Several years ago when I first became engaged in learning and writing about Islam I was like most Americans. I wondered “where are the ‘moderate’ Muslims who should be speaking out against the violent Jihadi acts of terrorists in the US and around the world? Where are they?”
I wondered where they were as if finding them would be the solution to all our concerns about Islam. There was a smattering of qualified apologies for 9-11 among some Muslims, but the majority of demonstrations around the world were celebrating the jihadists and their victories over the Great Satan. We called their ideology “radical Islam” pretending it was distinct from Islam. After all, a day after 9-11 our president declared Islam “the religion of peace.”
As the years passed, more “moderate” Muslims in the US were added to the ranks of Muslims already in positions of influence in our government and academia as if their presence would help us solve the problem of “Islamic terror.” Instead of working to solve that problem, the Muslims in positions of influence in government and academia convinced our leaders to rename the problem of “Islamic terror” to “workplace violence” and “domestic terrorism”, removing all vestiges of association of these problems with Islam. No longer is the problem identified with the source of the problem.
In fact, the advice we acted on should have been the exact opposite: Identify the problem not merely as “Islamic terror”, but “Islam” itself. Sadly the influence of Islamist infiltration kept that from happening.
Why should we go that far? Why should we lay these problems at the foot of the Islamic ideology itself, and not on the so-called perversion of Islam that is referred to as “radical Islam?” First, few of us heard of Sharia law or knew what it was until half a decade after 9-11. It has taken us almost a decade now to realize that we have more to worry about Islam than just “terror.” The great majority of Muslims living in this country would like to impose their antithetical moral and political values on the rest of us, and in a very intolerant and unforgiving manner. Don’t believe for a second this isn’t the case.
I have come to realize over the past couple of years in particular that “radical” Muslims are just the tip of the Islamic spear. The shaft is what the Islamic ideology would like to impose on the rest of us: Sharia law, Islamic morality, Islamic intolerance of other faiths, Islamic treatment of women, Islamic engendered anti-Semitism, and all the rest of their ideology which is incompatible with our Judeo-Christian heritage, faith, legal, and political systems.
I am the subject of evolution. I have evolved into understanding that it is not merely the “radical Muslims” who are a threat to our nation. It is the Islamic ideology itself. It is historic, orthodox, fundamental, Muhammadan Islam that informs and promotes the intolerant, supremacist drive to subvert our way of life. Whether it is the patriotic, self-described devout moderate Muslim like Zudhi Jasser or a blatantly violent jihadi like Nadal Hasan, they both represent and claim their allegience to Islam. One represents the Meccan version; the other the Medina version. They both represent the teaching of Muhammad. The early Muhammad cannot be separated from the later Muhammad. It is the later, violent, intolerant, supremacist warring Muhammad that Islamic leaders throughout the world almost universally declare supersedes the earlier Muhammad. The early Muhammad represents the “make nice” version of Islam today. The later Muhammad is certain to follow.
So, I no longer seek the “moderate” Muslim. Such is a diversion. A waste of time. The moderate Muslim is an illusion; wishful thinking. The occasional “moderate” Muslim’s rhetoric aimed at chastening his fellow violent Muslims into moderation is a fruitless exercise; a shell game. There is example after example of “moderate” Muslims who have turned out to be anything but.
There is too much “Muhammad” even behind the moderates to believe that they are either sincere or believable. Who will they side with if the SHTF (as Obama has declared)? And there is too much momentum behind the fundamentalist-inspired Ummah of Islam to believe that the rhetoric of the “moderates” is any more effective than spitting against the wind.
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