Stalking the Mythical “Moderate”

Prompted by yesterday’s exposé of Maajid Nawaz, Matt Bracken created the following image:

This picture ties in with a discussion thread that took place in the comments on the same post. A commenter named Oren made these remarks:

Nawaz appears, at least to the average listener, as a genuine moderate Muslim, a very rare creature indeed. Whether his intentions are truly pure or not is irrelevant, because he is currently serving as a secular, reformed Islamic role model. If he is able to convince the anti-Jihad movement, then he is probably able to do the same for all the young Muslims out there.

I don’t know why anyone would think that the “anti-Jihad movement” is as hard to convince as “young Muslims” about where Mr. Nawaz’ true loyalty lies. I’m certain it’s clear to all Muslims who pay close attention to his words — especially those in the Hizb ut-Tahrir milieu from which he sprang — exactly what he is doing to further the cause of Islam.

This was my reply in the same thread:

I wish I could spend the time answering this comment in depth. However, I will say this:

Your words define the exact strategy that Nawaz and similar “moderates” want to promote.

I think the same process is going on in a lot of places. There must be hundreds of deep-cover Ikhwan operatives in these non-profit organizations, feeding sincere well-meaning people exactly what they want to hear about Islam. It makes those good-hearted folks feel so relieved — it gives them hope that a modern, civilized society that includes Islam can somehow be salvaged.

But it can’t. Despite all the hard work and millions of non-profit dollars that have gone into promoting “moderate” Islam over the past fifteen years, there is nothing to show for it. There is no sign that any of it will bear any fruit.

All this diversionary tactic has done is to keep the Western public in a hypnotic trance wherein they continuously mutter “moderate Islam… radical Islam… tiny minority of extremists… the need for an Islamic Reformation…” etc. This gives the Islamic State — the longed-for Caliphate — the time it needs to grow into a coherent, implacable manifestation of the will of the Ummah.

By the time Westerners throw off the post-hypnotic commands and wake up to what is happening to them, it will be too late. The enemy will have metastasized to the point where there is no choice but full civilizational war, with all the horrors that entails — mass-casualty terrorism, heaps of rotting corpses in the streets, the destruction of parts of major Western cities, and so on. Millions of deaths, economies destroyed, whole nations turned into wastelands. Just like North Africa circa 660 A.D.

So all I can say to you, Mr. Oren, is: Get thee hence, Satan!

Ten years ago I might have embraced your words. But I have learned a lot since then and been hardened by bitter events.

You may well be a taqiyya artist just like Maajid Nawaz. Or you may have just been fooled by his ilk. It doesn’t really matter; the end result is the same.

To expand on these thoughts just a little, let’s consider the long-term consequences of this desperate longing for “moderate” Muslims.

Many Westerners, both inside and outside of the Counterjihad, want to believe that somewhere out there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who are deep-down just like us. These good folks just need to be released into the sunshine of a modern secular democracy, and somehow lured out of their thrall to the imams and mullahs, and then “radical” Islam will no longer be the menacing force that it is today.


Muslims real and unreal

It was this earnest hope that led George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet the dismal failure of those two enterprises — which cost thousands of American lives, generated millions of refugees, and emptied the U.S. Treasury of untold billions of dollars — has not deterred well-meaning optimists who want to empower “moderate” Islam. They’re ready to throw good money after bad, invade more Third-World pestholes, spend more blood and treasure, and generate tens of millions more refugees. All in hope that Islam can somehow be modernized and civilized and made to resemble Western culture.

Why do they persist in such madness? What feeds this seemingly bottomless appetite for self-delusion?

Part of the explanation must lie in an unwillingness to contemplate the possibility that more than a billion people, a sixth of the world’s population and an entire pseudo-civilization, is implacably hostile towards us, its would-be benefactors. That there is a persistent political ideology behind this hostility, one that is strengthening and not diminishing. That Islam already is experiencing a Reformation, which is the cause of all the increasing intensity and zeal for converting, enslaving, or killing all infidels.

Normal people don’t want to contemplate this possibility because they don’t want to face the implied consequences. If 1.6 billion people (or whatever the OIC says the current number is) want to make war on the rest of us, what kind of world are we facing? What sort of heritage will be leaving for our children and grandchildren?

Better to search high and low for that mythical beast, the Moderate Muslim. Ah, just wait until we find him! Then we can welcome him into our house, enlist him in the cause, and with his help build a bright shining future for everyone.

I must admit that ten years ago I was willing to accept the possibility of such an outcome. I, too, was unable to face the horrible consequences of a civilizational war of that magnitude.

But about five years later I abandoned hope of any meaningful encounter with “moderate” Islam, if such a thing is even possible. Irshad Manji, Zuhdi Jasser, and Tarek Fatah will be ground under the tank treads of the Islamic juggernaut, just like the rest of us.

In the five years since I reluctantly faced up to that reality, “radical” Islam has strengthened by at least an order of magnitude, despite all the airstrikes and electronic surveillance and naked scanners in airports. It is not deterred by our puny efforts, and is currently gathering support from millions of Muslims who recognize a strong horse when they see one.

This is what the efforts of people like Maajid Nawaz and Imam Rauf have enabled. Their task is to pull the wool over the eyes of the wealthy, well-meaning movers and shakers at the highest levels of society in Western countries. At the governmental level their suave-tongued misdirection helps divert billions of dollars into bombing a phantoms in the desert. At the NGO level it induces organizations to expend most of their resources on “partnering” with “moderates” to create a form of Islam whose existence has never even been demonstrated.

It’s a delusion, but an understandable one, given the awful alternative — which is Reality.

This is why people like Vlad and me are on short rations while devotees of “moderate Islam” rake in millions in foundation money. The well-meaning, decent people who control the financial spigots of philanthropic organizations want to feel good about themselves just like everyone else, and contemplating the bloody future that lies ahead doesn’t make anybody feel good. Better a pretty lie than the miserable, ghastly truth.

Maajid Nawaz and his deep-cover colleagues have bought the Ummah a decade of breathing space (so far). Thanks to them, the Khalifa has had time to establish itself. Mujahideen are scattered throughout the West, waiting for the signal to initiate carnage in our cities. The wombs of the faithful are giving birth to new Muslims every day, from Jakarta to Tenerife, from Berlin to Hamtramck. And all paid for by the infidel.

That’s what the “secular, reformed Islamic role model” has done for Western Civilization.

Would I like to see more of the same? No, thanks.

47 thoughts on “Stalking the Mythical “Moderate”

  1. Liberals and leftists are only postponing the inevitable by their desperate whinging desire for global day care wherein Muslims are their little Play Doh, nappy time, cookies and milk, safe space friends. The “moderates” such as Nawaz, Uygur, Aslan, Oz, etc., are simply here to hand out the psychological teddy bears. Islam has at least a 1,400 year jump on us in the psychological warfare game and it is working like a charm. Now, let’s play the “reformation of Islam” game for another few years while they dream up another level of Islamist bull[ ]for leftists to wallow in while they suck the corners of their blankies.

    • “Islam has at least a 1,400 year jump on us in the psychological warfare game and it is working like a charm.”

      If only people could understand this simple significant truth!

  2. Well said, Baron.

    We sit and listen to people debate endlessly about Islam. Pundits, know-nothings, frauds, well meaning dupes.

    A fountain of wasted ink, real and digital, is being spilled by people who are simply behind the curve. This is something I’ve come to notice a great deal.

    There is a plethora of people who know a tiny by about Islam, just a little something, just enough to be concerned. This is the audience of people like Maajid Nawaz and Fareed Zakaria.

    Their audience thinks they’ve finally found a friendly face, and they hang on every word, without actually bothering to study Islam for themselves. They have no concept of how in the dark they really are. Instead they accept received opinions from people like Nawaz and his Infidel supporters.

    They talk endlessly about “jihadism” and “Islamism”. They wring their hands, trying their best to look as moral as possible, to be the Adult In The Room who won’t stoop to the “hatred” of the Counter-jihad.

    Meanwhile, they prate, and they prattle, and Islam marches on.

    The one thing that keeps me from despairing is knowing that Islam is, deep down, a paper tiger. The reality is that it can’t fight any real resistance, and it it’s ideological foundations are about as strong as butter.

    • “Islam is, deep down, a paper tiger.”

      It seems to me there is a huge difference between saying that Muslim armies almost inevitably lose to Western armies (true) and saying that Islam lacks the capacity to take over Western lands and governments (false).

      The unfortunate fact is, the governments of the West, as presently constituted, will do the fighting for the Muslims and will attempt to crush any indigenous efforts to expel the invaders. This is exactly what happened to Serbia in Bosnia and Kosovo.

    • I’ve been on the trail since the baby on the beach a month after being fired from my job copy editing the endless stream of telegraph, Reuters and ap copy that was my daily fare for 15 years, and here I am in graduate school with you. Friends and family are bemused and i understand they don’t get it because I didn’t either until the outrage I felt over the baby manipulation caused the blinkers to fall away. A while ago I was searching for this navaz character thinking he might serve as a bridge to reality via liberal anti jihad thought for my friend in San Francisco who was proving impossible in response to the revelations I have been experiencing. I had painstakingly walked her through original quaranic sources as well as horowitz and she’d reply with links to salon. I had had him on my feed for about a week but i got rid of him after feeling unease over a huffpost piece that made no sense and left me feeling vamped in the same way all leftie media does. I didnt peg him as a taqiyya artist just a confused muslim leftie head case. At the time I googled around and saw that he appeared on stages with all kinds of unsavory types (to my mind) and the reason I left off was because I knew I wanted my mind exposed to clear thinkers only although I was suspicious of those UK panels. So a couple of weeks later wondering what to do about my insane flower child in cali I decided not to introduce him at all. So your piece is very interesting to me but at the same time common sense is needed and it comes from being sensible plain and simple. So yes all this punditry and process learning simply has to tolerated and where possible guided. Baron himself says that ten years ago he was looking for answers in moderates. This is no time to feel miserable. You should be demanding responses from both Harris and nawaz as well as for the latter to debate peole like Spencer and jasser. These events can act as wormholes that cut through vast amounts of nonsense towards exposing the naked emperergod. And it’s good timing re the uk denouncement of mb.

    • I agree with “paper tiger” qualification

      – in peaceful competition, archaic islamic order has no winning chances
      – in direct military confrontation, it has no chances either
      – violent jihad will only lead to physical separation (Gaza strip model)
      – significance and price of oil/gas will be further reduced
      – Western demographics will be sustained by the progress in reproductive (“designer babies”) and regenerative medicine

      although islamic infiltration and subversion are annoying, – there is also hard cultural/intellectual/moral pressure exerted on muslims living in the West, driving them to face clear alternaive

      – those who are susceptive to Western ways of “reason and experience, and Golden Rule for all”, – will eventually choose apostasy. Western liberals might not articulate it when mentioning “moderate muslims”, but I think this is their real goal.

      – those who are kept strictly islamic/archaic by whatever cause – will be isolated, beseiged culturally, economically, and even geographically/militarily if/when/where needed, and marginalised

      and certainly under no circumstances I see “heaps of rotting corpses in the streets” in the West.

      don’t look at black Africa or ME with their “heaps of corpses” – the victims of islam don’t have there any intellectual/technological advantage over conquerors.

      for the snapshot of near future – look at Israel.
      not a rosy picture, in some places in the West it might become like this for some time, but hopefully not worse.

      before islam crushes completely.

      • Living in Israel, my free speech is not threatened as it is in say, UK, where Tommy Robinson was Gaoled for 11 months by a kangaroo justice system. Personally, I wish that UK could rise to the level of Israel, no “run, hide, tell” here.

        Most ordinary Israelis are honest about the fact that Israel is at war with Islam, even if the government cannot admit it publicly, We know that in war, horrible things happen. Europe, however, is trying to pretend that it is only at war with ‘extremist’ Islam and is thus deluded and vulnerable. Israel is not a snapshot of Europe’s near future because Europe lacks, and will continue to lack the spherical vim to even face its problems; Europe will surrender, just as in 1940, having seen Poland engulfed in the Nazi inferno, the rest of continental Europe just collapsed.

        • ehm, – as I see you are simply not interested in recent European affairs. Let us operate by facts not mantras.

          In the UK, the politicians like Nigel Farage, Paul Weston and his Liberty GB, journalists like Ann Mary Walters, Douglas Murray, Nick Cohen, Katie Hopkins, street protest movement Britain First, even Richard Dawkins, even BBC’s Andrew Neil – and Tommy himself, who now wants to start British PEGIDA division – are all speaking about, and debating dangers of islamization in direct and systematic terms.

          Also, very tangible polarization is felt at grassroot level.
          Throwing hijab-wearing women out of buses becomes national sport among some part of the “great unwashed”. Sort of “sudden counter-jihad” syndrome. I’m not endorsing it, but this is how it is.

          As to the “surrender” – please get real.
          Surrender – to whom?

          Surrender – to the bunch of bearded types wearing robes and sandals, who are increasingly perceived by the majority of population as brainless freaks, criminals, savages, or dangerous animals?

          Where is the victorious conquering force, anything even remotely resembling Nazi occupation administration?
          Is there any chance for sharia to be declared the law of the Land?

          The whole European police and armed forces are under reliable and exclusively Western command. In the UK, the firearms officers are almost all White.
          Every Islamic terror act is dealt with overwhelming force, exactly as in Israel. Suspected jihadis are kept under surveillance.

          One can expect several unpleasant years ahead, but overall, it is rather the Islamic radicals, who should consider or “surrender” (abandoning their cause as it is hopeless), or running out of Europe.

  3. That picture could almost be a U.S. TV commercial. Or a sitcom.
    Anyway, Americans tend to think in terms of individual bad guys: If we take out Saddam Hussein, Iraq will become free & democratic, if we kill a few Taliban leaders, Afghanistan will become free & democratic, if we remove Ghaddafi, Libya will become free & democratic, if we kill Osama ben Laden, Al-Qaeda will disappear, etc. etc. etc.
    The concept of total war – every man, woman & child being a potential soldier , assassin, living bomb is completely alien to Americans and very deeply disturbing.
    One of the reasons Vietnam was such a traumatic experience many are still not entirely over.
    And the frontier days of equally savage farm-to-farm or tree-to-tree warfare without quarter to anyone are too long ago and too shrouded in Disneyfied saccharine mythology.

  4. There are no Moderate Muslims. All Muslims are suspect. No Muslim can be trusted. It is impossible for Muslims to integrate with any non-Islamic society. [Sentence better left unsaid redacted]

    • Thomas Jefferson, you and I see the same picture. There are not and never have been any moderate or trustworthy muslims.
      Nor will there ever be any; they all follow the same murder manual, aka the Koran, which TELLS them to harass, murder and subdue us.

      Just no end of idiots in the west who WILL NOT see muslims as what they are and have always been–the enemy!

      Excellent essay Baron, and I wish you and Lady Dymphna a great Christmas and the best possible New Year! Pete

  5. One of the things I appreciate so much about Gates of Vienna is that you support the examination of theoretical, as well as pragmatic, backgrounds of what is happening. I think your series by El Ingles on the limits of democracy in the presence of diversity

    https://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/El-Ingl%C3%A9s-Ethno-Religious-Diversity-and-the-Limits-of-Democracy.pdf

    provides an excellent model for what we see in our countries. Basically, the more people who are brought in who do not share the values or goals of the indigenous population, the more difficult or impossible it is for a representative government to actually govern. Paradoxically, it seems to me, bringing in alien peoples, such as Merkel is actively doing in Germany, actually makes it easier for horrible leaders to stay in power. Once they hold office, it takes an active consensus of representatives to get rid of them and with numerous, weak political interest groups competing with irreconcilable objectives, there is no way to achieve such a consensus.

    I think that it is highly likely that there will be local rebellions involving what we call “ethnic cleansing”. As distasteful as it is, it is the only way to achieve a working polity. The Bosnian and Kosovo wars in Serbia in the 1990’s would probably serve as a good model.

    I don’t think it would be impossible for local, indigenous militias to move out the vast numbers of recent Muslim immigrants. Muslim armies and militias are not very effective.

    What really scares me, though, is the likelihood that national, and international, government forces will actively intervene on the side of the Muslim invaders. These are the governments that brought them in, and criminalized any effective critiques of Islam or Muslim immigration. Why would one think the governments would maintain even a neutral stance to local fighting?

    The fact is, the Muslims excel in subversion and penetration. They have been working for decades to penetrate the political parties and bureaucracies of the West. I think they also involve the major Western leaders not in bribery, exactly, but in a network of international organizations and mega-governments which provide an extremely lucrative future for their friends, as well as a milieu of support that denigrates national identity.

    • @RonaldB
      – Important explanation
      – Good insight
      – Must read for anyone trying to comprehend and get an overview of what is going on today

  6. I’m waiting for the emergence of the Million Moderate Muslim Foreign Legion, to form up in outrage at the misappropriation of their moderate and peaceful religion.

    I know that if a rogue group of Catholics seized a territory in the Alps or the Andes, and declared itself to be the Catholic State, and set to raping, beheading, crucifying and burning non-Catholics and “wrong-Catholics,” actual Catholics could not be stopped from going there en masse to put them down like rabid dogs. There is no way that Catholics would tolerate an evil “Catholic State” enslaving, raping and killing in the name of Jesus Christ.

    So, where is the Moderate Muslim Foreign Legion? Is the lack of a Muslim Foreign Legion to wipe out the Islamic State related to the fact that more Muslims from Europe are joining ISIS than are joining their national militaries, by a two-to-one ratio?

    If those mythical Moderate Muslims won’t fight against the Islamic State, then what conclusion might be drawn, other than that they don’t really mind what is being done by ISIS in the name of Mohammed and Allah?

    • An excellent point.

      And “… if a rogue group of Catholics seized a territory in the Alps or the Andes, and declared itself to be the Catholic State, and set to raping, beheading, crucifying and burning non-Catholics and “wrong-Catholics,” actual Catholics could not be stopped from going there en masse to put them down like rabid dogs. There is no way that Catholics would tolerate an evil “Catholic State” enslaving, raping and killing in the name of Jesus Christ.”

      Hard to disagree with that. And my Catholicism died a natural death when I was seven years of age.

  7. Please pardon the pedantry, but “kalashnikov” in the graphic at the top of this article should be capitalized, and “the beheaders’s knife” should be “the beheader’s knife”. And the beheading blade shown here is too short; it’s infant-size. The blade shown in the last photograph is of more suitable length. Maybe there is a fatwa at
    http://islamqa.info/en
    that prescribes the recommended beheading blade for each occasion. And isn’t it an embarrassment of Islamic science that the world’s most efficient beheading blade was invented by a French infidel in the late 1700’s?
    Fun fact: The last person guillotined in France was Hamida Djandoubi, on 10 September 1977. Here’s his story:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamida_Djandoubi

    • I never tire of correct punctuation and spelling. Thanks for upholding proper standards.
      Does anyone remember a writer with the pen name, Takuan Seiyo? He wrote an excellent series, “From Meccania to Atlantis”.
      I suspect he’s still active but using a different name. I address this question to everyone.

  8. All true. The bit about Bush’s hope in invading Afghanistan and Iraq is especially true. My take on it is that Bush really honestly viewed Iraqis as equals – unlike most left-wingers – and this was his mistake. He figured that it would be like Denmark under the nazis: remove the nazis, and the problem is solved – remove Saddam, and the problem is solved.

    But it turned out to be different.

    Sadly, the proper response to 9/11 would probably have been to drop a few well-placed nukes on the Taliban, and promise worse next time. That type of thing they and their ilk would have understood better than anything else, sadly.

    Some civilisations are just not compatible, and bound to end up fighting sooner or later. Communism was such an example. So was nazism. OTOH, it’s quite obvious that there are no problems coexisting with a Hindu civilisation, for example. Or a Chinese one. And many other examples. But this isn’t a universal truth.

    In the past, people had this worry more and tended to apply it generally, resulting in unfair discrimination, for example against the Chinese. Sadly, this discrimination was well-placed in some cases, as current events are showing.

    It’s with great regret that I say this, but sadly, it is becoming more and more apparent that it’s true, and that force will have to be used to keep things sane.

    • “force will have to be used to keep things sane.”

      I disagree with almost everything you said.

      “Sadly, the proper response to 9/11 would probably have been to drop a few well-placed nukes on the Taliban…”

      Totally untrue. US special forces did a superb job of assisting the Northern Alliance forces to depose and decimate the Taliban. US forces had Osama bin Laden bottled up at Tora Bora, and all they had to do was capture him. In the interests of “nation-building”, US forces left the capture to Northern Alliance Muslim troops, who promptly botched it and let him slip away.

      The proper response would have been to go in, decimate the Taliban, as we did, capture bin Laden, as we blew it, and LEAVE.

      It would be immaterial to the US if the Northern Alliance had maintained power or the Taliban recovered power. The message would have been clear: leave the US alone.

      “Some civilisations are just not compatible, and bound to end up fighting sooner or later. ”

      It’s not a matter of compatibility. It’s a matter of borders and defensive capability. Islam is totally incompatible with the West, and perfectly safe when bottled up. Our biggest danger is the Muslims we foolishly allowed to immigrate. In a sense, our worst enemy is ourselves. We had the power to contain Islam and render it more-or-less harmless. We bottled ourselves up so thoroughly that we now have a President who supports Islamization at every opportunity, but receives no criticism for his jihad-friendly actions in the mainstream press.

      • bingo

        as stated above
        – one part of islam is to be internalized by the West
        – another is to be disarmed, neutralized and contained indefinitely

        the sooner we start considering every confrontation, including violent, in this context, – the better.
        ..

  9. Now that you have turned my comment into a post, please allow me to respond.

    First of all, let me begin by making clear that I am not a Muslim apologist, nor a “useful idiot” in the ranks of the left. I am an Israeli blogger and activist, who has been warning against the danger of the Islamization of the west for close to a decade now.

    However, I quickly realized that in order to have any impact, the anti-Jihad movement must have clear objectives. What is it that we wish to achieve? Waking up the large public is an important mile stone, but certainly not the end game.

    If your declared goal is simply to eradicate Jihad violence, and to prevent Sharia law from entering our legal system, then you have the potential to bring the public on board. As a part of this agenda you may advocate stopping further immigration to the west, but you will still have to suggest a reasonable solution for those Muslims already living in Europe and the US, one which the public opinion will be able to accept. The only such solution I can think of is integration. In other words, allowing them to stay, as long as they abide by western law and adopt western values.

    On the other hand, if your stated goal is to kick each and every Muslim out of Europe and the US, then I’m afraid you will probably only alienate the moderate sections of society, and supply ammunition to the hard core left, which constantly tries to vilify the anti-Jihad movement as “racist”.

    Let’s imagine for a second an average European, who is not very knowledgeable about Islam, but is troubled by the recent attacks in Paris, for instance. He is looking for answers, which he can’t get from the main stream media. What would such a person think to himself, were he to stumble upon your blog and find it lampooning someone like Nawaz, which he believes to be the quintessential moderate Muslim? He would probably come to the conclusion the anti-Jihad movement really is extreme, and shy away.

    And so I believe that your recent piece was counter productive. I am not a psychic, and I can’t tell weather Nawaz’s intentions are pure or not (and mind you, misspelling the word Taqiyya is not a very compelling argument…). However, there are literally thousands of Islamic apologists out there who are openly preaching hatred and violence towards non Muslims, and whose intentions are proven beyond doubt. I believe we should direct our energies against them.

    Best of wishes,
    Oren.

    • agree almost completely.
      just two points

      – Nawaz is definitely the stealth jihadi; but he might be unwillingly working against islamic cause – his aim is to provide cover for expanding muslim demographic, but ideologically, that demographic is inherently divided, its best, most capable part leaning to the West. I do know such people personally; they are or ex-muslim or only nominally muslim

      – “integration” is not enough, there always should be – demonstrably overwhelming – Western self-defense force, ready to beat off any threat

    • “The only such solution I can think of is integration. In other words, allowing them to stay, as long as they abide by western law and adopt western values.”

      Good joke.

  10. The only “moderate” Muslims I’m aware of are the ballast, the unassuming, Friday-go-to-prayers Muslims who secretly drink alcohol and have a suppressed fondness for bacon pizza. They’re “moderate” because they have nothing to say. If Islam were repudiated globally tomorrow, they would probably sigh with relief. “Thank God — or is it Allah — we don’t have to perform that degrading ritual five times a day, now I can get rid of this beard because it’s been collecting a lot of annoying little creepy-crawlies! And I’ve got to tell my wife that she really shouldn’t be wearing miniskirts at home or in public until she’s lost about 50 pounds. I hear there’s a sale on toilet paper in Wal-Mart and now I can use that instead of an oyster shell like they did back in the 18th century, they really hurt….” But the “moderate” Muslim is a member of an Islamic silent majority that will say nothing bad about ISIS or Al-Qaeda because that would be blasphemy and even apostasy so he keeps his mouth shut and his thoughts, if he has any, to himself. The “moderate” Muslim is a cipher, a maquette. He knows that “moderate” Muslim spokesmen like Nawaz will say one thing in public for public consumption but behind closed doors or off-camera laugh up their sleeves, having just served the infidel a generous helping of Taqiyya Supreme.

  11. A Nice Peaceful “British Islam”:
    “Taqiyya artists will dangle the prospect of a Nice Peaceful British Islam before the unsuspecting kuffar, affording endless prospects for waffle, but the animal is dead in the water. There is not one, and Islam’s rules do not permit one. Islam is not defined by “what the vast majority of Muslims in Britain feel”; Islam is defined by its source texts.”
    See “The BBC’s Useless Waffle about “British Islam””.
    http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/6697-the-battle-for-british-islam

  12. A “religious reformation” in Islam?
    No. Islam is ironclad reform-proof. It is watertight.
    Many share the wish to reform the Koran. It will not happen. It is not permitted.
    The Koran is part of Islamic law.
    The Koran itself says it is “perfect”:

    “The word of your Lord is complete, in truth and justice.
    There is none who can change His words.”, 6:115.

    To “reform”, or change any verse is to deny it. One who denies any verse has to be killed. The killing can be performed, penalty-free and vigilante style, by anyone “since it is killing someone who deserves to die” (Manual of Islamic Law, “Reliance of the Traveller” o8.7(7), o8.4). The Manual is available as a free download.

    Martin Luther’s reformation was of the non-Biblical PRACTICES of the Roman Catholic Church. He did not reform the Bible.

    Westerners, accustomed to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, erroneously suppose that they can influence what muslims believe by appealing to reason or to their better nature. Not so. Muslims are INSTRUCTED what beliefs to hold, which are not variable. They do not get to choose. Islam is not Pick Your Own.

    “ It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair.”

    Koran 33:36, part of Islamic law (with death penalty for denying it).

    • The Islamic State is the Reformation of Islam; it is a return to foundational scripture and the expunging of any moderating influences and practices of modernity — as they claim. This sort of thing has occurred often in Islamic history where a fiercer, more fundamentalists group claiming greater adherence to original Koranic teaching will displace a ruling elite that has grown fat and content, as the Almoravids did, who were in turn displaced by the Almohads, or more recently the Wahabis of Arabia and now Daesh. Any parallels to the Christian Reformation insomuch as producing a peaceful Islam are illusionary — ain’t gonna happen.

      There is only one law that needs to be abrogated within Islam that would change everything: apostasy as a capital crime. Islam cannot survive without the threat of death for leaving it (and there are safe havens in the world). This has been admitted to by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Egyptian television when he said, “If the [death] penalty for apostasy was ignored, there would not be an Islam today; Islam would have ended on the death of the prophet.” This is the point of attack. This fundamental principle of Islam needs to be constantly criticized and ridiculed for its cultishness, narrow-mindedness and cruelty. This is how you reform Islam — by allowing people to freely leave it.

  13. There was a guy from French intelligence who said that if you stick a Quran in front of one of these ISIS people they had captured in France he would not be able to understand what was written there, same as if you stuck a bible there.

    I said to my wife the Intel guy is looking at the Quran as he reads it, not the properly abrogated Quran that a very devout Muslim understands, because he does not understand that key aspect he is comparing apples to pears.

    It’s this type of stupidity that causes so many issues in understanding the issue, Islam is designed to be difficult to understand so it can creep in like a cancer. In 1997 I decided that I wanted to understand the hate I could see from devout Muslims, I do understand it after studying Islam in detail. It is about time that all intelligence people do exactly that.

  14. Another thing I read at lot is how ‘Islam tolerates other beliefs’. The word tolerate has two meanings. One is to accept.; the other meaning is to ‘put up with’. As in the sentence:
    “I have to tolerate this tooth-ache until I get to the dentist”..Doesn’t mean like it!

    Well I don’t want to live in a cou ntry where I’m thought of as ‘tolerated’. Or where I have to put up with other people who don’t like liberal democracy. Since Muslims don’t like it they will try to slowly corrode it.

  15. Have been listening and reading what Nawaz has to say for some time, and the conclusion I draw every time which he has yet to disabuse me of is he is a stealth jihadist, and not to be trusted one little bit.

  16. “It’s a delusion, but an understandable one, given the awful alternative — which is Reality.”

    Understandable because, once it is accepted that there are Muslims and us non-Muslims and that either we survive or they do, there is no option but to deliver an ultimatum to all Muslims everywhere to abandon Islam and convert to Christianity. If they do not, then [intemperate recommendation redacted].

    • Take [intemperate recommendation redacted]. Insert your – or anyone else’s – worst nightmare. Here’s a clue: 1 Samuel 15. Now imagine what Jesus did then, and what He’d do now. And then, be very afraid.

      • This is what I’m wrestling with. What would Jesus do now? I see nothing in the NT which tells me how, realistically, we will survive. This weakens my faith – for the first time since my conversion the NT doesn’t give me answers. (The churches’ response to the migrant crisis only adds to my scepticism). 1 Samuel 15 was long before Jesus.

  17. re:

    “So all I can say to you, Mr. Oren, is: Get thee hence, Satan!
    Ten years ago I might have embraced your words. But I have learned a lot since then and been hardened by bitter events.”

    Within the last ten years ~ we all should have been aware of Michael Oren’s proclivity to “surrender”…
    via Australia’s ABC radio, Oren describes his participation in the forced removal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in this radio report:
    History of Israel 2 September 2007
    Download Audio – 02 09 2007

    How Israel handles itself in the Middle East is a challenge to Jewish morality, says renowned historian Professor Michael B Oren. Now with the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale, author of two New York Times best sellers, and a frontline soldier. He presented the Richard Pratt Oration of 2007 on the history of Israel and its moral dilemmas.
    Show Transcript

    QUOTE: “I carried out policies with which I was not always in accord, and yet I fulfilled them responsibly because those responsibilities represented to my mind the decisions of the democratically elected government of Israel, and because they did not exceed the bounds of Jewish morality. And should those policies exceed those bounds, I told myself, then I would simply refuse to carry out those policies and I would bear responsibility for that decision as well. and in the summer of 2005 I donned my uniform again as a reservist and participated in the operation to remove 21 Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and 8100 inhabitants. Those residents regarded Gaza as the Jew’s god-given patrimony, a gift which no government had the right to reject, and then the question arose, could this rift be spanned? Could Israel survive it? I was not sure.

    On the morning I walked into the first of those settlements, with 500 Israeli soldiers, and the settlers set fire to the gate on fire so that we had to wait until an armoured bulldozer came and broke it down. We poured into the settlement and the residents pelted us with sacks of paint and assailed us wearing the yellow star of the ghetto, calling us Nazis. The settlers then barricaded themselves into the synagogue and would not come out, and finally the commander of my unit reached an agreement with the rabbi of the settlement that they would pray the afternoon prayer and then they would come out, and line up and go on buses. But they did not come out. That poor commander had to make the difficult decision any Jewish officer could make: to break into the synagogue with a sledgehammer. So we broke into that synagogue with a sledgehammer, and what greeted us in there was the most difficult scene I’ve ever encountered in my thirty years of army service. There were 100 Jews lying on the floor, wailing and screaming, clutching Torah scrolls, clutching pews, crying out for God to save them. And some of these Israeli officers, many of who were pilots and commando, fell as if they’d been hit by bullets. And for a while there we weren’t sure who was evacuating whom as some of the settlers came to help the soldiers who had been stricken and fell down. And it took hours to literally tear these people away from these Torah scrolls and physically to carry them on to buses. And I was not sure that we could survive this as a people, as a state.

    More on that here:

    “Oren didn’t just don the uniform and participate mechanically after receiving the order. He volunteered to implement the Mitzna plan that the people voted against by voting for Likud whose leader then disenfranchised and implemented it against also the Likud charter and referendum that he swore to uphold. “

    I SPIT upon submission, treason and those who take solemn oaths then behave counter to their oath, believing the oath a frivolous and meaningless tradition which bears no personal consequences. To Oren’s everlasting shame…Get thee hence, Satan!

    • Some settlers and their supporters, as well as a few others, viewed the (eventually) terminal stroke that felled Ariel Sharon as his divine punishment for having given land to the Palestinians *by* forcibly removing settlers.

      I can understand how officers and others were felled by this tragedy in the synagogue. They were, unsuspecting, put right into the shoes of the Nazis, which they had believed banished forever.

      I hope they have now found peace in their souls, those on all sides of this painful situation.

    • I sympathize. I lose about a third of mine when I’m on my laptop. As just happened with my first note to you about it. Maddening. The B suggests I type it in a document so I can have a copy, but sometimes I forget…

      • I learned the hard way to use an external text editor to write comments, so the Baron’s suggestion is one I fully endorse. Funny thing is that sometimes you start out only to write a simple entry and begin typing in the comment section’s text box and you keep thinking of something else to add and something else and so on — then something squirrelly happens and it’s like, “Aargh!” I did this a few times and lost some fairly extensive entries before I got wise. Even for this entry I used TextEdit.

        Merry Christmas.

        • Merry C backatcha…you just described what I do and each time promise myself not to do again. Your step-by-step outline of what happens is spot-on, right down to the “Aargh!”

  18. I saw a moderate Muslim the other day. He was riding a pink unicorn over the golden rainbow and singing Jesus Loves Me.

  19. There is one big error in this piece. As I understand the numbers the US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, including aid, have not cost “billions”, but three (3) trillion dollars. And that’s direct costs only.
    When a government gives, say, $500,000 in aid money to say, East Timor, the administration of that aid costs a lot more in salaries of public servants than the actual aid grant.

    On the financial cost of the USA helping Iraq and Afghanistan become … whatever the goal was, I’d be delighted to be corrected by somebody who knows better than I.

  20. “Normal people don’t want to contemplate this possibility because they don’t want to face the implied consequences. If 1.6 billion people (or whatever the OIC says the current number is) want to make war on the rest of us, what kind of world are we facing? What sort of heritage will be leaving for our children and grandchildren?”

    The implied consequences are truly ghastly. They drive us to the conclusion that [intemperate observations redacted].

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