly concerned with them. Nor am I compelled to applaud them. I do not have to pat on the back every Muslim who does not want to kill me. I expect that. That is my bar. The idea that one should praise them speaks to the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to Western dealings with Muslims. It’s just absurd.