Is Moderation Even Possible in Islam? Should It Matter?

Cinnamon Stillwell at FrontPageMagazine gives a picture of the slow emergence of moderate Muslims and Arabs from the shadows. Listing organizations and listing names gives hope of the possibility of moderation and reform. But it is ONLY a possibility.

But despite such promising developments in the Arab and Islamic world, Americans should not be under the illusion that this evolution in thought is yet widespread. The Muslim world still has many crimes to account for, and all too often its people remain silent in the face of injustice. To impatient Westerners, change can seem excruciatingly slow to take hold in a culture so mired in the past. But the voices of moderation should not be ignored, nor should they be stifled. Just as the West grappled earlier with its reformation, so, too, must the Muslim world face its own demons. The question is can we wait for this process to occur before our own survival becomes tantamount? Only time will tell.

Americans are becoming aware of the threat and the dangers of the world that is now invading our Fortress America. We scoffed at the thought that a religion could be dangerous in the land of freedom of religion. But Islam is different. War is deception and if your objective is to conquer to impose your thought process on your enemy, then what better way could be contrived than to make your adversary believe that your ideology is benign?

Over the centuries Islam has developed strategies to use against an adversary that is too powerful to defeat through the use of force. The series of tactics and strategies called taqiyya and kitman, confuse the adversary, create disunity, and make them believe that Islam is here to rescue them from themselves. That is what is happening to us today. We are being conned and bamboozled, manipulated, pummeled, and undercut psychologically, making us ripe for the pickings.

The process is every so slow because the adversary must not realize that they are being drawn into the trap. Islam has learned the cruel tactics of deception and predation that is often seen in the animal world. We see and understand the danger of the charging elephant and the lurking lion, but the huge spider net is often around us before we know we are trapped. Muslims have learned how to plan and wait, even if the plan of conquest is one of decades or even centuries.

Islam uses deception as a means of infiltrating the targeted society. In the case of the West, particularly America, the mechanism of entrapment has been education, and the tools of education are the university and school system, the media, and Da'wa, the call to Islam, or chatting up and instructing on the beauties of Islam. Who better to do this than those that are labeled Moderates, as Americans reject extremism?

Muslims in the West come as settlers to prothleysize and to increase their demographics. They are the vanguard of invasion and conquest. Thus, Americans that hear about Moderates should first consider why they are here and remember that Islam will make a profound change in their lives if Muslims are successful in their process of Islamification of America. Don't be fooled by the appeal of moderation. Although Muslims that embrace moderation should be commended as moderation is usually a good thing, be aware that this metamorphosis could be a red herring to create an illusion that we can stop resisting the slow pull of Islam into the trap.

Should we commend them for their moderation? Yes, should we give up our efforts to educate ourselves and resist Islam? No. We are not resisting terrorism as some contnue to advocate. We are resisting a radical change in our culture and social mores by a group that has demonstrated disdain for other cultures and groups during its entire existence. Why should we believe that a moderate brand of the same ideology would treat us any better than did the original brand to its neighbors over 1300 years ago, or as the updated, though extreme version, is presently treating others in many parts of the world? It would be foolish to take such a chance just at the mere promise of moderation.

Keep up your guard and take a wait and see attitude. Train your children well. Teach them about the tenets of Islam in view of dhimmitude, the second-class citizenship of non-Muslims, and taqiyya and kitman so that they will be able to recognize and resist the deception of Islam. Teach them about hudna, the strategic withdrawal and truce that Muslims make when they can't immediately press their advantage as they wait for the moment to press forward. Teach them that this could take decades or centuries.

Teach them about the value of propaganda, the war of words. Propaganda is a very powerful tool that can inflame those that can change friends into enemies. We saw how Muslim propaganda fooled even an American President into making war against the enemies of Islam in Bosnia against the Serbs, and we are seeing how Muslims have inflamed the rest of the world against America through the use of deception and misinformation that is being spread in a systematic campaign of anti-American propaganda.

It is certain that Moderate Muslims will propagandize their presence and their views to show that they trying to make a difference in America and that bad old America simply won't see the light and the rest of the Muslim world will use this in their ongoing educational process to destroy America.

Don't be fooled and don't give up.

Update:The astute Robert Spencer at JihadWatch has panned Cinnamon's article:

The unwieldy title of this FrontPage piece by Cinnamon Stillwell is necessitated by the fact that a significant number of the people that she cites in this useful resume of voices for moderation within Islam are actually non-Muslims and ex-Muslims.

Now why might that be?

(Postscript: The title still doesn't get it right, as Ibn Warraq, who is discussed at length in the piece, is neither a moderate Muslim nor an Arab. But such is the difficulty created by the fact that there are very few genuine moderates who continue to identify themselves as Muslims.)
Posted at November 22, 2004 03:58 AM