Where Are the Muslim Anti-Islamists? They’re the People Battling and Being Murdered by the Islamists
These people listed above vary in their religious views from pious, to different varieties, to lax, or secular, but they are still Muslims.
B) There are far fewer people who could be called moderates who want to reform Islam in some active way.
Perhaps it is the relative shortage of these people that is misleading. The number of liberal Muslim reformers is not large, partly due to repression and intimidation. To some extent, though not completely, a lot of the alleged power of the reform movement is a creation of Western apologist propaganda. Yes, real moderate reformers do exist — a variety of articles and books deal with their ideas — and they are courageous people. Unfortunately, the Western mass media often favors the phonies.
Yet aside from all the varieties of Islam (one of which is the moderate Sufi view) and relative secularists and the sincere but relatively inactive Muslims, there’s something else, too. I call it conservative-traditional Islam, and it has been very powerful. Conservative-traditional Islam has dominated, for example, the Arab world and Iran and Turkey and lots of other places for decades. It has several different approaches.
Among the Shia there is the “Quietist” Islam which means to be very religious and stay out of politics. This is the Islam that Ayatollah Khomeini battled, defeated, and his regime has tried to repress. But it is very much alive, and one day — though it might take many decades — it will boot out the Islamists of today right to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. It is also very active in Lebanon and in Iraq, too.
Then there is the conservative-traditionalist Islam that has controlled the official positions throughout the Arab world and will now be rooted out by the Muslim Brotherhood if it can. These clerics are not necessarily lovable liberals, but they are not advocates of violent revolution and people who fully intend to implement genocide. They viewed the Islamists as heretical and just ignorant, though many have surrendered or gone over to the winning side.
And in some places, notably Indonesia and places in sub-Saharan Africa, a systematically moderate Islam has emerged and run things for many years, though it is being challenged by the Islamists.
One more thing: if the foolish and ignorant governments in many Western countries actually helped real moderates, secularists, assimilationist or acculturating-oriented Muslims, and even conservative-traditionalist ones, perhaps the Islamists would be getting pushed back in the West, especially Europe. Instead, the intellectual establishments and governments often back, coddle, fund, and cheer the radicals.
Prof. Rubin – It is not often I disagree with you, but today is one of those times. Suppose you take the column you wrote and change the word, Muslim, to German, and the word, Islamist, to Nazi, and then suppose you transport the time period to 1934. Yes, there were Germans who were moderates, and yes, they were probably the majority in Germany (in 1934). That did not stop the Nazis from wreaking havoc across Europe and North Africa while destroying one-third of world Jewry; and that did not stop Germans of types being identified as Nazis. So, yes, there may be moderate Muslims, but right now it’s Islamists who hold sway, and it is they who make Islam the political ideology it is today, rather than a religion.
In any event, refuah shlemah.
Jack – I don’t entirely agree w/your analogy, but let’s run with it.
I would say that the missing ingredient in the 1930s and the missing ingredient today was/is courage w/in the Western world to resist and eliminate the Nazis/radical Islamists. For example, folks often offer the well-researched (it seems) thought experiment that if the British and French had militarily resisted the re-militarization of the Rhineland and gave Hitler’s opponents covert assistance that would have been the end of the Nazi regime in 1936.
In the spirit of intellectual debate among allies, this important essay by Rubin should be discussed at all anti-Islamist websites which claim to be serious. IMHO, Rubin is exactly right that the RoP meme is just the more influential mirror image of the Muslims-are-robots-with-a-default-to-head- chopping meme. Both are too simple and stupid.
I would love to see Barry Rubin (may he soon have a refuah shlemah), Daniel Pipes, Andy McCarthy, David Goldman and Robert Spencer in a moderated discussion of this issue. FPM sponsored a decent Goldman/Spencer discussion a year ago.
MarcH, I do not see how you refuted Jack’s comparison. The point he is making is not that the West (but for Churchill and a few others) saw Nazism as the mortal threat it was, but that Nazism became synonymous with Germany. When the U.S. declared war, it was not against Nazism but Germany. The question is, who speaks for authoritative (authentic) Islam, so-called moderate Muslims or orthodox, shariah-compliant Muslims?
Barry:
Thanks for this piece. Much needed, and especially from someone of your calibre and background.
I hope you remember me, and our meeting in Tel Aviv, and our going out together. I treasure the memory
of your hospitality, and of everyone else I met during my last visit to your great country.
I have been saying over the years in my columns what you have expressed here, that right inside the heart
of Islam there is an immense struggle taking place between Islamists who outnumber, out gun, out reach those
of us Muslims who understand too well in every aspect and lived experience the utterly cruel nature of Islamists
and Islamism as an ideology that rides on the back of a faith tradition that has been pulverized by politics going
back to the earliest years of Muslim history.
Few today in the West in public will acknowledge this for reasons you have so well stated. For instance, from Islam in Indian history (I am, as you know, of Indian origin) there is a wide gulf between the Islam of the two Mughal emperors Akbar the Great and his great grandson Aurangzeb. Akbar, the contemporary of Elizabeth I, was a man devoted to embracing people of all faiths, supporter of Sufi Islam, a man in his time immensely liberal in his living and thinking, who is held in the highest regard in modern India as a symbol of India’s value of pulling together her immense diversity into a shared principle of respect and recognition of the other. Aurangzeb, on the contrary, was everything that Akbar was not, who pushed his bigotry as a religious command that spelled the beginning of the end for the Mughal rule in India. Indian Muslims have been divided over which of the two emperors was more faithful to the ideals of islam, and those who took to Aurangzeb ended up dividing India and creating what is now indisputably the failed-rogue state of Pakistan, and what passes for Islam in Pakistan could well be traced back to the bigotry of the Muslim orthodoxy surrounding Aurangzeb. There is a whole world of ideas to be explored in the little example I have shared with you, and perhaps you might take
the time and think and write about this as an example of what today passes for this immense struggle in the heart of Islam that will likely continue for many decades to come.
Muslims who are on the side of Akbar are mostly alone today. They are up against the petrodollars of the Arab monarchs,
the politics of the Muslim Brotherhood and its off-shoots, and of course the role of the Western powers to continue aiding and abetting the very source of Islamism for reasons of national interests and world politics even as Islamists today have replaced Bolsheviks/Communists/Leninists/Stalinists/Maoists as the most insidious enemy of freedom and democracy. The first victims of this war of Islamists against freedom are Muslims themselves in numbers far exceeding the casualties among non-Muslims.
I hope you are getting well, and I pray you will vanquish your malady, get strong and continue to provide your readers world wide with your unique insight to the political challenges of our time you understand so well.
God bless.
Salim
I’m writing this from not from a Muslim religio-legal standpoint, but from a Jewish one, and I don’t know how exact the analogies are. That said, the question seems to hinge on whether “jihad” can be redefined, or the obligation to engage in violent jihad so limited, that it ceases to pose a danger to non-Muslims.
In Jewish law, there is a specific Torah injunction to extirpate Amalek. Leaving aside the irony that Amalek would probably be unremembered today were it not for this commandment, the definitive Rabbinic approach seems to be to say that this command involved killing people who belonged to a single, specific nation/people which no longer exists. Yes, there may well be a spirit of Amalek that needs attention, but careful distinction is made between combating habits of thought or character attributes and killing the people that have those habits and character.
Can this be done for jihad? If not, the fact that there are Shia quietists who choose to ignore that aspect of their religion does not immunize them against the Khomeinis of the future.
Or Islamalek, perhaps?
Salim you would do well to look around the globe at how Muslims treat each other daily http://youtu.be/BYaqNdkMiJk
and come to the realization that there is no allah of mercy or compassion within Islam,only a bloodthirsty god with absoutedly no compassion or mercy.
A foundation built on lies
With this fact firmly in view you will come to the realization that this evil cult is built on lies,violence,threats,subterfuge and robbery and escape from it post haste for the good of your eternal soul.
Shut your face. Salim is an anti-Islamist. You should be offering encouragement.
I’m no fan of Islam, but there’s a flaw in your logic. If violent Muslims are proof that Islam is blood-thirsty, then how come peaceful Muslims aren’t proof that Islam is peace-loving?
The number of liberal Muslim reformers is not large, partly due to repression and intimidation….and sudden death,sometimes at the hand of new converts.
http://news.yahoo.com/caucasus-suicide-bomber-named-russian-widow-101431448.html
It is apparent that on the subject of Islam and the false prophet Mohammed that you have a very limited view and understanding of what is soon to transpire.
The end of Islam is near.
Barry,there is no fixing an evil lie !The moderate are powerless and deep in their hearts they also long for the day of Islam’s world domination.
Islam is united and determined to wipe out Israel.No peace is possible between the ‘infidel’ Jews and Islam PERIOD.
Whether Israel attacks or does not attack it will continue to be blame and vilified by the US,EU,UN and Islamic world for being an infidel nation in the heart of the Islamic world.
Islam and Israel cannot,will not co exist,the final showdown is coming as we saw between the God of Israel and the dominant.undefeated Egyptian Empire, little Moshe in goat herder apparel, Israel vs.Islam, Pharaoh for the same repeat preformance.
THe Holy One of Israel will bring about Islam’s defeat and all the world will know that the God of Israel is God alone.
The brainwash the masses will finally understand that allah was hte creatin of an evil deceiver and falsse prophet named Mohammed.
It is truly a sad spectacle of how ignorant many Jews are of the Jewish book and it’s warning for this present generation.
Joel 3
Proclaim this among the nations:Prepare a war; rouse the mighty men!
Let all the soldiers draw near, let them come up! Beat your plowshares into swords
And your pruning hooks into spears;Let the weak say, “I am a mighty man.”
Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations,And gather yourselves there.
Bring down, O Lord, Your mighty ones.Let the nations be aroused
And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat,For there I will sit to judgeAll the surrounding nations.
13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.Come, tread, for the wine press is full;
The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.The sun and moon grow dark
And the stars lose their brightness.The Lord roars from Zion
And utters His voice from Jerusalem,And the heavens and the earth tremble.
But the Lord is a refuge for His people And a stronghold to the sons of Israel.
17 Then you will know that I am the Lord your God,
Barry – I hope you’re doing well. You are in my thoughts. I agree with you on so many things, but in this I think you have it completely wrong. Please pardon me while I put forth counterpoints to this notion of engaging “moderates”.
To begin, change the ideology to two which menaced the world 80-90 years ago: oh! had we only sought out the moderate Shintos and the milder Nazis! I’m sure the exact same thing could be said about the vast majority of Germans and the vast majority of Japanese… Most of them were moderate and had no interest in all mass murder and global conquest, but the problem was the ideologies in which these respective peoples existed. Those ideologies were poisonous and required extirpation.
I have no doubt that Islam, as all ideologies, is open to variations and interpretaion. It is axiomatic; there are Shias and there are Sunnis and innumerable sub-sets within and among Muslim communities. Even the vicious mullahs in Iran and the vicious clerics in SA have squabbles over interpretation, sometimes leading in murder and bombings of rivals… And of course there are Muslims for identification purposes only.
But these uncomfortable facts remains:
At its core Islam exhorts violence and the slaughter of those not with the program.
Islam is a utopianist ideology which explicitly calls for world domination.
There is no effective effort among Muslims to roll back the dark forces among them who take their Islam seriously.
There is no way to predict when, or prevent any Muslim anywhere from beginning, for whatever reason, to take Islam’s bloodiest exhortations seriously, and thus becoming a terrorist.
There are few to no argumants which so-called miniscule number of Islam-reformers can muster to alter the trajectory of Islam’s immutable texts.
Further, just because there is internecine war among Muslims over interpretationof Islam doesn’t mean any of those factions are fighting for anything we’d value or wish for or find salutary.
I am not a “full stop” arguer as described above. But I assert that partnering with syncretistic Muslim unicorns will only permit the legion of Muslim decievers and liars to take the field. People like Irshad Manji, the lesbian Islam reformer with a following of zero Muslims and a few dozen infidel media types (and apparently Barry Rubin), has no answers. Even her mother rejects her interpretation of Islam!
Look, Muslims have inhabited the West now for four decades. They have lived safe properois lives because of the blessings of a secular society deeply infused with the Judeo-Christian ethos. During those four decades, those Muslims have not only failed to come up with any convincing counter-argument to the extremists, much worse, their communities have begun to show all the signs of nurturing and protecting terrorist monters from among their ranks.
Project that trend out another two decades, as radical and entrenched Western Muslims give birth to even more radical children, and as millions more Muslims flee the disgusting despotism and horrors which Islam inculcates…
With all due respect, if we take this advice to enlist the help of those so-called “moderates” it will be a catastrophe for the West. There are more Muslims now, and will be even more in the future if we don’t reverse migration. What will this dark future look like? Just see what use Muslims have put their freedoms and privileges to in the West: not reform, but more Islam – more mosques – more lectures about our Islamophobia – more demands for respect – more exhortations to outlaw criticism of Islam – more intimidation of surrounding communities (in my lifetime Hamtramk Michigan has been transformed from a charming blue collar enclave of Polish people to a mostly Arab Islamic redoubt which increasingly looks like Lebanon or Turkey.)
Engagement with “moderate” Muslims has lead to “moderate” Saudi Arabia funding over 10,000 mosques and terror-spewing imams in the US and Europe. Engagement with “moderate” Muslims has lead to 20-30,000,000 Muslims colonizing the cities of Europe, and several millions more infiltrating America. Engagement with “moderate” Muslims has lead to the mole Human Abedin whispering into the ear of our US Secretary os State. Engagement with “moderate” Muslims has lead to terrorists consutants instructing the FBI, the Pentagon, the CIA, and local law enforcement on “Muslim sensitivies”. Engagement with “moderate” Muslims has lead to hundreds of dead American patriots as they are forced to work with Iraqi and Afghanistani fascist armed forces… If this isn’t reversed, then it is only a matter of time before nukes are slipped into a Western port, and Jihad is openly waged in places as diverse as Hamtramck and Los Angeles, etc.
Morton, You have nailed it dead on.
“Please pardon me while I put forth counterpoints to this notion of engaging moderates.
To begin, change the ideology to two which menaced the world 80-90 years ago: oh! had we only sought out the moderate Shintos and the milder Nazis! I’m sure the exact same thing could be said about the vast majority of Germans and the vast majority of Japanese… Most of them were moderate and had no interest in all mass murder and global conquest, but the problem was the ideologies in which these respective peoples existed. Those ideologies were poisonous and required extirpation.”
I’d like to repeat the last sentence again: ” Those ideologies were poisonous and required extirpation.” Exactly the case with Islam.
Mohamed was undoubtedly one of the most despicable men who ever lived. Any belief system that follows and reveres someone as evil as Mohamed cannot be reformed nor should an attempt be made to do so. For civilization to survive Islam must be eliminated.
I keep finding myself asking this question: “If these so-called moderate Muslims don’t believe in the in the teachings of Mohamed why do they remain Muslims?”
It seems it would make more sense for them to leave the religion than to try to change the minds of a billion plus people.
Moderate Muslims reforming Islam makes no sense whatsoever.
Professor Rubin,
I readily confess to being a member of the group which considers Islam, and, of course, her allies, to be the problem; I am willing, however, to employ a semi-colon on this occasion.
I shall be as succinct as I am able: the precise proportions of revolutionary Islamists versus ordinary, decent humans with the misfortune to have been born into the Umma has been the principal discussion point on this important topic for quite some time.
Are you of the opinion, therefore, that in order to separate goats from sheep or to winnow chaff from wheat, and with some form of caliphate seemingly in the offing, an ideological ultimatum concerning the provenance of the Shaytanic verses, the principle of abrogation and the nature of the Medinan elements of the Queer’un might be timely?
Sincerely,
Ben Qurayza
Taqiyya. Taqiyya, taqiyya, taqiyya.
This is what it all comes back to in the end.
So long as Taqiyya (Lying to Kafir [infidels] in order to advance Shari’ah and Islam) exists, it is impossible to have Muslim allies.
So long as Taqiyya exists, trying to engage them is nothing more than allowing them to perform Da’wah.
It’s time to for so-designated “experts” to start pointing out to non-Muslims what Taqiyya (and the more recent concept, Muruna [Temporary exemption from Shari'ah in order to advance Shari'ah]) is, and how Muslims engage in it.
Kitsune – spot-on!! Also, appreciated Morton Doodslag.
Barry Rubin places me between extremes in order to get “full stop” at moderation. “Islam is a religion of peace full stop” vs. “Islam is the problem full stop”. Rubin then moderates between Islam = peace and Islam = problem by turning to “Muslims”, i.e., to the people who indentify themselves as Muslims. Once this shift from “-ism” to practioners is made, there is no problem whatsoever to finding endlessly varying individual bearers of the tenure “Muslim”. The term “Muslim” takes on a confusing plurality of meanings–and, perhaps, it should. (I will return to “-ism” vs. “believers” presently.)
Since Rubin has related a story, so will I. For years here in Germany I have done much grocery shopping from a sincere, friendly, family oriented grocer from Turkey. Alas, he has moved. Nevertheless, whenever we see each other we give a hug and I inquire as to his lovely family–and I am being sincere. THAT Muslim is not secretly waiting to cut off my infidel head with his “full stop” sword. Yet, for a long period, my Turkish grocer sold translations into German of some of the homilies of Al-Ghazali, one of the great Muslim thinkers in the 12th Century (Christian time), sort of an Islamic David Hume (alas there was no Islamic Kant to answer him), who finally surrendered to living out theologically his “core” Islam. A lesson to learn is here.
I learned my Islamic (?) philosophy in Spain. R. Ramos Guerrero in various books has noted that Al-Ghazali did not simply refute philosophically his opponents. (No less a thinker than Averroes spent much time trying to rebut Al-Ghazali–and that is a philosophical compliment!) No, Al-Ghazali (Arab speaking, though of Persian origins), thinking theological according to his “core” Islam, ended further philosophy in the world of Islam, however not so much with arguments, as with demanding that the philosophers lose, yes, their life because of their theoretical heresies. Al-Ghazali was ONE Muslim. His religious doctrine was “Islam”. The “-ism” of Islam took full possession of Al_Ghazali (his life’s story evinces probable bouts with terrifying doubt) and that one Muslim brought “full stop” not only to the further evolution of philosophy in Islam, but to the very lives of the philosophers themselves. Averroes lived an adventurous life seeking refuge here and there. (Averroes and Avicina could well have had more influence in Christian Europe than in “Islam”–cf. the interest of Thomas Aquinas in the two.) What is the point of my story? I am seeking to find a way “to moderate” between “full stop Islam” as the problem and Muslims who are not a problem (or less so) without falling into “full stop” Islam as a religion of peace! The fact that my Turkish grocer finds in Al-Ghazali a source for his theological mianderings does not bother me too much. That Erdogan might find inspiration in Al-Ghazali does, indeed, trouble me. Al-Ghazali was an Islamic supremacist. In hia way, so too is Erdogan. It is time for the moral of my argument.
Let us say, just for the sake of the argument, that the doctrinal “core” Islam is exactly as interpreted by Robert Spencer or, more importantly, by Raymond Ibrahim of “Pundicity” (certainly proponents of Islam as the “problem full stop”). Under this assumption, “ISLAM” as a doctrinal “core” contains structurally the elements that quite plausibly motivate aggressive behavior as evidenced today in the Egyptian Brotherhood or in Shia Iran or in the various lethal killers “in the name of Allah” in Africa. What I find missing in Rubin’s analysis is an adequate consideration of the relationship between “-ism” and “believer”. Raymond Ibrahim, a Coptic Christian, has developped a thesis that is worthy of consideration.
Ibrahim compares “core” (my term and not his) Islam to the Protestant Reformation. What he means is that the Lutherans of the early 16th Century sought a return to the sources, a restoration of “original” or, should I say, “core” Christianity–a Christianity stripped of the accumulations of centuries, all supposedly evident in the Catholicism of the day. (Eventually, the returners to the origins got themselves into a lethal 30 years war with the accumulators.) Ibrahim sees (and documents over and over) a dynamic impulse amongst “MuslimS” to find their way back to the “core”, a core constituting a “problem full stop”. If Ibrahim’s thesis holds water, then the MuslimS, being in disarray since the collapse of the Ottoman empire, who manifest attempt to “return to the core”–and that seems to fit the Muslim Brotherhood or any other return-to-the-fundamentals MuslimS–are exposed to a permanent radicalization. From such a standpoint, “core” Islam is precisely “the problem full stop” because it can inspire Muslims to become problems. Reading Rubin’s last article and David Goldman’s current one, I am left with the impression that the “return-to-the-origins” reformers are winning out–and the tone of the current article by Rubin seems to bear out my thesis.
The problem, as it appears to me, is to figure out how to aid reforming, though believing Muslims not to become returners-to-the-core Muslims, rather to seek to live their religion “in peace”. For afterall, medieval Catholicism has long since surrendered any theocratic claims,–yet only after some time. There is nothing in Catholic doctrine, particularly exemplified in St. Augustine, that demands theocracy. (Indeed, Emmet Scott holds that Catholicism became theocratic in imitation of Islam.). Tentatively, I think that “core” Islam does entail theocratic goals which are, indeed, a problem–but then Muslims themselves can change. In time? What strategy is to be recommended, particularly since the Obama administration and Europeans in general seem to see naught but “Islam is peace full stop”? Rubin’s article raises for me more questions than answers.
I have read that in fact what happened to the once thriving Islamic civilization is that it was taken over by the back to basics and more violent breed of Islam. No more scholarship, no more mathematicians.
I am not an expert in islamic history, but I noticed three things: The Muttalab were muslims, but in their time they advocated critical thought and the intellectual path eventually leading to science. They did not go very far. They were accused of heresy, and eventually silenced, which is perhaps a euphemism.
Then there was the case of an Ottoman Sultan, some 3 centuries ago, who attempted to modernize his society, but could not create anything durable. Then there is the more recent case of Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, who managed to create modern and democratic institutions in Turkey, the biggest fragment of the Ottoman empire in the aftermath of WWI.
In the last few years it became evident that the islamist in Turkey are trying hard to return to their oppressive tradition of sharia. Same thing in Egypt and elsewhere, where the Muslim Brotherhood is proceeding furiously for a general takeover. 30 years ago Khomeini overtook Iran, which at the time was relatively modern.
So, yes, there are what we might call “moderate” or “modern” muslims, but we should understand that so far, along history, they have been crushed by the islamists. So I see two questions:
1. Can we make a difference by supporting these brave souls? Perhaps we can, and we are not trying hard enough?
2. Perhaps we have made a difference already, because things like Internet, satellite TV, airplanes have demonstrated to hundreds of millions of people living under various tyrannies the empirical superiority of the West, as opposed to the axiomatic superiority of Islam?
There are many on this thread who know islamic history much better than I do, and perhaps can bring some precision to my remarks.
Perhaps our real problem is that we’re now so enveloped in spin, double-speak and elastic taqiyya and stretched-hypocrisy from these muslims of whatever stripe that definitions of gradations of their Muslimhood or Islam-hood are now impossible.
It’d seem the best definition of a muslim is the narrowest..is he/she a reader and advocate of the Koran? All….of their Koran.
How can he/she be a little bit pregnant…..how does he/she choose which verses to ignore?
“Sure, Muslim communities in Europe and America hardly ever renounce terrorism or fight the Islamists or explain to converts that Usama bin Ladin and Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood aren’t big heroes.”
Then how do you know that they do not support Islamists? How do you know that they are “moderate”? Just because they did not kill anybody personally yet? But most of Nazis did not kill anybody personally either. Why is Islam better?
About “freedom loving” Iranians, you write: “…, I explain, I’m an Israeli just giving a talk there. Their faces fall.” The freedom-loving Iranians hate Israel the same as any other Iranians. For me, it means they are all the same. Their disagreements with the current authorities are superficial. They just want the power in Iran to change hands.
A Muslim is a Muslim, but not a “Muslim”.
According to documentaries on German tv some 200k Germans were actively involved in mass murder in the camps, though thousands of SS and others did killing until many in the officier corps revolted and tried to kill Hitler. Other Germans, such as cousin Patrik Hitler migrated to the US, joined the American navy and fought against Hitler. (Patrik’s grandchildren live in America under assumed names.) I can go on distinguishing between Germans that were Germans (= followers of Hitler) and “Germans” that deviated from to fighting against the Nazi menance with its “core” ideology. But, FDR put at gun point 11,000 German Americans without charge and trial (not just Japanese Americans) into holding camps for the duration (could have been my father, except that he was a naval officer).
The point of my deviation from the theme of “Muslims” is to show that at the time of “core” German Nazism (and Nazism entailed a “core” of beliefs which structured and motivated aggressive behavior), the equation of “German” with German, both inside and outside of warring Germany, would have been a false one. (My God, had we rounded up everyone with a German name, who would have replaced a certain Gen. Eisenhauer?). Coming back to the problematic of “Muslim”. I do not see my Turkish grocer as secretly waiting to surpress me and who is just fooling me with taquiyya(?). Or then there is my Iranian friend who is currently reading some articles by David Goldman on the Brotherhood and an old one on blood sacrifice in religion for further discussions between us. Andrew McCarthy praises in the pages of PJ Media the loyal American “Muslims” that helped him in his conviction of the Muslim terrorist. I just cannot fit all “Muslims” into an unequivocal category of Muslim who are my enemies. And any attempt is counterproductive.
I will try to focus the matter. Rita Breuer has published recently a book with the title (I translate) “In the Name of Allah? Persecution of Christians”. She shows as EMPIRICAL fact that in all countries in this world where Muslims constitute the majority there IS persecution of Christians and “in the name of Allah”! Note that I just placed the exclamation mark “!” after Allah whereas Breuer places a question mark “?” in her title. She leaves open (indeed, does not discuss) the connection between “in the Name of Allah” as empirical fact and “core” Islam as a necessary factor, one not reformable. What do I make of fact and its justifying “-ism” left undiscussed by Breuer? (This will be, by the way, a theme for a discussion with my Persian Muslim friend.)
I go back to my comment above, i.e., I find the analysis of Spencer and Ibrahim (and there are many more scholars) to be correct that Islam (considered by me as “CORE” Islam) contains within the doctrinal structures constituting its status as an “-ism” that imply a totalitarian supremist movement as logically derived. The Botherhood shows all signs of being so inspired. That makes “core” Islam qua being an “-ism” into a problem full stop. But, following Ibrahim’s thesis in a way not congenial to him, that does not make ever single “Muslim” a Muslim (= Brotherhood-type “core” believer), particularly as a “problem full stop”. At this moment in history not all “Muslims” have returned to the origins. Many evince a development in a way that would make them loyal to Western values. That they may be in the minority and under fire by the “core-ists”, does not mean they are not there and it would be a fatal error to write them off as Rubin notes. (Note: After time and struggle, the Japanese placed in camps convinced FDR to let them fight. The result was the MOST decorated –and highly decimated– division of soldiers in the European front fighting against the Nazies! Think about it!)
–Aside: Look up in internet the sendings of The Cardinal Newman Society and you will soon discover that a Catholic is not a “Catholic” (to the horror of the “papists” of the Newman Society–”papist” being the derogatory name applied to English Catholics by Protestants in the 1th Century and now, on occasion, by some “Catholics”). The point of such a journey into the internet is to show that a Catholic is not a “Catholic”. The moral is: Be careful with generalizations.
Oooops! I meant 16th Century England. Whereas Catholics in France persecuted Protestants (many of whom migrated to Fritz’s Berlin and contributed to the economic evolution of Prussia and, at least one of which, later became a general in the Wehrmacht and whose decendent is a current German politician), Protestants, viz., Anglicans prosecuted “heartedly” Catholics in England. Particularly under Henry VIII the matter of who was in charge of the Church was of crucial value (and every more wives). So, those true to Catholicism were identified as “papists” which in turn later became a term of self-praise. If one reads, say, in the Newman Society complaints, one will see that authrority, be it of the bishop or, particularly, of the Pope, has once again become a problem and the term does appear. All this is said not only to correct an error of date, but to remind the reader that “generalizations” must be made with care–>> a tension between “-ism” and practioner pointed out by Rubin.
Barry, first let me say how much I admire your writing and keen insight – as well as how prolific you are! And before I forget, I hope your battle with illness is going well.
At the bottom of all these debates about moderate, extreme, radical, Sufi, Sunni, blah de blah, is the ineradicable fact that the person that Muslims uphold as their prophet was a merciless butcher. Among his many atrocious acts, he participated in the beheading of 800 Jewish men, the Banu Qurash. This fact alone makes him and those who follow him a massive problem for peace-loving people. All religious devotees must look to the founder of their religion as a model of conduct. Muhammad is spoken of in the Koran in just those terms. He is the perfect model. The system of Sharia is simply the codification of his words and deeds as the requirements for all Muslims to follow. It’s all tied together into a coherent creed. Those Muslims who most closely follow the example and the rules are the Muslims who are truest to the message. By what other method can we judge a Muslim?
It really matters very little to which branch of Islam a Muslim is aligned, for any association with Muhammad and his example is morally compromising. Look at the societies where Islam is a dominant force. Which one has anything to offer the wider world in terms of social, scientific or moral advancement? For sure, there are many individual Muslims who are fine people but this is more in spite of Islam than because of it.
Also, there is the problem of what actually happens in practice. Wherever Muslims exist in large numbers you have a proportion who are ready, even eager, to commit violence in the name of their religion and in imitation of their prophet. Even without direct violence, there is a constant sense of menace. Islam inhibits moral development rather than advancing it. Winston Churchill alluded to this. Ernest Renan, having studied Islamic societies in North Africa during the 19th Century, concluded that they were societies maintained through terror; a fanatical minority intimidating everyone else. We see exactly the same thing occurring now in exactly the same places. These are the inevitable fruits of the creed of Islam which is the inevitable fruit of the example of Muhammad. Everything else is a mere distraction.
I assume your essentially sociological description of the Muslim world is empirically factual. Similar ethnic group descriptions of 16th century Europe during the Reformation have been done. At the time I suppose Thomas Muenzer could be construed as the revolutionary anti-Catholic while Martin Luther was the more moderate reformist during the peasent wars in Germany. Whether the religious sects were described as traditional, reformist, or revolutionary seemed not to matter a wit when it came to the duration of those religious sectarian conflicts. You seem to be intimating that we are doomed to repeat the 16th century religious wars and pogroms but as outsiders within an ascendent Muslim context and while the current western elite myopia over who the players are have made matters worse the die is essentially cast for years of sectarian conflicts within Islam and the West. The West’s current economic difficulties certainly undermines the West’s audacity for the resistance; it occurs to me further that those acient post reformation conflicts didn’t end very well for Europe’s religous status quo or traditional Catholic Church. In the twentieth century the Jews were ultimately subjected to an attempted genocide by German descendants of the Enlightenment while cheered on by traditional unenlightened Muslims before Israel even existed.
Since you mention 16th Century Europe I suppose you are referring, at least in part, to my comments (since Rubin made no such temporal references). My point re Christianity, viz., Catholics had one main goal. What goal? I was seeking to support the thesis of Rubin that generalization concerning a group can be dangerous. I got off the subject a bit with the 16th Century (my reference was to England and not to Germany–I live not far from where Muenzer had his headquaters and where he led a blood-thirsty rebellion and received a blood-thirsty surpression). My point with “Catholics” is the difficulty of predicting behavior of a group nature. Given the Catholic Church’s rejection of abortion (= illicit taking of human life–>implicitly “murder”–quite strong, no?) and so forcefully made by the Catholic bishops of America, one would predict naturally that “Catholics”, e.g., those who bear the name, will vote against Obama, the greatest promoter of abortion this country has seen. This would be (and will be) an error. If you read just what the Newman Society spreads about, it is obvious that “Catholics”, including lay people, professors, priests, nuns and varied other Catholic groups will not follow suit, indeed, defend and promote matters that counter discipline re authority of the bishops or, even, of the Pope. (The attack on authority is a necessary ideological ploy to justify being “Catholic” without being Catholic.) The Republcan Party must be careful with its generalizations re Catholic vote for its election strategy. Catholics that attend Church regularly are more likely to follow suit with the bishops, those humming around in universities less, etc. etc. I apologize if I brought up horrible memories about the destruction Jews received in the wake of the Reformation, etc. That was not my intent.
I just got married!