Wednesday, September 17, 2014

What, and who, is a moderate Muslim?

Islamic values are codified in the Koran. The idea that some Muslims might interpret those values in a moderate way is like saying there’s such a thing as jihad lite. There’s no getting around the fact that a central tenet of the Koran is mass murder – whether through the directive to kill infidels (non-believers), apostates (those who leave Islam), or hypocrites (Muslims who don’t practice their religion appropriately). In other words, most of civilization is fair game for slaughter. What, pray tell, would be a moderate version of that?

And if people try to suggest there are many peaceful verses in the Koran, they are either uninformed or practicing taqiyya, because older, more peaceful teachings are abrogated by more recent violent teachings, as written in Sura 2, Verse 106. Jihad Watch reports:

Those Westerners who manage to pick up a translation of the Quran are often left bewildered as to its meaning thanks to ignorance of a critically important principle of Quranic interpretation known as “abrogation.” The principle of abrogation — al-naskh wa al-mansukh (the abrogating and the abrogated) — directs that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career “abrogate” — i.e., cancel and replace — earlier ones whose instructions they may contradict. Thus, passages revealed later in Muhammad’s career, in Medina, overrule passages revealed earlier, in Mecca. The Quran itself lays out the principle of abrogation:
Whatever a Verse (revelation) do We {Allah} abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring a better one or similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things? (snip)
…Meccan suras, revealed at a time when the Muslims were vulnerable, are generally benign; the later Medinan suras, revealed after Muhammad had made himself the head of an army, are bellicose.

David Wood, from Acts17Apologetics, has created a short video of essential verses from the Koran that highlight the pervasive call to violence. Would that such violence were only written in some ancient document that no one cared about. Unfortunately, we see Muslims the world over following these violent teachings as they commit mass murder, engage in honor killings, as well as rape, stoning, floggings, acid attacks, beheadings, and on and on and on.
The Muslim community appears to have no desire to expunge these violent teachings from the Koran, and so Islam remains a totalitarian ideology that puts it in a class all its own among other religions. Yet most in the West refuse to accept this fact. Instead, they want to believe a sweet story about Islam that exists only in their minds. Case in point: Just a few days ago after ISIS beheaded a British aid worker, Prime Minister David Cameron publically stated the all-too-familiar refrain that “Islam is a religion of peace.”

This gaping hole between the reality of what the Koran teaches and the fantasy so many want to embrace was highlighted when Bill Maher was interviewed by Charlie Rose recently. The interview included a discussion about Islam, Muslims, and ISIS. Maher, who has been outspoken about Islam in the past, was forthright on Rose’s show. (It’s the only positive thing I can say about him.) He spoke the truth about Islam and – miracle of miracles – even defended Christians. Rose, smirking and laughing, resisted being educated at all cost. But more importantly and emblematic of so many progressives on this topic, he was left with only one card to play as he said another familiar leftist refrain: “But I don’t believe….” Real Clear Politics reports:

MAHER: But most Muslim people in the world do condone violence just for what you think.

ROSE: How do you know that?

MAHER: They do. First of all they say it. They shout it.

ROSE: Vast majorities of Muslims say that?

MAHER: Absolutely. There was a Pew poll in Egypt done a few years ago -- 82% said, I think, stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery. Over 80% thought death was the appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion. I'm sure you know these things.

ROSE: Well I do. But I don't believe --

“I don’t believe” are critical words for progressives.
The left wants to live in a fantasy world. Part of that world includes the idea that most Muslims are not violent nor do they support violence. Many on the right are fond of making this proclamation, as well. But how do they know what “most Muslims” truly think or want?

As noted in the excerpted transcript above, a Pew Research poll from 2013 showed that a large percentage of Muslims around the world support Sharia law, with varying interpretations of what the law should dictate.
In addition, two years ago a poll was conducted on behalf of World Net Daily that revealed the following:

Nearly half of 600 Muslim-American citizens polled…believe parodies of Muhammad should be prosecuted criminally in the U.S. (snip)
“Almost half of those Muslims surveyed – an astonishing 46 percent – said they believe those Americans who offer criticism or parodies of Islam should face criminal charges,” said pollster Fritz Wenzel in an analysis of the survey’s results.
“Even more shocking: One in eight respondents said they think those Americans who criticize or parody Islam should face the death penalty, while another nine percent said they were unsure on the question,” he said. (snip)
Four in 10 said Muslims in America should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Islamic Shariah law.
“A much smaller percentage said they think the U.S. should establish an entirely separate court system to adjudicate matters involving Muslims,” Wenzel said.
While the respondents overwhelmingly lean toward the Democratic Party…they also have a fundamental conflict with American life, expressing objections to the freedom of speech and religion guaranteed in the Constitution.
American Muslims, Wenzel said, “show signs of ambivalence toward the U.S. Constitution generally and the First Amendment specifically.” (snip)

When you read polls like these. When you consider the tens of thousands of Muslims around the world who poured into city streets this summer to chant “death to Jews,” yet who are silent in the face of atrocities committed by Muslims in the name of Islam; when you watch the Muslim Day parade in New York city and witness their embrace of hate and faux victimization; when you see the violence that is unfolding in Europe as a direct result of Muslim immigration; when you realize there are increasing numbers of Muslims who seem like regular folks who then turn around and become jihadists, one realizes there is no way to know just which Muslims are “moderate.” See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here among a litany of examples.
As Daniel Greenfield recently wrote in FrontPage Magazine:

Every week another lad or lass from St. Louis, Toronto or Sydney makes the trip through Turkey to the Islamic State. A reporter dispatched by a local paper to talk to the neighbors scribbles down the same recollections about how nice and normal Jihad Joe or Jihad Jane was.

Classmates remember a loud partier or a shy student. Neighbors mention that everything seemed normal until those last few years when he began wearing a robe and she began wearing a burka.
The Somali and Algerian immigrants, the German and American converts, the black burkas and dyed beards, headed into the dying summer to kill Christians and Kurds, Turkmen and Shiites, to behead babies and crucify critics, don’t seem like monsters.
They loved their parents. They posed for jokey snapshots on Facebook. They had dreams of becoming biologists or boxers. Until they began killing people, they seemed just like the rest of us.
And with one difference, they were.
The forensic examinations of their lives rarely reveal anything of significance. The extensive digging into the lives of the Boston bombers told us nothing about why they would plant a bomb near a little boy.
The answer lay in the topic that the media carefully avoided. As with the other Muslim terrorists, the meaning of their motives was in the little black book of their religion which commanded them to kill.

Then there are those Muslims who are not outwardly violent (yet), but who support those who are and/or who participate in creeping Sharia. Throw taqiyya into the mix and it becomes extremely difficult to know or trust who is the ever-elusive moderate Muslim.
Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.