Writing in Front Page Magazine last week, Daniel Greenfield made some insightful observations about Islamic ‘extremism.’
In the West we tend to associate Islamic extremism with guns, bombs and terrorism, and with good reason. However, in Muslim nations, Islamic extremism is about a lot more than violence.
In Muslim nations, the battle between extremists and ‘moderates’ is about whether people can listen to music, play chess and watch soccer games. It’s about whether women can drive cars or men can shave their beards.
Greenfield also goes on to point out that the difference between ‘extremist Muslims’ and ‘moderate Muslims’ obscures an important reality.
Distinguishing moderate and extreme Muslims is as useful as making distinctions between moderate and extreme Communists. These distinctions did and do exist, but they are less relevant in the context of an overall ideology whose goals are war, dominance and subjugation.
A moderate Communist was still a pretty terrible person. Likewise, a moderate president of Iran is still a political force in a theocracy that discriminates against non-Muslims, engages in regional religious wars and denies many civil rights to half the population.
Western liberals obscure this basic fact in their obsession with finding moderates to talk to. Moderate Muslims are still extreme by the standards of the West. They still support violence; the only difference is that they are more willing to try non-violent methods of conquest first.
In the long run, how much difference is there between the moderate slave owner who tricks his slaves into putting on their own chains and the extremist slave owner who makes them do it at gunpoint?
The end result is still the same. And that is the problem.
Greenfield concluded his article on the following sobering note:
It will not matter much if the civilization we know is lost and if the freedoms we are familiar with are taken away by the moderates who play the long political game or the extremists who play the short and violent game. It will make a difference to the great-grandchildren of our conquerors who will be able to play chess or fly kites; but our great-grandchildren will still be as fundamentally unequal as the Copts of Egypt or the Jews of Yemen.
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I totally agree with the article.
There was a mini TV series called “How the West was won” about the migration of people in America from east to west with the genocide/subjugation of the indigenous people as collateral damage. A new series called “How the West was lost” should be now made documenting how the indigenous peoples of the Western world are being conquered and subjugated by an alien religious philosophy. What other civilization has allowed a hostile force into its territories where it can train its foot soldiers openly under the guise of cultural centres and allows those who hate the status quo to openly preach hatred and change under the guise of freedom of speech and /or religion?. The West is already lost helped by the secularists/ humanists who embraced liberal equality for all yet hate Christianity which made the West great and prosperous and which is the only thing that can stand up against Islam. Islam means submission and there is no such thing as moderate or extreme it’s the same thing as much as an attack Rottweiler and a Chiwawa are both canines.
For the liberal/humanist lobby Islam does not play by the rules and atheists are considered to be worse than Christians and Jews. So once they are running things watch out!
I really appreciate that article. I have often considered the whole moderate v extremist muslim situation. The foundations of Islam are the same, just that some have chosen a more liberal, contextualised approach so they can engage with their Western neighbours, or lack of knowledge of their own religion so they cannot explain the violent teachings and have to overlook them. I don’t think that all moderate muslims would still support violence, this is a generalisation, I personally know some muslims whose concern is raising their families and trying to be pious on a personal level, but I would agree that the moderate view as a whole is deceiving. I read an interesting book called ‘The Islamist’ by Ed Husain, a moderate muslim who went into radical political expressions of Islam, then became disillusioned with that approach, particularly when a student at his college was stabbed to death by a fellow radical muslim. However, Ed Husain believes in Sufi Islam, which is a more mystical expression of Islam, which requires dumbing down of Mohammed’s conquering ways and presents a more ‘romantic’ view of their prophet, which appeals to the more intellectual, educated muslims such as Ed, who satan then uses to deceive the general public into thinking that moderate Islam is the true form of Islam, a ‘religion of peace’. Come, Lord Jesus! May we be praying for and winning muslims to Christ.
“ Distinguishing moderate and extreme Muslims is as useful as making distinctions between moderate and extreme Communists.” Indeed it is ! There was a massive distinction between the Stasi in East Germany and ordinary Germans (nominally communist because they had to be ) trying to get on with their daily lives. The Muslims I know are not extreme or violent.
“A moderate Communist was still a pretty terrible person.” This sounds like the words of an American who has seldom met one. Very many English people were perfectly happy with their holidays in communist Yugoslavia. American tourists may have reached French and Italian cities like Avignon or Bologna without ever realising that they had communist administrations elected by a majority of the citizens, who seemed just like anyone else.
An “extreme” Muslim in the religious sense is merely like a “strict” Baptist . They may seem a bit awesome when they get going, but they aren’t really going to do other people a lot of harm unless they have guns and things and are a bit demented.
When I read this kind of thing, I’m not sure what the writers think is happening. There are more Muslim immigrants in European countries than before, and for some of the young men and women here an interest in the strict teachings of their religion has become fashionable (which is often considered a good thing when it happens periodically in Christian countries). But I don’t see Muslim countries going to war with Christian countries and conquering them, and I don’t see masses of white Christians in their own western countries being converted to Islam. My guess would be that the balance is the other way, and that there is a decline of enthusiastic Islam in western countries, with many young people in fact losing interest, even if they go through the motions to please their parents. That would be analogous to what happened to Christianity in England in the 1950s and 1960s .