Pardon me, but what is moderate Islam?

Submitted by Madeleine (Australia), Aug 29, 2007 at 13:40

Dr Pipes, I do respect so much of your deep knowledge and experience and avidly read all your articles, however I am puzzled by what appears to be some form of political correctness here. Undoubtedly there are individual Muslims that are moderate (a relatively small proportion of the worldwide 1.3 billion Muslims that either don't know much about the Koran or turn a blind eye to it) but where is there any moderate textual Islam? Are you are referring to some earlier parts of the Koran than have been abrogated by later, more violent, suras on the same subject. If one was to remove all the violent parts - the 'radical variants' as you call them - the Koran would be a very thin book indeed, and I am aware that scholars have been killed for attempting to tamper with this so-called 'perfectly revealed' entity?

A number of brave ex-Muslim women writers (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Taslima Nasrin) speak much more forcibly about the need to expose and reject the Koran and Islam as an intolerant, absolutist, hate-inciting, violence-inciting religio-political system. Why should we be required to respect this murderous Arabic-based political system that has been the inspiration for a culture of jihadism since its inception and is the basis of all the global terrorism in the modern world? Just because this warped ideology hides under the tag of religion, shouldn't mean it is immune from opening up its texts to see why it is the polar opposite of our modern liberal democratic system, and hence simply does not fit within it.

In practice, whenever the percentage of Muslims rises in a country, due to immigration, there is a rise in violence and intimidation to the host country and to other minorities. We are already experiencing it, as well as the inevitable appeasement as a result. The dangers of allowing Islam into a predominantly non-Muslim country are huge and quite different to the successful integration of other religious and ethnic groups in the West. Surely it is time to face this reality and begin to deal with it.

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