The Missing Link

February 07, 2006

The Battle for Moderate Muslims

Thomas Lifson writes:

The only way that Islamofascism can be defeated and the world’s Muslims live in harmony with other faiths in today’s interconnected world is for questions of faith to be discussed without fear. Fundamental questions need to be debated among Muslims about the use of violence against unbelievers and those Muslims who dare question any scriptural teachings. The rest of us must be permitted to express opinions as well.

Muslim immigrant and Dutch Member of Parliament Hirsi Ali (who now lives in hiding under death threats) makes the point convincingly:

“A free discussion of Islam remains rare and dangerous, certainly in the Islamic world, and even in our politically correct times in the West… Apostasy is still punishable by long prison sentences and even death in many Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Iran…�

“You cannot liberalize Islam without criticizing the Prophet and the Koran…You cannot redecorate a house without entering inside.�

Those who seek the same goal as the Islamofascists, the global reign of Islam as the unchallenged religion of humanity, understand Hirsi Ali’s point very well. For them it is essential that ordinary members of the umma never see fundamental questions raised and never start raising them on their own.

For once degrees of individual autonomy are granted on spiritual questions, and the right to question and make up one’s own mind becomes established, the top-down pattern of divinely-sanctioned authority inherent in the ideal of a Global Caliphate collapses.

“Moderate� Muslims by definition are people who recognize some limits on scriptural injunctions to spread the faith by violence. Questioning religious injunctions from others and deciding for oneself the best answers is the only way such moderation will spread in the umma.

By seeking to establish a global norm – a custom enforced by social sanction, not law – that Sharia restrictions shall apply even in non-Muslim lands, the Islamofascists are engaging in prophylaxis: preventing the “disease� of free discussion and debate over topics they wish to control exclusively from ever gaining traction and possibly spreading to their own constituency.

It is quite understandable that caring, sensitive Westerners seek to avoid offending the religious sensibilities of any serious believers, Muslims included. Such empathy is normally a highly commendable impulse.

But acceding to the demand that those most willing to use violence be allowed to control the discussion and stifle debate, among infidels and Muslims alike, is a betrayal of not only the moderate Muslims, but of all those who hope someday to live in peace with an Islam that grants legitimacy to religious dissent and to the claims of other faiths.