"Moral Muslims": A Continuation of the Discussion

Below are three comments from Findalis' recent thought-provoking Radarsite article.

Roger W. Gardner said...
Fine, thoughtful article. The subject of reforming Islam remains problematic for me. To abrogate the existential threat of Islam to the non-Islamic world, one would have to expunge so much material from the Koran that it would become utterly unrecognizable -- conquerable to taking Christ out of Christianity. Islam is aggressive political movement founded on religious doctrine. Islam was founded by a criminal and murderer, and this fact cannot be altered by changing or deleting a few violent phrases. I'm afraid I still find it difficult to recognize "moral Muslims" or "moderate Muslims". Unless they are prepared to completely renounce the teachings of their "prophet" and start afresh, they are, in my view, guilty of perpetuating this ghastly cult. Islam is the enemy. Not just the radicals, but the bloodthirsty cult itself. Islam -- regular, "non-radical" Islam is the sworn enemy of freedom and liberty, There can be no other interpretation of its message. It truly is "them or us".
April 23, 2009 4:14 AM
Findalis said...
Actually Roger there is a small minority of Muslims who do reject the violent passages of the Koran as false prophesies. They accept only the early non-violent ones. Nor do they consider Mo the most perfect man but place him as imperfect as many of the other prophets of the bible.It is too bad that the majority of Muslims don't follow this sect. For if they did, none of us would have a problem with Islam.Islam today is where Christianity was in the 15th Century. The violence over the Reformation lasted centuries. Unfortunately, the world cannot afford 200 years of war. Not in an age of WMDs. So either Islam must reform to a gentler form or it will be destroyed. The world cannot accept any other choice!
April 24, 2009 12:43 AM
Ben said...
I dissected the article here:http://snooper.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/flight93-terrorist-memorial/I took issue with seven critical points, which I denoted with superscripts linked to an enumerated list following the article. Roger is right: Islam can not survive the excision of its evil core. Findalis is out of luck, because Islam is irreformable. Perfection can only be defiled, not improved; see 5:3. 6:115. And the Word of your Lord has been fulfilled in truth and in justice. None can change His Words. And He is the All­Hearer, the All­Knower. 18:27. And recite what has been revealed to you (O Muhammad ) of the Book (the Qur'ân) of your Lord (i.e. recite it, understand and follow its teachings and act on its orders and preach it to men). None can change His Words, and none will you find as a refuge other than Him. You can't change the Qur'an!!! Umdat as-Salik, Book O, Chapter 8, paragraph 7 lists 20 acts entailing apostasy, punishable by execution. This is one member of that list:-7- to deny any verse of the Koran or anything which by scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does belong to it;A Muslim who denies 2:216, 8:12, 8:39, 8:60,8:67, 9:29 or 9:123 is an apostate and may be killed with impunity. I believe that Zehudi Jasser and Khalim Massoud are sincere, sufferers of cognitive dissonance. Islam is what it is, not what they wish it were; it will never become what they want it to be.
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A note from Radarsite: At the very heart of our prosecution of the GWOT lies the persisting quandry of the "moderate" - or as our friend Findalis offered - "moral" Muslim. Isn't it astonishing that, nine years after being viciously attacked by Islamic jihadis, we are still finding it difficult -- if not impossible - to satisfactorily identify our enemy? Who is our enemy and who is not? The more we learn about Islam the more muddled we become. Despite the overwhelming and undeniable evidence -- which we are all well aware of -- that in the last half century the vast majority of attacks against the West and the US were perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Allah, we still look for ways to minimize the extent of the Islamic threat and make ourselves more comfortable. Not all Muslims are bad people, we tell ourselves. Many Muslims are decent law-abiding citizens. We have Muslim friends and acquaintances who are beyond reproach. And, perhaps the biggest objection of all: if Islam itself is our enemy, then will we find ourselves at war with the entire Muslim world? Are we fated to have to fight all x-billion of them?

As you can see from the comments posted above, even the most informed and intelligent among us, such as our good friends and compatriots Findalis and Ben, find themselves at odds over this thorny issue. To Findalis, the existence of these moral Muslims gives reason for hope. To Ben, it is Islam itself, in whatever form, that is our sworn enemy -- and this includes all Muslims who follow the Koran. For Ben, hope is to be replaced by clarity and resolve.

Perhaps now would be a good time to clarify Radarsite's position on this seemingly intractable problem. Below are links to a sampling of the many articles I have written for Radarsite on this subject. There are many, many more. In a nutshell, I am a 'maximalist', I believe that Islam itself is the source of the evil which confronts us. I believe that Islam truly is a manifestation of utter evil. I further accept the premise that Islam, by its very nature, is, has been, and always will be the mortal enemy of the West, and that the two ideologies are inherently incompatible. It is the avowed mission of Islam to conquer the world for Allah, to make the world into a universal caliphate. This has been its unalterable goal since it inception. To ignore or misread this fundamental truth is to make a deadly mistake. And in our courts and universities, and in the hallowed halls of Congress, we are making these deadly mistakes daily.

The bottom line.
If I truly believed that what this country needed at this time in our history was more compassion, more tolerance and more understanding, then I would be calling for that. However, given the irrefutable evidence of the facts of our world, given that the common denominator of all of our Middle Eastern enemies, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, et al is Islam, given that this is -- whether we deem to acknowledge it or not -- a global war of Islam against everybody else. Whether it be in Africa or Malaysia or Dearborn, the enemy is openly and unequivocally Islam.

I believe that given the great changes that have occurred in this nation over the last half century, and given the perilous conditions we now find ourselves in, the last thing, the very last thing, we need is to continue trying to find more ways to humanize our Islamic foe. Our good-hearted tolerance of the intolerant has placed us in this untenable position, and if we are to survive we must abandon our present foreign-policy-by-wishful-thinking and confront the enemy head on. Now is the time. Tomorrow will be too late. We must stop trying to find common ground with Islam and, once and for all, recognize it for what it truly is: an aggressive bloodthirsty political movement based on "religious" teachings. If we are to win this virtual Clash of Civilizations we had better cease trying to understand the enemy and concentrate on defeating them. And, yes, I truly do believe that it is Us versus Them. - rg
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For further reading:
http://bestofradarsite.blogspot.com/2009/01/rethinking-gwot-maximalists-versus.html

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/11/golden-key-those-illusive-moderate.html

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2009/01/blinded-by-hope-abandoned-by-reason.html

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2009/01/wrestling-with-mohammed-revisited.html