Which Side Are You On?: The "Moderate Muslim" Litmus Tests

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
26 August '10
Posted before Shabbat

In the controversy over the "Ground Zero" mosque in New York and other issues, Muslims are often asked if they condemn terrorism, Iran, or Hamas and other revolutionary Islamist groups, along with other questions. The idea is to determine whether they are moderates or radicals. Each of these questions also has an unnoticed "internal Muslim" aspect as well that makes them all the more important.

Yet this question is often placed in the context of whether or not they support murderous attacks on non-Muslims or calls to wipe out Israel. This is a valid consideration, but it misses a key point about why Islamic activists should be asked and how they should answer such questions.

There is an important additional factor embedded in this question. One is that these are revolutionary Islamist groups or countries. If you don't condemn them you are in effect accepting their program for a radical transformation of Muslim-majority (and even other) countries, the imposition of a radical interpretation of Sharia law on every aspect of society. If you are a nationalist, or a liberal, or a moderate Islamist the prospect of your enemies seizing state power and perhaps repressing you would be a most upsetting prospect.

In other words, a moderate would condemn these groups and Iran not for the sake of Israel or the West, but for the sake of his own people and anti-Islamist cause. It is impossible to be neutral on this point: Do you want to live (or see most other Muslims live) under a caliphate, a theocratic dictatorship, a repressive regime as exists in Iran or the Taliban's Afghanistan or not?

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How the Western Pursuit of Muslim Moderates Actually Promotes Extremism

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
04 April '10

The term Moderate Muslim is a misnomer, because it is the equivalent of describing him as a Secular Catholic or a Liberal Conservative. Muslims who pride themselves on sticking to the Koran view extremism as a virtue, not a fault. Islam's reform movements that succeeded were not movements that made Islam more liberal, but that made it stricter, harsher and more unfeeling.

Aside from the original Sunni-Shiite schism, which has its basis more in power politics than in theology, the spectrum within Islam itself always runs to the more extreme. A new alternative mosque that succeeds is likely to be a place more conservative and more hostile to the outside world. A new Islamic movement is usually one that calls for more blood and guts, and a lot less women walking around on the street. A movement that fails to do that rarely survives or essentially is forced outside of Islam if it does.

And so what the West's pursuit of moderate Muslims really does is push them toward more extreme views. A Muslim ruler who develops closer ties with the West is forced to compensate for it by moving further to the extreme in order to avoid being vulnerable to domestic charges that he is a bad Muslim. It is no surprise then that Saudi Arabia, America's closest ally in the Muslim world, is also the most extremist Muslim country on the planet, that is behind the growing push to the extreme around the world.

The Saudi Royal Family's balancing act trades American support for them and their oil off by supporting the expansion and spread of increasingly radicalized mosques and imams. This is supposed to hold future Bin Ladens at bay. Meanwhile American politicians praise the country where women aren't allowed to drive and non-Muslims can't even set foot in Mecca for its commitment to moderate Islam.

The Western pursuit of moderate Muslims alone helps create more enthusiasm for pushing Islam further to the extreme. Once Western leaders define a Muslim group as moderate, new more extreme groups are quickly spawned in order to set a new bar for "True Islam", as opposed to the compromise variety that the infidels praise. For example when Israel and the US announced that they had successfully made a deal with Arafat, the rise of Hamas was all but assured. When the UK or the US tries to treat Islamists as mainstream, not only do the Islamists become more extreme, but they develop new and more extreme rival groups.

So the pursuit of Muslim moderates not only pushes them into even greater extremes, but it spawns a host of new more extreme groups looking to capitalize on setting an even more extreme standard that will be praised for its faithfulness to the Koran. While the West tries to pretend it is bringing Muslims in from the cold, in fact it is turning up the heat.

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