In the comments on one of Sunday’s posts, the topic of the elusive “Moderate Muslim” came up again. The discussion began with criticisms of the post (written by our British correspondent JP) by Rob of Joshua Pundit, who was disturbed by JP’s seeming abandonment of Muslims who behave well, accept Western norms, and in no way contribute to the Great Jihad.

These “moderates” are analogous to ordinary people who were forced to live under Communist tyranny behind the Iron Curtain. They did not believe Communist ideology, nor did they accept the legitimacy of the regimes that oppressed them, but the political and social environment in which they lived made it dangerous for them to protest or publicly question the validity of Communist doctrine.

And so it is under Islam. Dissidents or skeptics who live in Muslim-majority countries — or even in predominantly Islamic enclaves within Western countries — take their lives in their hands if they criticize Islam or depart publicly from orthodoxy. Such people deserve our sympathy, and those who actually dare to dissent deserve our respect and admiration.

Nevertheless, I find the distinction between “moderate” and “extremist” Muslims to be useless. It’s not so much that I don’t believe there are “moderates”, but rather that the distinction between “moderates” and “extremists” is meaningless. It is a false dichotomy, and has no significance within Islam itself.

The word “extremist” actually gives the game away. To be an “extremist” implies an adherence to “extreme” doctrines of one sort or another. And what doctrines are those? Why, the core teachings of Islam itself! The “extremist” is one who proclaims the need to return to doctrines as they were originally written in the universally accepted documents that became the canonical teachings of Islam.

Extremists are thus “fundamentalists”. Like Christian fundamentalists, they want to return to the true religion. But Christian fundamentalists are not generally described as “extremists”, because the core scriptures of Christianity — the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Revelation of Saint John — are not extremist by modern standards. Modernity may regard the New Testament as outmoded superstition, but it does not see it as violent, extremist ideology — because it isn’t.

The Koran, the hadith, and the Sunna are another matter entirely.

Rob’s discussion on JP’s post prompted a response from a commenter name “ManoftheWest”. Evidently a man after my own heart, to bolster his case he cited ’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper. It is commonly referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when cited in English.

The Revised Edition (published 1991, revised 1994) is “The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ’Umdat al-Salik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 769/1368) in Arabic with Facing English Text, Commentary, and Appendices”, edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller.

This book is an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar; it is the closest equivalent to the Vatican that can be found in Islam.

The rest of this section is adapted from ManoftheWest’s comment. First of all, he noted that the penalty for a Muslim apostate (someone who no longer believes in or no longer follows the tenets of Islam) is death. From Book O, “Justice”:

(O: Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst. It may come about through sarcasm, as when someone is told, “Trim your nails, it is sunna,” and he replies, “I would not do it even if it were,” as opposed to when some circumstance exists which exonerates him of having committed apostasy, such as when his tongue runs away with him, or when he is quoting someone, or says it out of fear.)

o8.1		When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed.
		[…]
o8.4		There is no indemnity for killing an apostate (O: or any expiation, since it is killing someone who deserves to die).

But it gets worse:

Acts That Entail Leaving Islam

o8.7		(O: Among the things that entail apostasy from Islam (may Allah protect us from them) are:
		[…]
		(7)		to deny any verse of the Koran or anything which by scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it;
		(8)		to mockingly say, “I don’t know what faith is”;
				[…]
		(14)		to deny the obligatory character of something which by the consensus of Muslims (ijma’, def: b7) is part of Islam, when it is well known as such, like the prayer (salat) or even one rak’a from one of the five obligatory prayers, if there is no excuse (def: u2.4);
				[…]
		(17)		to believe that things in themselves or by their own nature have any causal influence independent of the will of Allah;
				[…]
		(19)		to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law;
		(20)		to deny that Allah intended the Prophet’s message (Allah bless him and give him peace) to be the religion followed by the entire world (dis: w4.3-4) (al-Hadiyya al-’Ala’iyya (y4), 423-24).)

There are others, for the subject is nearly limitless. May Allah Most High save us and all Muslims from it.)

#14 and #20 above are doozies when one reads in Reliance of the Traveller that offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a communal, religious obligation:

The Obligatory Character of Jihad

o9.1		Jihad is a communal obligation. When enough people perform it to successfully accomplish it, it is no longer obligatory upon others (O: the evidence for which is the Prophet’s saying (Allah bless him and give him peace),
		“He who provides the equipment for a soldier in jihad has himself performed jihad,”
		[…]

Who is Obliged to Fight in Jihad

o9.4

Those called upon (O: to perform jihad when it is a communal obligation) are every able-bodied man who has reached puberty and is sane.

Rob and ManoftheWest inspired me to respond with this:

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