Moderate Islam - More Moderate Than What?

A local Catholic priest published this in his church bulletin...

I'm glad that some folks are catching on that so-called "moderate" Islam is not as moderate as they would have us believe.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Attack on Christianity - Warning from a Rabbi

Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Jew, highlights the growing badmouthing of Christians by secularists in this nation. He brings to our attention that many, such as Rosie O'Donnel and other media "stars", claim that conservative Christianity is more of a threat to this nation than fundamentalist Islam. What kind of agenda are these fools promoting? My educated guess is they are so keen on defending their perverse lifestyles that anything that gets in the way will be ridiculed. They are blinded by their defense of their perversions. Amazingly, they are so hellbent on justifying themselves that they mock the values that founded this nation. And consider Islam less of a threat to their own radical freedoms? Boy, are they in for a shock.

Read it here: http://www.towardtradition.org/index.cfm?PAGE_ID=284

The Challenge of Islam in America…

These comments are in response to those who wonder why some of us seem to be so concerned about the Muslim religion, including its’ practice in the United States. Let me explain my concern in a reasoned way – an argument other than “I’m not paranoid – they really are out to get us!!!!”

First, see if you agree with any of my opinions:

• Most Americans consider the great majority of Muslims to be moderate, benign, freedom-supporting people.

• The great majority of Americans don’t understand the basic doctrines of the Islamic faith nor the alignment of their “moral compass” as contrasted with that of practicing Christians.

• The great majority of Americans consider Islam through Christian-colored glasses, that is, from the religio-moral perspective of Christianity

• The great majority of Americans believe that most Muslims in the US are Americans first (believers in the values of freedom of expression, choice, etc.) and Muslims second.

• Most Americans greatly underestimate the Muslim threat in this nation.

Many Americans probably do not agree with the last bullet. So, I will especially focus on that issue: Why we are underestimating the Muslim threat in this nation.

Here is why I hold these opinions - based on the reality many do not yet understand.

Muslim growth and numbers:

Nothing is wrong with the growth of a benign group which has no intention of imposing its moral will and their form of government on me and my country.. I have no concern about the growth in numbers of Hindu’s, Buddhists, Shinto’s, Jews, or Baptists. It is the growth of an organization whose primary beliefs include coercion as the ultimate means of essential conversion and a highly repressive legal/moral code that is enforced by means that our culture believes is barbaric that is a problem. This spells trouble, especially for our culturally liberal friends (who are defenders of the Islamic faith) who hold the ability to do anything they please, no matter how morally outrageous or irresponsible, as their highest value. What an irony this will prove to be in the coming years! I almost wish I could be around to watch.

Back to the numbers. There are currently about 1.3 billion Muslim in the world and 3.9 million in the United States. The numbers of Christians is in decline in the world and in the United States. The rate of increase in the numbers of Muslims is increasing in both the world and in the United States.

Based on the rate of growth of Islam and the rate of decline of Christianity, in 2025 (18 years from now) Islam will be the majority religion in the world, with 30% (over 2.3 billion) versus 25% Christian. The number of Muslims in the United States will almost double, to over 7 million.

What difference do these numbers make? Let’s assume for a moment that the great majority of the 2.3 billion are “moderate” Muslim. Let’s say 90% are peaceloving and don’t really want to blow people up as an acceptable means of imposing their Sharia law and placating Allah. That leaves only 10% who tend toward the more literal version of Jihad…but how many constitute “only 10%.” Let’s see, that would be only 230,000,000 people that want to blow themselves up in our malls, restaurants, subways, and aircraft for their reward in heaven.

Muslim doctrine:

The point is, even 3, 4, or 5% who believe in and practice violent Jihad is a lot of folks creating a lot of trouble. But that is not my major concern. What exactly is a “moderate Muslim” and what does he believe?

Christianity went through a “reformation”, a return to traditional teachings of the faith, back in the 1500’s. These rebels against the Catholic church attempted to expunge the sectarian abuses and influences that crept into the Catholic church up till that time. They returned to the teachings of Christ, which centered on love, forgiveness, mercy, worship. The Catholic church itself instituted many reforms to correct the acknowledged abuses. In any event, neither coercion nor forced conversion were ever a teaching of Christ or of the early Church.

Many considered Islam a benign religion up until the last two or three decades. (Unfortunately, many still do.) A number of Muslim leaders themsleves have acknowledged that they have been a religion in decline in need of resurgence. Islam is felt to have strayed from its' roots, its' basic doctrinal teachings. That is why they have been benign until recently – they have not been practicing what their founder, Muhammad, has preached.

Islam is in a period of reformation – a return to their roots. Although unlike Christianity, their roots are not love, forgiveness, mercy, the sweet Christ-like attitudes that we take for granted. They are the attitudes of Muhammad. Let’s just say that they are the opposite of Christ. While during the early part of his life Muhammad practiced a degree of tolerance, during the latter part he practiced anything but. He taught war, he taught retribution, he taught conquest. He developed Sharia law (this is a whole topic unto itself). Let’s just say it involves the removal of various body parts for various infractions of the law. And oh yes, it does not involve freedom of expression, or religion, or women’s rights – take note, cultural liberals!

Those who point to portions of the Koran that sound peaceful and Kum Bay Yah-like…those are mostly in the early sections, the equivalent to the sequence of our Old Testament relative to the New Testament. The violent teachings occur in the latter portions of the Koran. And just as in Christianity where the later teachings of Christ supercede the teachings in the Old Testament (turn the other cheek, not eye for an eye), the Koran sequence is just the reverse. It started with turn the other cheek and later became “cut off the other cheek”. These later sections of the Koran supercede the earlier sections in this current Islamic “reformation.

So, who is a moderate Muslim? Who are the 90+% who are not involved in violent Jihad? What do they really believe? Are they the equivalent to the liberal Christians who doubt the literal messages and real significance of the New Testament? Are they in fact liberal Muslim who do not literally believe the teachings of Mohammad in his later life? Or are these “moderates” to some degree sympathetic to the recent Muslim reformation – the return to the glory days of the conquests of Muhammad? How many are sympathizers and in what ways are they lending support to the "reformed" core values of their faith?

Violent Jihad aside for the moment, there are several basic tenets of Islam. These deserve separate study apart from the space I want to allocate here for their understanding. But I will simply remind you what they are:

· The strictly narrow and subservient role of women
· Sharia law: Muslim law that takes precedence over all other forms of national government
· Dhimmitude: The second class and extra taxed condition of those who do not claim the Islamic faith.
· Taqiyya: The divine right to lie to advance the cause of Islam.. Examples of the use of this doctrine include Muslims deceptively pointing only to the early portions of the Koran to illustrate how peace-loving they are. A more outrageous example is the President of Iran claiming there was no holocaust and others claiming 9-11 was perpetrated by the United States or Israeli government to incite anti-Muslim outrage.
· Role of free choice in selecting a religion or no religion: None.

This latter tenet, the suppression of free choice, presents a real moral dilemma for this country. We cherish freedom and free choice as our highest value. Yet there is an organization out there (Islam) that wants to use our freedom of choice as a means to install their form of government and religious values that contends that free choice is evil.

Many of us question what business is it of ours to be concerned about a religion that does not share their values with most of us. How narrow minded and bigoted it is to be concerned about another religion in this manner.

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that Islam is not a religion, but is a political party. Let’s say that political party desires to overthrow our government by violent means and install an oppressive government that the political organization promotes? What would our attitude be toward that political party? Should such political group be outlawed?

This is exactly what is being taught in many of the Islamic schools within this nation, and certainly in most Muslim nations. Except for the fact of it being a “religion”, the resurgent “Islam” is another organization that desires to impose an oppressive form of government and faith on the people of the world and of this nation.

We are grossly and dangerously under prepared for the next jihadist event in this nation. Our national ignorance of the basics of the reformed Islamic faith are a big part of our problem. Blind tolerance and political correctness is another.

There are more Islamic jihadi sympathizers and helpers willing to assist in the next attack and the establishment of Sharia law in this nation than the public and possibly the federal government imagines.

For every example that can be shown of an American Muslim condemning terrorism or Jihadi terrorist acts by fellow Muslims, there are ten examples where they defend such actions, make excuses for such actions, or express outrage and offense that we are singling out Muslims for their terrorist acts. Nine out of ten times, Muslims express more concern over protecting their rights and privacy than they do over Islamic violence, murder, and terror.

I want to elaborate on this last point through the words of Brigitte Gabriel. She says it much better than I because she has lived through the Muslim torment.

Brigitte Gabriel is a Lebanese Catholic who, as a child in Lebanon experienced the Islamic revolution in her former Christian country. In her book “Because They Hate”, she ponders the "moderate" Muslim American…

“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? If something of yours had been stolen, wouldn’t you scream to the world that someone had hijacked it?

Where are the voices of Western Muslims, particularly the American Muslim community, sending a clear message to the Arabic world that we are American, and when you attack one of us you attack all of us? We condemn and consider the enemy Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Gamaat al Islamiya, and the rest of the collection of barbaric Islamic thugs and murderers who have neither conscience nor humanity. Where is the outrage of the Muslim community? Why aren’t the imams of every mosque holding press conferences, and inviting the media to tell the American public, “We are Americans first. Any enemy of America is our enemy. We will work to find, stop, arrest, turn in, and condemn anyone in our community who aspires to radicalize our religion and harm our country”?

Why do we not hear this condemnation? Because their allegiance is to their Muslim religion, not to America. They may be “moderate” Muslims. But that moderation is only an abstention from violent Jihad. They still maintain their allegiance, and it does not include us.”


Sources for further information:

http://jihadwatch.org/
http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/
“Because They Hate” by Brigitte Gabriel (book)
http://www.danielpipes.org/
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/