Boreal

Moderates & Fundamentalists

Is There a Difference and the Implication for Democracy?

By using man-made laws to further the cause of Allah, The Opener, The Judge, we were using democracy the way it was intended, to vote God into government and to vote out those who would exclude Him. Democracy never had a more noble purpose.

Domeini

Fatima Houda-Pepin, the former Muslim member of the Québec National Assembly said that the expression "moderate Muslim" is an invention of the media. There are, she explained during an interview on the Charter of Values on the Charter of Values, the fundamentalists and then there are the Muslims who believe in democracy.

Pictures from a rally in London England demanding the abolishment of democracy and the establishment of Sharia law. CBS 60 Minutes, Nov 2, 2014 Face-to-face with an extremist

The authors of United Against Terrorism argue that calling a Muslim a moderate is redundant:

The term “moderate Muslim” implies that if one just identifies as Muslim that one is not a “moderate.” This term is meant to divide and classify Muslims based on Islamophobic (sic) jargon. A practicing Muslim is by nature moderate and so one should avoid this redundancy.

 Sam Harris:

Many authors have pointed out that it is problematic to speak of Muslim "fundamentalism" because it suggests that there are large doctrinaire differences between fundamentalist Muslims and the mainstream. The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamentalist" in the Western sense of the world—in that even "moderate" approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and inerrant word of the one true God …

 ... At this point in their history, give most Muslims the freedom to vote, and they will freely vote to tear out their political freedoms by the root. We should not for a moment lose sight of the possibility that they would curtail our freedoms as well, if they only had the power to do so … This situation must be remedied, but we cannot merely force Muslim dictators from power and open the polls. It would be like opening the polls to the Christians of the fourteenth century.

End of Faith, W. W. Norton, 2004, p. 132

Harris' hope for the world is still with the so-called "moderates", as unlikely as it is that they will be willing, or allowed to change Islam before Islam inevitably changes us, or kills us.

It does not seem much of an exaggeration to say that the fate of civilization lies largely in the hands of "moderate" Muslims. Unless Muslims can reshape their religion into an ideology which is basically benign—or outgrow altogether—it is difficult to see how Islam and the West can avoid falling into a continual state of war, and on innumerable fronts. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons cannot be uninvented … weapons of mass destruction will soon be available to anyone who wants them.

p. 152

Reformers beware!

Bernard Payeur