I have said this repeatedly, that it’s entirely irrelevant that there are ”moderate” Muslims, (if I had a nickle for every time someone brought out that bromide in an debate as a defense for Islam, I would be a millionaire right now) because Islam itself is not a moderate ideology.
All four schools of Islamic jurisprudence underline the strict sharia as is, there is no room for negotiations on ”differing interpretations, Islam is what Islam is. There is no ‘islamism’, there is no ”moderate” Islam, there is just Islam. What people get confused about is the lax conditions some mosques, Islamic communities or even states are in their reading of Islam.
Bypassing violent passages is not the same as their being officially deemed by official Islamic orthodoxy as no longer being relevant for today. When these mosques, communities and states are influenced by those adhere to the sharia sanctioned by these four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the more hardline (basic Islam 101) they become.
NOTE: Anyone close to the Michele Bachmann campaign, send her this article by Diana West. I really liked her recent speech on C-Span, but Diana is right.
Islam Is Radical
In this address, the excellent Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MI) makes the crucial, overlooked connections between Islamic sharia speech restrictions — as systemically promoted by the Islamic bloc countries of the OIC and the Obama administration — and how the violence across the Middle East this week fits into the OIC-Obama-Clinton strategy to enforce sharia speech restrictions even on Americans, despite our First Amendment rights.
It’s important to realize sharia’s prohibition of criticism of Islam is basic Islam: There is nothing “radical” about it. Indeed, it is this basic Islamic censorship that is at the crux of why Islam itself — not “Islamism,” not “radical Islam,” not “Islamists,” but Islam — is an existential threat to the survival of any free society. It is why free societies, once penetrated by a Muslim demographic over 1 percent, begin to lose their liberties as a means of “accommodating” — appeasing — their new Islamic populations.
The problem is that no one in public life in America, land of the First Amendment, will acknowledge this fundamental, non-radical Islamic threat to this single most important foundation of our liberty — free speech. And that includes even La Belle Michele. Early in her speech she gives what might be considered the obligatory sop to PC. While it won’t provide her a shred of political cover, it does shatter the arc of understanding the threat, which is why I mention it.
Bachmann, from the C-SPAN transcript :
No one here is suggestion that all Muslims are radical, but we should not be ignorant of the objective reality that there is a very radical wing of Islam that is dedicated to the destruction of America, of Israel, and of Israel’s allies.
All Muslims are not radical, she says, which is a logical enough statement, although truly beside the point, which concerns the existential threat posed by Islamic law and ideology to Western liberty. Juxtaposing Bachmann’s non-radical Muslims with that “very radical wing of Islam” she also singles out takes us all right back to the “tiny band of extremists” theme, sounded by everyone from George W. Bush after 9/11/01 to Hillary Clinton after 9/11/12.
This is only one point in Bachmann’s 19-minute address, but it is a foundational flaw that puts any call to Americans to be vigilant in their defense of liberty onto a cracked footing. Why? Because it implies that within Islam itself — within its laws, customs and culture — there is a doctrinal basis for Western-style liberty, too. If it is only the “radical wing” of Islam that is waging this war on the West through a war on freedom of speech, then all we need do is align with the moderate Muslim hordes out there. Indeed, this same non-realist thinking is the rationale for “Muslim outreach,” which Bachmann has courageously decried as a vehicle for jihadist penetration of the US Government.
