Moderation In Islam Quotes

There is so much debate about moderate and radical Islam but there is only one Islam.

Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists of each religion that cause problems. But there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists.

But not everything is normal. After all, there's no indictation that religion exits here. Granted, I've only been at camp for a day, so maybe I just need to be patient. However, so far there have been no calls for prayer and no public sermons. I haven't seen anything that indicates which god — if any— these people believe in. The only signs of religion that I have seen are the few religious items that people wear on themselves. Other than that, it's as though God doesn't exist.

Imagine if, in the Cold War, the West had lent its support not to the dissidents in Eastern Europe—to the likes of Václav Havel and Lech Wałęsa—but to the Soviet Union, as the representative of “moderate Communists,” in the hope that the Kremlin would give us a hand against terrorists such as the Red Army Faction.

After the Islamic State, even al-Qaeda appears ‘moderate’.

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.

In Islam, it is the "moderate" who is left to split hairs, because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, sub- jugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world.

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.

This division is not one by religious affiliation, rather it separates the extremists and the peace-loving people. Therefor I'm optimistic: now a humanistic Islam is getting shaken awake. Moderate Islam needs now to finally break cover and explain how to deal with the violence-glorifying parts of the Quran. The (psychological) repression that this has nothing to do with our belief doesn't work anymore. We have to face this challenge.

The problem is that moderates of all faiths are committed to reinterpreting, or ignoring outright, the most dangerous and absurd parts of their scripture—and this commitment is precisely what makes them moderates. But it also requires some degree of intellectual dishonesty, because moderates can’t acknowledge that their moderation comes from outside the faith. The doors leading out of the prison of scriptural literalism simply do not open from the inside. In the twenty-first century, the moderate’s commitment to scientific rationality, human rights, gender equality, and every other modern value—values that, as you say, are potentially universal for human beings—comes from the past thousand years of human progress, much of which was accomplished in spite of religion, not because of it. So when moderates claim to find their modern, ethical commitments within scripture, it looks like an exercise in self-deception. The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there. Moderates seem unwilling to grapple with the fact that all scriptures contain an extraordinary amount of stupidity and barbarism that can always be rediscovered and made holy anew by fundamentalists—and there’s no principle of moderation internal to the faith that prevents this. These fundamentalist readings are, almost by definition, more complete and consistent—and, therefore, more honest. The fundamentalist picks up the book and says, “Okay, I’m just going to read every word of this and do my best to understand what God wants from me. I’ll leave my personal biases completely out of it.” Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God’s literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn’t hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery—you just put in a few lines like “Don’t take sex slaves!” and “When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don’t rape any of them!” And yet God couldn’t seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth.

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.

that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.

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

In December 2011 in supposedly moderate Malaysia, priests and church youth leaders were required to obtain “caroling permits” by submitting their full names and identity card numbers at police stations—always a harrowing experience—simply to visit their fellow church members and sing carols like “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.

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.

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.

Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and almost every other faith, tries to help people deflate their own ego, and reduce selfishness, pride, and materialism; but in an industry that is built on self-righteous, hedonism, and money, one would expect that religions teachings modestly, moderation, and humility would be rejected. That’s not to say spirituality or religion altogether has been rejected in Hollywood. Quite the contrary, it is alive and well—it’s just not the brand of religion one is accustomed to.

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.

Commendably, the conversation on the emerging presence of Moslems in the West has focused on progressive thinking and encouraged women to reach their highest potential. But we cannot do that if we insist on honoring those who, however sympathetic their backgrounds and moving their personal stories, make the mistake of demonizing all Moslems and bashing Islam. Rather, we must clarify the distinctions between radical and fanatic versions of Islam and moderate and centrist versions. When entire populations are represented in the public imagination by their worst elements, the consequences are damaging.

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.

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.

From predator-prey models (the so-called Lotka-Volterra type of population dynamics), I knew that populations will experience Extremistan-style variability, hence predators will necessarily go through periods of feast and famine. That's us, humans-we had to have been designed to experience extreme hunger and extreme abundance. So our food intake had to have been fractal. Not a single one of those promoting the "three meals a day," "eat in moderation" idea has tested it empirically to see whether it is healthier than intermittent fasts followed by large feasts. But Near Eastern religions (Judaism, Islam, and Orthodox Christianity) knew it, of course-just as they knew the need for debt avoidance-and so they had fast days.

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God’s literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn’t hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery—you just put in a few lines like “Don’t take sex slaves!” and “When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don’t rape any of them!” And yet God couldn’t seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth.

On August 3, 2012, the fifteenth day of the government offensive, rebels in the city said they were desperately low on ammunition and expressed dismay that the international community had not reacted when a huge massacre could be coming. Again, Libya was the example. Gadhafi threatened to overrun Benghazi and when he tried to do it, NATO started bombing. Now in Syria, Assad was threatening to crush the opposition in Aleppo and had already started doing it, but Washington’s reaction was only hand-wringing. In my conversations with rebels it was clear they were becoming increasingly disheartened and desperate. (The rebels would usually communicate with each other on Skype, blending in with the billions of people using the Internet instead of going through cell-phone towers.) The United States was apparently still skittish about sending in arms because it feared they would end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, but that, like so many unintended consequences of US foreign policy in the Middle East, was a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this stage the rebels were numerous, strong, motivated, and moderate and I made that clear in my reports on the air.

The fundamentalist picks up the book and says, “Okay, I’m just going to read every word of this and do my best to understand what God wants from me. I’ll leave my personal biases completely out of it.” Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God’s literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn’t hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery—you just put in a few lines like “Don’t take sex slaves!” and “When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don’t rape any of them!” And yet God couldn’t seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth.

Target killing of Palestinian leaders, including moderate ones, was not a new phenomenon in the conflict. Israel began this policy with the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani in 1972, a poet and writer, who could have led his people to reconciliation. The fact that he was targeted, a secular and leftist activist, is symbolic of the role Israel played in killing those Palestinians it ‘regretted’ later for not being there as partners for peace. In May 2001 President George Bush Jr appointed Senator George J. Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East conflict. Mitchell produced a report about the causes for the second Intifada. He concluded: ‘We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the [Government of Israel] to respond with lethal force.’13 On the other hand, he blamed Ariel Sharon for provoking unrest by visiting and violating the sacredness of the al-Aqsa mosque and the holy places of Islam. In short, even the disempowered Arafat realized that the Israeli interpretation of Oslo in 2000 meant the end of any hope for normal Palestinian life and doomed the Palestinians to more suffering in the future. This scenario was not only morally wrong in his eyes, but also would have strengthened, as he knew too well, those who regarded the armed struggle against Israel as the exclusive way to liberate Palestine.

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.

Our country, as well as the rest of the world, faces an enormous threat from ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations that aspire to achieve world domination. These were the same aspirations held by the followers of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Our government must recognize the importance of directly and vigorously confronting these forces of evil. We must not make the mistake of avoiding necessary conflict; we did not get involved in World War I or World War II until we felt that American interests were directly threatened, and this proved to be the wrong choice, though we eventually were victorious. If a vicious enemy that is willing to decapitate people, burn people alive, and even crucify children is allowed to grow with only minor to moderate resistance, it will only become a more formidable adversary in the future. If during this period of tepid responses to terrorist expansion the radical Islamists manage to acquire nuclear weapons, providing for the common defense will take on an entirely new different meaning. The longer we wait to eliminate the threat, the more difficult that task will become and the more dangerous the world will be for our children and grandchildren. We must use all necessary resources to protect the lives of our people. Given the existence of enemies who have a stated goal of destroying our nation and our way of life, one way to provide for the common defense is to hide, which in our case would not be possible. A better option is to try to eliminate the threat, and the earlier the threat can be eliminated, the fewer lives will be lost in the conflict.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says that the very term “moderate Islam” is “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.” Turkey’s refusal to fight ISIS has led to the rise of that terror group as well.

It’s very much the moderate world that has to speak up on this,” says Chemberlin. “I recently got an award from the Islamic Resource Group [a US-based educational group seeking to further understanding of Islam]. And I told them, ‘Your extremists and our extremists want to fight. And then we’re all in trouble.

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?

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.

Throughout history there have been populations that have lived in desperation, and none of them have resorted to the intentional targeting and murder of children as an officially practiced and widely praised mode of achieving political ends. When extremist elements of otherwise legitimate liberation movements such as the Republican Sinn Fein have committed such atrocities, their actions have been unconditionally condemned by the civilized world, and their political objectives have been discredited by their vile crimes. This is not so with the Palestinians. Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now that place is in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Now that behavior is legitimized as ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli ‘occupation’ by, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the European Union. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas in 1987, the campaign to destroy Israel has taken on an ugly, fanatic religious tone. Holy obligation reinforces (and is replacing) Palestinian nationalism as the motivation for committing terrorist murder. As we have seen the secular, ‘moderate’ factions of the Palestinian nationalist movement (such as Abbas’s Fatah Party) will shrink into insignificance, and is replaced by terrorist Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas receives financial and material support from the same sources as al Qaeda, and from al Qaeda directly. Islamic Jihad receives financial and material support from Iran, directly and through Hezbollah. These are the same international criminal entities that wage religion-based terror war against the United States. They do it for the same reason and by the same means: to make Islam supreme in the world, by the sword or the suicide bomb.

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.

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?

Again, as young males have always been the most aggressive element in society whereas older men were traditionally associated with a counsel of moderation and compromise, it has been suggested that the decline in young men’s relative numbers may contribute to the pacificity of developed societies while explaining the greater belligerency of developing ones, particularly those of Islam.

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.

The rise of radical Islamism received a good deal of state help from Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family agreed to propagate Wahhabism as a means of propitiating the clerics, thus buying “their own political legitimacy at the cost of stability elsewhere.”65 Because funding of Wahhabist institutions comes from both Saudi government ministries and private charities, it is virtually impossible to estimate the total spending. One expert testified to Congress that the Saudis had spent roughly $70 billion on aid projects since the 1970s, and others report that they sponsored 1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools worldwide from Indonesia to France.66 These institutions often displace more moderate and worse-funded institutions promulgating moderate interpretations of Islam.67 Even if these numbers are incorrect, a fraction of the dollar figures still dwarfs what the United States has spent on public diplomacy in the Muslim world.

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.

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.

US policy of recruiting Syrian “moderates” to fight both ISIS and Assad, Biden said that in Syria the US had found “that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.” Seldom have the real forces at work in creating ISIS and the present crisis in Iraq and Syria been so accurately described.

ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb is associated with being particularly sensitive to justice and fairness. ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān’s name is derived from the same Arabic root as ʿiffah, which according to al-Qāmūs of al-Fayrūzabādī, refers not only to moderation but also to one who is abstinent and chaste, a meaning that is fitting for ʿUthmān. The Prophet once said that even the angels were shy before ʿUthmān because of his modesty. In ʿAlī ibn AbīṬālib, there is extraordinary wisdom or ḥikmah. It is true that these great heroes of Islamic civilization embodied in a particular way one of the four virtues, but they also kept a balance that enshrined the rest.

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.

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).

When US air strikes began the US did tell the Syrian government when and where they would be, but not the “moderate” rebels whom the US was publicly backing. The American military presumably calculated that anything they told the Free Syrian Army, the loose umbrella group of rebel units, would be known to ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra within minutes.

While the United States claimed to be promoting moderate, secular rebels, in fact the strongest groups held rightist, Islamic views. In

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.

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

Even in America this is a problem. In the summer of 2011, Middle East Quarterly published the results of an intensive four-year study on “sharia-adherence and the promotion of violent, jihadist literature in U.S. mosques.”14 The results? A stunning 81 percent carried jihad hate literature—with 51 percent carrying texts “rated as severely advocating violence,” and 30 percent carrying texts “rated as moderately advocating violence.”15 Especially disturbing was the discovery that “mosques with this literature were not merely repositories but incubators for the messaging of this material.”16 And fully 58 percent of the mosques “invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad.”17

It is impossible to make predictions—to say if the Islamic Republic will collapse or if it will survive in its current form. Certainly its current form isn’t the one it took in the immediate wake of the revolution. Although Khamenei has been committed to safeguarding the revolution, he has also created a new theocracy—one that relies on the greed of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij instead of the loyalty of its founding fathers. Khamenei has banished nearly all the clerics who held power when Ayatollah Khomeini was alive. Despite falling oil prices and economic sanctions, Khamenei had enough petro-dollar to satisfy his military base of support: the Guards and the Basij. The oil revenue has been the biggest deterrent to democracy in Iran, even though the windfall has transformed the fabric of Iranian society. The Iranian middle class, more than two-thirds of the population, relies on the revenue instead of contributing to economic growth, and thus has been less likely to fulfill a historic mission to create institutional reform. It has been incapable of placing “demands on Iranian leadership for political reform because of its small role in producing wealth, as in other developing countries. The regime is still an autocracy, to be sure, but democracy has been spreading at the grassroots level, even among members of the Basij and the children of Iran’s rulers. The desire for moderation goes beyond a special class. As I am writing these lines, Khamenei’s followers are shifting alliances and building new coalitions. Civil society, despite the repression it has long endured, has turned into a dynamic force. Khamenei still has the final word in Iranian politics, but the country’s political culture is not monolithic. Like Ayatollah Khomeini, who claimed he had to drink the cup of poison in order to end the war with Iraq, Khamenei has been forced to compromise. The fact that he signed off on Rohani’s historic effort to improve ties with the United States signals that the regime is moving in a different direction, and that further compromises are possible.

Biden said that in Syria the US had found “that there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.

Give them an inch, and they take the whole playing field and then change the rules of the game to make sure it is only they who ever get to win. Above all, you cannot beat the Islamists at the long game. When it comes to sheer endurance they will always have the edge. The very definition of moderation is knowing when to stop. What all the Islamists have in common is that they never let up for a second. To quibble with Islam, or, more precisely, with what the Islamists define as Islam, has become the equivalent of advocating that the age of consent be abolished in a full session of the U.S. Senate. Once the Islamists take charge, all arguments must be carefully couched in Islamic terms. Such support as secular movements once enjoyed go up—at least publicly—in smoke. In August 2011, Malaysian activist Norhayati Kaprawi, the director of a documentary about the new stricter women’s dress codes in her country, said some women she interviewed had refused to show their faces in her film. They did so not on religious grounds, but because they feared reprisals. Malaysia is a country living in fear of the radical Islamists, she said. “If you don’t follow the mainstream you will be lynched,” she said, adding that people who hold more progressive or alternative views “don’t dare to speak up in public.”36

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.

Die Grenze verläuft nicht nach Religionszugehörigkeit, sie trennt vielmehr Extremisten und friedliebende Menschen. Deshalb bin ich optimistisch: Es wird nun ein humanistischer Islam wachgerüttelt. Der moderate Islam muss endlich aus der Deckung treten und erklären, wie mit den gewaltverherrlichenden Stellen im Koran umzugehen ist. Die Verdrängung, das habe nichts mit unserem Glauben zu tun, funktioniert nicht länger. Wir müssen uns dieser Herausforderung stellen.

Our interaction with nature is clearly constrained and directed by such foundational ethical precepts as mercy, moderation, and gratitude, which, when systematically understood and applied, result in ecological health. But ethical precepts refer ultimately to human nature, and therefore ecological health is rooted in psychological health. From this deep level perspective, environmental degradation is less a resource problem than an attitude problem. This psycho-ecological approach toward preserving and enhancing environmental health is explored by considering some pertinent aspects of Islamic socio-intellectual history and their relevance for re-articulating and re-applying authentic Islamic environmental ethical values in today’s world.

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.

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.

Ann CoulterAnn Coulter > Quotes Ann Coulter quotes (showing 1-30 of 210) “Guns are our friends because in a country without guns, I'm what's known as "prey." All females are.” ― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans tags: humor, politics, second-amendment 143 likes Like “I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it. You know who else was kind of "divisive" in terms of challenging the status quo and the powers-that-be of his day? Jesus Christ.” ― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans tags: faith, humor, politics 112 likes Like “When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times” ― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans tags: humor, politics 60 likes Like “The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.” ― Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans tags: humor, politics 50 likes Like “No matter what argument you make against evolution, the response is Well, you know, it's possible to believe in evolution and believe in God. Yes, and it's possible to believe in Spiderman and believe in God, but that doesn't prove Spiderman is true.” ― Ann Coulter, Godless: The Church of Liberalism tags: faith, humor, politics 45 likes Like “As far as I'm concerned, I'm a middle-of-the-road moderate and the rest of you are crazy.

The Misbâh has chapters on “knowledge” (- ilm, ch. 62), “certain knowledge” ( yaqîn, ch. 88), “wisdom” (hikmah, ch. 99), and “ignorance” ( jahl, ch. 77). The chapters are spread over the whole, work seemingly without any clear motivation justifying their insertion in the particular places in which they are found. “Jafar” starts, of course, with the praise of knowledge as he does with the blame of ignorance whose progress is darkness42 and whose recession is light. He is concerned with clarifying the particular aspect of knowledge that is referred to in such common traditions as the search for knowledge being a duty, the search for knowledge to be extended even as far as China,43 and the knowledge about one’s soul being the knowledge of the Lord.44 In the first case, the knowledge intended is the knowledge of the fear of God and of certainty (- ilm at-taqwâ wa-l-yaqîn); in the sec- ond, the knowledge about (ma- rifah) the soul/self which includes the knowledge about the Lord; and in the third (where this last knowledge is particularly speci- ed), the knowledge that requires acting in accordance with it and which is “sincere devotion” (ikhlâs). The theme of the necessity of acting with sincere devotion is then elaborated by means of statements castigating useless knowledge and stressing the fact that just a small amount of knowledge supports a large amount of life-long work. An inscription found and deciphered by Jesus and a revelation received by David likewise indicate the need for action. “Knowledge” is the only way leading to God. The true “knower” is identi- ed by his prayers, his piety, and his actions, and not by his appearance, his pre- tensions, and his words. True knowledge has always been sought in the past by those possessing intelligence, devotion (nusk), modesty (bashful- ness, hayâ), and the fear of God (khashyah); today it is sought by men not possessing any of these qualities. Statements concerning the qualities required of teachers and students conclude “Jafar's chapter on knowledge. Knowledge, for “Jafar,” is the result of introspection, a response within the individual to the divine. But it is also the result of a process of teaching and studying, and it must - find expression in relevant human activity. The whole would seem to be a mixture of moderate Shîah views of revealed and inspired knowledge and the “orthodox” concern with the methodology of the transmission of traditions and their practi- cal legal signi- cance.

The era that began in 1979 is over,” he announced. From here on, Saudi Arabia would be the home of “moderate Islam.” To drive home the point, he declared, “We will destroy the extremists.” To emphasize the change coming in the country for the young Saudis who were watching online, he pulled out what looked like an “old” BlackBerry—circa 2005—and a current iPhone. The difference between the two, he said, is how Saudi Arabia would change. The image went viral.

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.

But Dua, more pious and conservative, had learned about Islam only when ISIS took over, and wished to see religious politicians—moderate and genuine ones, certainly not these fanatics who used religion as flourish—in power. Her problem with ISIS was not that it had sought to establish an Islamic state and impose Islamic law, but that it showed disregard for basic Islamic legal tenets. ISIS had instrumentalized Islam, made it a means to its political ends; it had hollowed the faith out of everything it stood for and reduced it to a tactic: takfir, designating opponents as enemies whose blood could be spilled.

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.

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.

true brotherhood I had seen in the Holy World had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision. Every free moment I could find, I did a lot of talking to key people whom I knew around Harlem, and I made a lot of speeches, saying: “True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete. “Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds—some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called Capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists

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 issue of fascism since 1945 is further clouded by polemical name calling. The far Right in Europe after 1945 is loudly and regularly accused of reviving fascism; its leaders deny the charges no less adamantly. The postwar movements and parties themselves have been no less broad than interwar fascisms, capable of bringing authentic admirers of Mussolini and Hitler into the same tent with one-issue voters and floating protesters. Their leaders have become adept at presenting a moderate face to the general public while privately welcoming outright fascist sympathizers with coded words about accepting one’s history, restoring national pride, or recognizing the valor of combatants on all sides. The inoculation of most Europeans against the original fascism by its public shaming in 1945 is inherently temporary. The taboos of 1945 have inevitably faded with the disappearance of the eyewitness generation. In any event, a fascism of the future—an emergency response to some still unimagined crisis—need not resemble classical fascism perfectly in its outward signs and symbols. Some future movement that would “give up free institutions” in order to perform the same functions of mass mobilization for the reunification, purification, and regeneration of some troubled group would undoubtedly call itself something else and draw on fresh symbols. That would not make it any less dangerous. For example, while a new fascism would necessarily diabolize some enemy, both internal and external, the enemy would not necessarily be Jews. An authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well; in western Europe, secular and, these days, more likely anti-Islamic than anti-Semitic; in Russia and eastern Europe, religious, anti-Semitic, Slavophile, and anti-Western. New fascisms would probably prefer the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and time to alien swastikas or fasces. The British moralist George Orwell noted in the 1930s that an authentic British fascism would come reassuringly clad in sober English dress. There is no sartorial litmus test for fascism.

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.

the aforementioned case of Muhammad Hegazy, who was not permitted to change his religion from Islam to Christianity on his I.D. card. In February 2009, another apostate, Maher Al-Gohary, fifty-eight, tried to officially convert to Christianity—only to be accused of apostasy, with prosecutors calling for the death penalty. As Maher himself put it: “Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals. We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us.” He has been attacked in the street, spat upon, beaten, and threatened by text messages and phone calls—all simply because he petitioned to be granted the right to convert to Christianity. Eventually he and his daughter fled to Syria, once a moderate nation under secularist Bashar Assad. However, since the “Arab Spring” reached there, too—with Syrian Christians under attack by jihadis—in 2011, Maher and his daughter managed to flee to France where they applied for asylum.66