Caught between a rock and a hard place?

Submitted by Dian Kjaergaard (Denmark), May 20, 2013 at 18:04

"If there are moderate Muslims, they have lost respect for us because they see us cowering and kowtowing to their more violent coreligionists. When we start acting as though our culture and our civilization is worth defending as aggressively as the Islamists defend theirs, then maybe the dynamic will change. Until then, we are doomed to play a losing game of defense and Islam and its adherents will just keep wearing us down, day by day, bit by bit."

Absolutely.

The question is HOW to defend ourselves aggressively without destroying our own souls.

Some of Lorthog's suggestions seem absolutely reasonable. Profiling and immigration restrictions might not be as effective as one would like - there are more and more home-grown Islamist terrorists who don't fit any profile.

But certainly we need to vigorously oppose creeping Shari'a in the form of "small" special priveleges, e.g. requiring school lunches to provided Halal meat or permitting 5 daily calls to prayer in a non-Muslim-majority country. And it is vital to challenge insanities such as presenting the Fort Hood murders as completely unrelated to religion!

Other suggestions in Lorthog's list would push us over a brink that I believe would be self-destructive. Concentration camps dehumanize those who round up and police the inmates and in an open society can create victimization narratives that completely undermine the goals of self-protection.

It's a hell of a dilemma - and absolutely not our fault - but we have to deal with it. And "we" has to include Muslims who are brave enough to stand up against Islamists.

As Dr. Pipes points out, Muslims can roughly be categorized as 15% Islamists, 2% anti-Islamists, and 83% "up for grabs" - not necessarily "moderate". And there are certainly a lot of Muslims in all of these categories who look down on us for not standing up for our own values and institutions. Indeed, many Muslims who have run away from e.g. Iran are absolutely horrified to see Islamization of the countries they sought refuge in.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".