Moderate Muslims vs. moderate Islam
The former may exist. The latter, as Mark Steyn points out, does not:
What the west calls “moderate Muslims”, Islam regards as apostates. Sometimes, as with Dr [Wafa Sultan], they’re atheist apostates; sometimes, as with Miss [Irshad Manji], they’re lesbian apostates; and sometimes, as with Magdi Allam, they’re Christian apostates. To Islam, it doesn’t matter which branch of apostasy you opt for: As the Prophet [Muhammad] puts it, “Whoever changes his Religion, kill him.” All four principal schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree. So do the 36 per cent of young Muslims in Britain who believe apostasy should be punished by death. But, to the west, which branch of apostasy has most appeal to Muslims is an interesting question.
There are two main reasons why I feel myself compelled to take such a hard-line stance against Islam, its false prophet, and the various violent excesses of many who hold to that religion. The first, of course, is that Islam is, itself, a false religion, and is worthy of opposition on those grounds alone.
Equally, though, I cannot comprehend how one could view Islam as being in any way compatible with Western, Christian-founded ideals like human rights, equality before the law, equality before God, and other fundamental tenets of what we call “freedom.” In Islam, none of these things exists. There is no free will; there is only the will of Allah. There is no equality; there is Sharia. There is no freedom; there is only submission.
And ultimately, there is no love either; there is only hatred. Whether that hatred is directed at the Jews or at those who are not sufficiently “Islamic” in their character shifts week to week, but the hatred itself is ever-present.
On the one hand, Magdi Allam’s conversion is bad news…on the other hand, it’s good news in that it suggests the most effective strategy against a resurgent, radicalized Islam may be the oldest of all — an evangelizing Christianity.
The response of Europe to its progressive Islamicization has been a predominantly secular one that has sought to push Christianity even further toward the sidelines. In Canada, Muslim lobby groups (like the Canadian Islamic Congress, headed by terror-supporter Mohamed Elmasry) use human rights commissions to silence and censor those who dare to articulate any views that holds Islam suspect. In America, CAIR attempts to do the same through the civil courts.
And for the most part, when the West has roused itself to push back, it has done so through secular avenues. And while it is good to meet the enemy on the battlefield, whatever form that battlefield might take, it is not enough to merely win at the secular side of the game, because that is the distraction, the feint. And indeed, becoming too entrenched in a secular response to Islam will be our undoing, because Islam’s advantage is its ability to proselytize into the void that secularism leaves in its wake.
A strong, expanding religion like Islam can only be met, and subsequently thrown down, by a strong, vibrant religion that exists in opposition to it. Traditionally, this has been Christianity.
And so it must be, again.
Update: Welcome, Steynians!
Steynianism 133 « Free Mark Steyn! (May 7, 2008, 10:00 am).
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