Mark Steyn on “moderate” Muslims:
'…as we always say, the “vast majority” of Muslims oppose “extremism.” These are the so-called “moderate Muslims.”
The “moderate Muslim” is not entirely fictional. But it would be more accurate to call them quiescent Muslims. In the 1930s, there were plenty of “moderate Germans,” and a fat lot of good they did us or them.
We know, because Western politicians and religious leaders tell us so incessantly, that the “vast majority” of Muslims do not support terrorism? Yet how vast is the minority that does? One percent? Ten percent? Here are a couple of examples that suggest it might be rather more. Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar, a sociology professor at Mount Royal College in Calgary, went along to a funeral at the city’s largest mosque and was discombobulated when the man who led the prayers - in Urdu - said, “Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways.” Dr. Kanwar said, “How dare you attack my country,” and pointed out to the crowd that he’d known this man for thirty years, most of which time he’d been living on welfare and thus the food on his table came courtesy of the taxes of the hardworking infidels.
As Licia Corbella wrote in the Calgary Sun: “Guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Trail mosque?”
Final score: Radical Islam 1, Moderate Muslims 0.
Here’s another example: Souleiman Ghali was born in Palestine and, as he put it, raised to hate “Shiites, Christians - and especially Jews.” After emigrating to America, he found himself rethinking these old prejudices and in 1993 helped found a mosque in San Francisco. As Mr. Ghali’s website states: “Our vision is the emergence of an American Muslim identity founded on compassion, respect, dignity, and love.” That’s hard work, especially given the supply of imams. In 2002, Mr. Ghali fired an imam who urged California Muslims to follow the sterling example of Palestinian suicide bombers. Safwat Morsy is Egyptian and speaks barely any English, but he knew enough to sue Mr. Ghali’s mosque for wrongful dismissal and was awarded $400,000. Mr. Ghali was forced off the board and out of any role in the mosque he founded. And, as the Wall Street Journal reported, Safwat Morsy - a man who thinks American Muslims should be waddling around in Semtex belts - is doing a roaring trade: “His mosque is looking to buy a building to accomodate the capacity crowds coming these days for Friday prayers.”
That’s Radical Islam 2, Moderate Muslims 0.
…(O)ne can’t help noticing that the most prominent “moderate Muslims” would seem to be more accurately designated as apostate or ex-Muslims, like the feminist lesbian Canadian Irshad Manji and the California academic Wafa Sultan. It seems likely that the beliefs of Mohammed Atta(9/11 hijacker) are closer to the thinking of most Muslims than those of Ms. Manji are.
The pseudonymous apostate Ibn Warraq makes an important distinction: there are moderate Muslims, but no moderate Islam…all of the official schools of Islamic jurisprudence commend sharia and violent jihad. So a “moderate Muslim” can find no formal authority to support his moderation. And to be a “moderate Muslim” publically means standing up to the leaders of your community, to men like Shaker Elsayed, leader of the Dar al Hijrah, one of America’s largest mosques, who has told his coreligionists in blunt terms: “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”
And even if you’re truly a “moderate” Muslim, why should you be expected to take on the most powerful men in Islam when the West’s media and political class merely pander to them? What kind of support does the culture give to those who speak out against the Islamists? The Iranians declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie and he had to go into hiding for more than a decade while his government and others continued fawning on the regime that issued the death sentence. The Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh spoke out and was murdered, and the poseur dissenters of Hollywood were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage and bravery in standing up to Bush even to mention their poor dead colleague in the weepy Oscar montage of the year’s deceased. To speak out against the Islamists means to live in hiding under armed security in the heart of the so-called “free world.”
Meanwhile, Yale offers a place on its campus to a former ambassador-at-large for the murderous Taliban regime…
In 2003, Abdurahman Alamoudi was jailed for attempting to launder money from a Libyan terror-front “charity” into Syria via London. Who’s Abdurahman Alamoudi? He’s the guy who until 1998 cerified Muslim chaplains for the United States military, under the aegis of his Saudi-funded American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. In 1993, at an American military base, at a ceremony to install the first imam in the nation’s armed forces, it was Mr. Alamoudi who presented him with his new insignia of a silver crescent star.
He’s also the fellow who helped devise the three-week Islamic awareness course in California public schools, in the course of which students adopt Muslim names, wear Islamic garb, give up candy and TV for Ramadan, memorize suras from the Koran, learn that “jihad” means “internal personal struggle,” profess the Muslim faith, and recite prayers that begin “In the name of Allah,” etc. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - the same court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the words “under God” - decided in this case that making seventh graders play Muslim for two weeks was perfectly fine, just an interesting exposure to a fascinating “culture” from which every pupil can benefit.
Oh, and, aside from his sterling efforts on behalf of multicultural education, Mr. Alamoudi was also an adviser on Islamic matters to Hillary Rodham Clinton.’