A proposal regarding Islamic Supremacism and Islamic Supremacists
This blog post is published here as a response to the Admin comment at the top of the Melbourne stabbing post by Unknown Scholar which I believe goes too far, failing to distinguish between dangerous Muslims and harmless Muslims:
[…Other Muslims who have nothing to do with such attacks must now be told in clear and uncertain terms- leave Islam if you disagree with these acts. These attacks are the result of Islam, and its doctrine of war on unbelievers. If ordinary Muslims want to be treated as normal beings, they must leave Islam or else they will be considered as supporters of such attacks.]
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In 622 AD Mohammed and his followers arrived in Medina as refugees, supposedly fleeing religious persecution. He quickly established himself there by means of criminality (caravan raiding), violence (assassination) then open warfare (jihad) and within eight years he controlled the entire Mecca/Medina area having either converted, exiled, enslaved or slaughtered all the local population.
When we observe the growing control by Muslim immigrants of no-go zones across Europe and the effect on local populations of escalating levels of criminality, violence and jihadist attacks, it is clear that the perpetrators are simply following the example of Mohammed…today Rinkeby, tomorrow Malmo, in due course Sweden. Clear to those of us who have enquired into the teachings and history of Islam at least. For those who have not done so it is a mystery. As an example, just recently there were co-ordinated carbecues in several Swedish towns accounting for around a hundred Saabs and Volvos. The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, responded by saying “I’m getting pissed off – really! My question to these people is what the hell are you doing?”
Some time in the not too distant future one or more of the European countries which so foolishly opened their borders to mass Muslim immigration will have to decide whether they will throw off such wilful ignorance and do what is necessary to survive, or just go under. Most likely the first will be Sweden but the rest of us are not that far behind.
Who do we turn to for guidance in these absurd times? Clearly not our mainstream political leaders. They have turned against us and care more for their utopian dreams than the protection of their people. The same goes for mainstream journalists, academics and religious leaders.
But amongst all the froth they produce, assuring us that we are all the same and we can all get along fine if we just make a bit of effort, one dissenting message from a religious man to the inhabitants of Europe stands out as starkly realistic. That man is Amel Shimoun Nona, exiled Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul:
“Please, try to understand us. Your liberal and democratic principles are worth nothing here. You must consider again our reality in the Middle East, because you are welcoming in your countries an ever growing number of Muslims. Also you are in danger. You must take strong and courageous decisions, even at the cost of contradicting your principles. You think all men are equal, but that is not true: Islam does not say that all men are equal. Your values are not their values. If you do not understand this soon enough, you will become the victims of the enemy you have welcomed in your home”.
I believe this to be undeniably true. Democracy was never designed to cope with a sizeable, determined contingent of people who are intent on its destruction, using its liberties against it. At some point we will have to accept that it is necessary to suspend or limit our non-discriminatory ideals with regard to one particular ideology and its adherents, and discriminate against it and them as though our civilisation depended on it….because it does.
Agree with me or disagree, but that is the assumption the following Proposal is based on. So now we just have to sort out the details. First of all, what is the ideology in question and who are its adherents?
“What a dumb question” you may say, “obviously we are talking about Islam and Muslims”. True, but is that the whole of Islam and all Muslims? Many people think so. The view that the problem we face comes from an undifferentiated Islam and all Muslims is clearly put here by the author of the Hesperado blog in his farewell post.
I suggest that we can slice things quite a bit finer than that though and save ourselves some trouble. Or we could if there was the political will, but that deficit applies to all proposed solutions…at the current time.
I would hope that we can agree there are parts of Islam which present no more of a threat to us than Sikhism or Hinduism – all of the five pillars in fact; the declaration of faith, prayer, compulsory charity ie Zakat (apart from the proportion which Islamic Law stipulates must go to support jihad), fasting and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
So what is it about Islam which is such a danger and what should we call it? Is it Sharia or jihad or political Islam or Islamism or fundamentalism or any of the other similar terms? They all point to aspects of that which threatens us, and overlap to some extent, but I suggest the crucial element can best be identified as Islamic supremacism.
This definition by the Citizen Warrior site sums it up precisely:
“ISLAMIC SUPREMACISM is the belief that Islam is superior to other religions, cultures, and governmental systems, and the belief that Islam’s superiority entitles Muslims to dominate, control, and rule non-Muslims”.
I deplore the fact that Islamic texts justify the cruel oppression by Muslims of other Muslims, particularly females, but if it wasn’t for the implicit or explicit call for the subjugation of non-Muslims then I could happily ignore Islam, as I did until five years ago.
“So the Muslims we really need to worry about are those who can be designated Islamic supremacists?” That’s right. I don’t give a damn which foot Muslims enter the toilet with or even that their bugaboo god reckons to torture me forever for not believing in him. But I do object to those Muslims who think I should be under their control since they are Allah’s representatives on Earth. I have to regard them as my enemy, as they apparently regard me as Allah’s.
“Ah yes, but how to tell them apart from the others?” More of that later.
How should we respond to Islamic supremacism and what is currently its central project, the Islamisation of the West? There is no shortage of suggestions to be found on counterjihad sites about how to deal with the problem. Putting aside those involving pitchforks or nuclear weapons, I am concerned to try to identify one which seems to hold out the best chance of being effective while doing the least damage to our system of governance built on democracy, liberty, individuals’ rights and the rule of law.
It may be that there is no such solution and that we are headed ineluctably towards subjugation or civil war. But there is surely nothing to lose in attempting to sketch out a possible last ditch plan to deal with the problem democratically (or somewhat democratically) before armed militias confront each other on the streets.
Looking at the proposed solutions to be found on the internet we can see that they tend to fall into two camps, those involving the ideology of Islam and those involving its adherents, Muslims. [My brief comments on some of the solutions look like this]
Examples of solutions based on Islam itself:
1. We recently saw a petition from a collection of French notables, including an actor and an ex-president, demanding that verses of the Koran “calling for the murder and punishment of Jews, Christians and disbelievers” should be removed on the grounds that they are obsolete. Not surprisingly al-Azhar university, the guardian of Sunni orthodoxy, replied “Not bleeding likely” or words to that effect.
2. Geert Wilders has simply called for the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands. [How are you then going to show people just how awful it is?]
3. I myself, not entirely seriously, proposed a joint venture with Her Majesty’s Government to publish and distribute a Moderate Koran, that is one with the Medina suras removed.
4. In a novel twist on this approach the Pakistani scholar Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri had the cheek to slip additional notes into his translation of the eternal, uncreated book making all the jihad verses explicitly defensive and then used it as the basis for his fatwa condemning all terrorism as un-Islamic. As an example this is what he did to the infamous verse 9:29:
“(O Muslims!) Wage (also a defensive) war against those of the People of the Book (who infringed the peace treaty signed with you, and despite being in exile, provided full support to the disbelieving Meccan invaders who imposed the battle of al-Ahzab [the Confederates] on Medina, and have continued every possible conspiracy against you even now). They do not have faith in Allah and the Last Day…etc”.
Examples of solutions based on Muslims:
1. The author of the Hesperado blog mentioned above always maintained that nothing short of the deportation of all Muslims from western countries could save the West. [But he would never address the practicalities]
2. The commentator El Ingles here, here and here thinks the solution, or a large part of the solution, for Britain would be to deport all Pakistanis. [Why settle for a religious war when you can have a race war too?]
3. One of the policies of the now defunct political party Liberty GB was to prohibit Muslims from holding public office. [Taxation without representation didn’t turn out well for us last time, did it?]
4. We sometimes hear calls for legal or geographic partition in Europe. [They would only be beachheads, wouldn’t they?]
There is however a third group combining both Islam and Muslims:
1. In 2006 Sam Solomon, an ex-Muslim scholar, wrote a Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding which was endorsed by the current leader of UKIP, Gerard Batten. It detailed which parts of Islamic teachings should be rejected by Muslims living in the West, and groups claiming to represent Muslims were asked to sign it. As far as I am aware there have been no takers so far.
2. In Australia Harry Richardson has produced a Declaration of Peaceful Intent for individual Muslims to sign and has suggested that it could form the basis of a statutory declaration, giving it some legal force. [Needs refining – as it stands even a genuinely quietist Muslim would be likely to object to the phrase “unprovoked violence” believing that the Koran sanctions only provoked, ie defensive, violence]
3. Daniel Pipes proposed in-depth interviewing to, as he says, smoke out Islamists and produced 93 questions to ask based on Islamic beliefs and practices. [Who could be more of an Islamist than Mohammed?]
4. Newt Gingrich proposed the deportation of any Muslims who believe in Sharia. [Far too broad brush – Sharia includes how Muslims should wash their hands]
My Proposal falls into this third group.
The law of the land, properly enforced, should be sufficient to deal with the various unlovely, but not necessarily supremacist, features of Islam such as polygyny, forced and underage marriages, FGM, honour killings, vigilantism, punishment for apostasy and blasphemy etc.
Common sense policies on immigration, welfare and ejecting illegal immigrants would also help with community relations. Likewise insisting on Friday sermons being given in the language of the host country and banning foreign funding of mosques.
But European governments should also accept that an uncertain percentage of their Muslim populations subscribe to the world view of Islamic supremacism which presents a mortal threat to western civilisation. Those governments should therefore make it clear which beliefs and actions are acceptable and which are necessarily seditious, with the understanding that offending individuals must be removed one way or another from the host society and offending institutions closed down. That is my Proposal in a nutshell.
Offenders should be interned until such time as they can be returned to their ancestral homelands or any other country willing to take them. There are 57 OIC member states. Perhaps some of them would be amenable to financial or other inducements. If not, we should ask ourselves whether it is likely to be cheaper in the long run to intern committed Islamic supremacists or to allow them free movement in a continent full of high value jihad targets.
You might ask whether it is physically possible to isolate a large number of such people in crowded European countries. Well, to take just two examples, the British Isles comprise 6,000 islands (yes, who knew?) and Sweden has plenty of unspoilt tundra in the North.
Here are some examples of those unacceptable attitudes and actions:
Anyone believing that jihad is still required from Muslims, and not just a dead letter from 7th century Arabia would necessarily qualify as an Islamic supremacist.
That would include any imam using the Hilali Khan translation of the Koran. Here is verse 8:60 making the issue very clear:
“And make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery, etc.) to threaten the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom Allah does know…etc”
The mosques or other Islamic institutions using it would qualify as centres of Islamic supremacism. Since the Hilali Khan translation (aka the Wahhabi Koran) is widely distributed in the West courtesy of Saudi funding, that means a lot of imams to be removed and a lot of mosques to be closed down. Those resisting such closures will have revealed themselves as supporters of the ideology in question and will also qualify for removal.
The same goes for mosques where the faithful pray for victory over the kuffar, apparently a not uncommon practice. Here is that nice Cat Stephens singing about it (at 2:00). He’s definitely one!
The Muslim Brotherhood is the primary font of Islamic supremacism in the world today. Its founder, Hassan Al-Banna, gave the organisation its ideological stamp when he said:
“It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet“.
It has spawned most of the well known jihadist groups around the world and has infiltrated western countries using a plethora of front organisations. It, and they, should be proscribed and their supporters removed. This, of course, goes for the many other Islamic supremacist groups which spring from other sources, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir or those organisations in the West taking their inspiration from the Pakistani scholar Abul Ala Maududi. Here he is making his position clear in his seminal book Jihad in Islam:
“Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it….Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet….”
What business does anyone holding such an ideological position have in non-Muslim European countries? Answer…none. And why would anyone own that book in the first place? Even now it is a crime in western countries to possess documents “likely to encourage or aid terrorism”. Jihad in Islam, and a great many similar books, could sensibly be added to the list.
Of course there are parts of Sharia which explicitly mandate Islamic supremacism. A well-thumbed Section O of the Shafi’i manual of Islamic Law, The Reliance of the Traveller would be highly suggestive of supremacist sympathies.
Attempts to take over symbolic public spaces such as Speakers Corner would also count since they have nothing to do with pluralistic engagement and everything to do with Islamic triumphalism. Blocking the traffic by praying in the street falls into the same category. Likewise expressions of contempt for non-Muslims, the vilest of creatures, such as anti-semitism or attacks on churches.
Successful attempts to impose Sharia on the indigenous population such as the exclusive provision of halal meat in hospitals, schools or prisons should be rescinded along with the de facto blasphemy law enshrined in hate speech legislation. But in truth you can’t blame Muslims for trying it on. The blame lies with the non-Muslim authorities who think they are being nice and decent rather than just weak.
If Sharia councils (not courts) are to survive they should be officially registered and closely monitored to be sure they are not going beyond their brief of providing guidance in family matters, and on a truly voluntary basis.
The niqab and burqa are not just a fashion statement or an expression of piety. They are a studied insult to western values and a declaration of permanent separation. As such they are likely precursors to Islamic supremacism. An Algerian apostate has related how those who eventually instigated the bloody civil war in Algeria in the 90’s started their campaign of differentiation and acquisition of power by first controlling the dress of their women before then going on to attempt to control everyone.
Islam is the Religion of Control – of the universe by Allah, of the Ummah by Mohammed, of women by men, and if given the chance, of infidels by Muslims. If we wish to survive as free societies we have to deny them that chance.
The above are just examples of supremacist attitudes and actions. No doubt an international committee, composed of people who understand the threat, could produce a comprehensive list and Muslims could be asked to sign a declaration rejecting them. Those refusing would save us the trouble of further investigation. As an added benefit, no doubt some useful-idiot SJW types would “convert” and refuse to sign out of solidarity with oppressed Muslims. Excellent – we should take them at their word.
Not surprisingly objections have been raised to this approach:
1. How to get the Proposal adopted and implemented.
Solutions to the problem of Islamisation are routinely proposed among the counterjihad community and are often met with the very reasonable objection “It’s no good just telling us what needs to be done. How do we get from here to there?”
The good news regarding the above Proposal is that we need do nothing at all. The conditions which may eventually induce the populace to support such decisive measures, and therefore governments to implement them, are being brought about as we speak. Not by us but by those Muslims closely following the example of Mohammed, enthusiastically demonstrating how incompatible they are with European civilisation. With greater numbers of Muslims come greater levels of criminality, jihad and actions which show the desire to dominate rather than to co-exist as equals. This pairing is automatic and invariable and so these conditions must only increase over time.
For the long-suffering indigenous Europeans the elastic is being stretched a little tauter with every stabbing to the cry of “Allahu akbar”, every rape of a kaffir girl, every desecration of a church and every small anti-social act toward the host population. It may of course just snap with us meekly accepting our subjugation or perhaps it will reach its limit and spring back, much to the surprise of those who have never heard the saying “Good fences make good neighbours”.
2. Is it even possible to implement without triggering the civil war we wish to avoid?
It all depends on the numbers. Attempting to deport all Muslims from Britain, or even just all Pakistanis, would almost certainly trigger civil war or something like it. There are (officially) about 4 million Muslims in Britain and the majority of those are of Pakistani descent.
Whatever the total, it would be an awful lot of people to round up and deport considering that the UK now has an army of only 60,000 soldiers, 10% of whom are considered unfit for duty. Factoring in an unknown number of non-Muslim allies who wish to see western civilisation brought down at any cost and true believers in the “poor Muslims persecuted by the evil West” myth, I suggest that the ensuing conflict would immediately go unofficial with militias fighting it out on the streets.
On the other hand, how many Islamic supremacists are there in Britain? Nobody knows. Estimates vary from a tiny minority, sometimes quantified as something like 0.001%, to all of them. Polls show variable figures, sometimes indicating percentages as high as 30% to 50%. At a guess, I would not be surprised to see Daniel Pipes’ finger-in-the-air figure of 10% to 15% borne out (he calls them Islamists).
There is only one way to find out, by making laws proscribing certain expressed attitudes and actions, and seeing who breaks them. If it turns out to be a tiny minority then there would be very little problem, in fact we could expect the great majority of Muslims to be glad to see the back of the trouble makers giving their religion a bad name. If it turns out to be 10% to 15% that would be manageable. If it turns out to be the opposite, 85% to 90%, then we have a problem but, as with any problem, it is at least a step in the right direction to know the real extent.
3. What might be the effects of this removal of Islamic supremacists?
Think of this Proposal as a gardener might. Applying a selective weedkiller will remove the ragwort in a lawn leaving the grass unharmed, even encouraged. Of course ragwort will always find its way back, requiring repeat applications, but that’s life.
The first application would remove the largest, most obvious clumps of noxious weed such as all those Muslim Brothers insidiously working to undermine our civilisation. Subsequent applications would account for ever decreasing hauls.
Let’s assume that this Proposal works and the first few applications remove most of the Islamic supremacists in our midst and a good many mosques are closed down. What would a Muslim community with the noxious weed of Islamic supremacism largely removed look like?
It seems reasonable to assume that those who wish to control non-Muslims are the same people who maintain such an effective control over other Muslims. Perhaps, with the coercive element gone, the remaining Muslims will give up the endless compulsion to dominate, and a truly moderate Islam will emerge, a quietist strain of Islam whose adherents really can get along with everyone else. Perhaps female Muslims will take control of their own fertility, join most other social groups in having no more children than they really want, and thereby put an end to the demographic trend which is the biggest threat of all to western societies.
Or perhaps we will discover that it is precisely the coercion which keeps Islam alive. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, effectively chaplain to the Muslim Brotherhood, once admitted that without capital punishment for apostasy Islam would have died out long ago. Perhaps when Muslims realise that they can leave Islam with impunity they will do so in numbers, leaving only a small remainder of non-threatening Muslims. This would take us back to the same happy condition which existed in Britain fifty years ago when Muslims dressed like the rest of us and words like “jihad”, “Allahu” and ”akbar” were never heard.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out?
4. There is no time, it’s too late.
The short answer is if it is too late for this Proposal then it is also too late for any others and we must reconcile ourselves to civil war or subjugation.
The long answer is as follows.
This is a quote from a discussion on the Gates of Vienna site about whether Islamisation can be rolled back without eroding civil liberties (of which this blog post is a continuation):
”….such policies should have been implemented a decade or so ago. We discussed similar things here back in those days, and the basic conclusion was that they needed to happen very soon, within a few years at most, or it would be too late….Well, those few years have come and gone, and nothing has changed. Or rather, things got worse….”
If events always took place in an orderly, linear way then it is true because things have got worse and if nothing happens it will be too late. But great changes generally do not occur like that. Actions lead to reactions; the pendulum swings too far in one direction and then swings back, sometimes catastrophically.
In the case of western acceptance of Islam the pendulum has been moving in only one direction for the last 20 or 30 years but now it is slowing drastically. Nationalist parties are not just springing up all over Europe but threaten to become the largest single party even in places like Sweden. Next stop is an outright majority, after which unthinkable things become not only thinkable but doable.
We see Brexit about to significantly weaken the EU’s power and finances, the Visegrad four defying Brussels, Italy turning back migrants and even France and Germany rowing back on Schengen. Surely these things, along with increasingly negative experiences with immigrants, herald the end of the EU, the prime mover of the pro-Islam pendulum, even though it may take a non-immigration issue such as a financial crisis in Italy to kick it off.
When the EU does implode it won’t be an orderly process but a sudden, dramatic collapse unpredicted by all the talking heads just as was the case with the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the global financial crisis of 2007. The above events lead me to believe that it is not correct to say that it’s too late, rather only that things are coming to a head.
5. Civil and Human rights.
The lessening of civil rights for any section of society must cause pain to any civilised person but there is an obvious precedent. In time of war civil rights are always severely, but temporarily, restricted for the sake of security. In the Second World War Germans were interned in Britain and likewise Japanese in the US.
We just have to accept that we are also in a war – the war to make Islam supreme in the world. It has been going on for nearly 1400 years with a partial break of about 150 years thanks to European colonisation after which hostilities resumed as normal. And now the enemy is within the gates, hiding among co-religionists who are not, or appear not to be, our enemy. If we do not identify and remove our enemies ”even at the cost of contradicting our principles” there will only be one of two outcomes, subjugation or civil war.
As for human rights, this is an area in which we are subject to dangerous assymetry on two fronts.
The first is that of the European Court of Human Rights which routinely puts the rights of enemies of member states before their citizens’ right to protection. Hopefully it will implode along with the EU and save us the trouble of extricating ourselves from it.
The second is that of mainstream Muslim attitudes to human rights themselves. While Muslims routinely play western human rights for all they are worth the Islamic view of human rights is markedly different and clearly expressed in the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
The Declaration starts with this assertion:
Article 1 All human beings form one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah…
and ends with this clarification:
Article 24 All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah.
In fact Islamic Sharia is invoked throughout the Declaration so you would need to know what it consists of before you can understand what the Declaration means. No source for the Islamic Sharia is referenced in the Declaration so anyone taking it seriously is buying a pig in a poke. Fortunately there are a few Manuals of Islamic Law (largely synonymous with Islamic Sharia) which have been translated into English and give the enquiring infidel a key to the Declaration. They all have things to say about relations between Muslims and non-Muslims which give the lie to many claims made in the Declaration, for instance the statement in Article 1 that:
“All men are equal in terms of basic human dignity and basic obligations and responsibilities, without any discrimination on the basis of race, colour, language, belief, sex, religion…”
This is what the Hanafi manual of Islamic Law, the Hedaya (Book 9 p.140) has to say about discrimination against non-Muslims on the basis of religion:
“War must be carried on against the infidels, at all times, by some party of the Mussulmans. The sacred injunction concerning war is sufficiently observed when it is carried on by any one party or tribe of the Mussulmans; and it is then no longer of any force with respect to the rest. It is established as a divine ordinance, by the word of God, who has said, in the Koran ‘SLAY THE INFIDELS’; and also by a saying of the prophet, ‘war is permanently established until the day of judgment’.”
That being the case, is it not beyond question that extending every benefit of universal human rights to those who offer in return the very far from universal rights under Sharia is nothing short of suicidal in our current situation?
As a closing note, may I reiterate that the Proposal above is not put forward as something to be acted upon now but only to be borne in mind until such time as a critical mass of Europeans realise that the coming struggle for dominance is a question of “us or them” and start to look for solutions short of outright civil war.
Jon – Thanks for taking the trouble to engage so fully with my modest proposal. When I told my wife “there’s someone here even more pessimistic than me” she said “Good Grief!”.
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I agree with a lot of the above, ECAW, but whilst there are moderate/quietist/peaceful Muslims (of course there are!) there is no such thing as a moderate/quietist/peacefu (MQP) Islam in an absolute sense.
I do think that your proposal, which I take to be this:
“The above are just examples of supremacist attitudes and actions. No doubt an international committee, composed of people who understand the threat, could produce a comprehensive list and Muslims could be asked to sign a declaration rejecting them. Those refusing would save us the trouble of further investigation. As an added benefit, no doubt some useful-idiot SJW types would “convert” and refuse to sign out of solidarity with oppressed Muslims. Excellent – we should take them at their word.”
Has a place in discussion at least.
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No, my proposal is here “Those [European] governments should therefore make it clear which beliefs and actions are acceptable and which are necessarily seditious, with the understanding that offending individuals must be removed one way or another from the host society and offending institutions closed down. That is my Proposal in a nutshell.”
What you quoted above is just a part of its imagined working out, just the start of negotiations really. I have no faith in the magical efficacy of such an agreement.
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Perhaps I am more pessimistic than you, but given that Muslims are permitted, under certain conditions at least, to lie to non-Muslims that getting people to sign (under a form of coercion, don’t forget) might be easier than you think. It would certainly weed out the Anjem Choudherys of this world, but they are not the biggest threat. Loud-mouths who spout off in public at least attract attention, those quietly “radicalising” others behind closed doors do not.
Mind you, I’m almost inclined to whole-heartedly agree just for the “added benefit” re SJWs!
The point never to forget is that Islam may be MQP under circumstances in which that gives the greater benefit to the Umma, but supremacism (and sword-Jihad) is always waiting in the wings (or lurking in the shadows) for when conditions change.
For example: the doctrine of Tayseer (“ease”) states (simply put) that the regulations of Sharia may be set aside if they are un-enforcible; thus Muslims in the West can say they “don’t believe in stoning people” quite honestly (for them to stone people would – hopefully at least – result in arrest and prosecution for murder, clearly not a good thing for the Umma, thus they honestly want to avoid the consequences), but this “moderation” of Sharia is contingent on there being (serious) negative consequences for enforcing it. Were conditions to change such that they could stone without negative consequences then I suspect that many would happily take it up – as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Syria when orthodox Muslims came to power.
You will know this as the “Meccan” vs. “Medinan” models of action (to which your article alludes).
Consider also the recent events in Pakistan: Asia Bibi released as innocent (the supreme court judges said point-blank that the case was “concocted”), yet the Muslim mob knows it can threaten violence and murder without consequence – and it has. And it has also dictated UK foreign policy, which won’t give her asylum for fear of the Muslim mob.
Again you touch on this in your article, but I can also point to history in which we do see periods of moderate, tolerant and even (in terms of the day) enlightened Muslim rule; but each was followed by an orthodox resurgence when Islam’s supremacism came to the fore again. Thus moderate Islam seems to have little staying power in competition with orthodoxy.
Thus I question how many Muslims really are “moderates” on several grounds. I would suggest that:
1. Many moderate Muslims are really apostates or “cultural” Muslims who pay lip-service to Islam and that they (who mostly live in the west) are not representative of truly mainstream Muslim beliefs and practices.
2. Many other moderate Muslims are quietists in the sense that, at the moment, they keep their heads down. As Jacob Olidort notes: “‘Quietism,’ or abstaining from political involvement or activism, is merely a placeholder rather than a principle for most Salafi groups today.”, thus their “moderation” is due to expediency and is not a product of their beliefs.
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I don’t think we disagree on any of the above but if someone acts moderate then they are not a problem to anyone are they? Until they act immoderately. There are “moderate” satanists and Marxists in the population. I don’t feel inclined to worry about them until they start sacrificing virgins on the village green or storming Buckingham Palace – or show signs of intending to do so.
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3.I genuinely find it hard to see how a faithful Muslim a “mumin” in the language of the Koran can be anything other than supremacist given what the Koran actually says – again something you note yourself.
You write: “Perhaps, with the coercive [supremacist Muslim] element gone, the remaining Muslims will give up the endless compulsion to dominate, and a truly moderate Islam will emerge, a quietist strain of Islam whose adherents really can get along with everyone else.”
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And yet a great many manage to avoid the supremacism that, to my mind, runs through Islam like “Brighton” through a stick of rock. People are funny aren’t they? Even Ayaan Hirsi Ali went from being an “infidel” rejecting all of Islam to being a “heretic” trying to salvage the Meccan part (which I personally think isn’t that nice either – it’s just that sura 9 makes it look so).
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The problem here is that this, whilst a Good Thing in its own right, does not remove supremacism from Islam itself. As you yourself noted when France called for that Al-Azhar replied “not bleeding likely”. Thus whilst the Koran and Islamic canon remain as they are Islam remains the best “radicaliser” of Muslims.
Again, as you state, Jihad – here meaning sword-Jihad (violence and terror) – is actually part of the five pillars thanks to the Zakat requirements for its support.
Thus if Jihad is written throughout Islam’s canon and beliefs (as it is) I cannot see how a “moderate Islam” can evolve from that canon – at least not without the wholesale rejection of Islamic beliefs re that canon.
If that were to happen then would would be left wouldn’t be Islam – it might be a parallel to the most ‘progressive’ elements in the CofE for example (SJW with a hint of religion-but-only-if-it-doesn’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings).
Thus I suspect that “a [truly] Muslim community with the noxious weed of Islamic supremacism largely removed [would] look like” an MQP community, but that is all. It would LOOK LIKE it, but wouldn’t BE it.
To pick up on your gardening analogy: I think that all your proposal, if enacted, would do would be the equivalent of pulling the leaves off a dandelion – it might seem that the noxious weed has gone, but the root is still there and the leaves will spring up again.
All such an action would do would be to drive the Muslim community towards the Meccan model, until such time as it thought it was once again strong enough to undertake a spiritual Hijrah to Medina.
What it might do, would be to instigate a Hijrah on the model of the first Hijrah, a flight from persecution, in which the Muslim population would leave of its own accord (I won’t say “voluntarily” on the grounds that they at least would believe that their departure was coerced).
Now there’s a thought ..
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So your counter proposal is the same as Hesperado’s, to deport all Muslims (or squeeze them out)? What about the practicalities which I brought up such as it probably being a shortcut to civil war. And what is going to change the situation such that the political will will appear?
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I agree with a lot of the above, ECAW, but whilst there are moderate/quietist/peaceful Muslims (of course there are!) there is no such thing as a moderate/quietist/peacefu (MQP) Islam in an absolute sense.
I do think that your proposal, which I take to be this:
“The above are just examples of supremacist attitudes and actions. No doubt an international committee, composed of people who understand the threat, could produce a comprehensive list and Muslims could be asked to sign a declaration rejecting them. Those refusing would save us the trouble of further investigation. As an added benefit, no doubt some useful-idiot SJW types would “convert” and refuse to sign out of solidarity with oppressed Muslims. Excellent – we should take them at their word.”
Has a place in discussion at least.
Perhaps I am more pessimistic than you, but given that Muslims are permitted, under certain conditions at least, to lie to non-Muslims that getting people to sign (under a form of coercion, don’t forget) might be easier than you think. It would certainly weed out the Anjem Choudherys of this world, but they are not the biggest threat. Loud-mouths who spout off in public at least attract attention, those quietly “radicalising” others behind closed doors do not.
Mind you, I’m almost inclined to whole-heartedly agree just for the “added benefit” re SJWs!
The point never to forget is that Islam may be MQP under circumstances in which that gives the greater benefit to the Umma, but supremacism (and sword-Jihad) is always waiting in the wings (or lurking in the shadows) for when conditions change.
For example: the doctrine of Tayseer (“ease”) states (simply put) that the regulations of Sharia may be set aside if they are un-enforcible; thus Muslims in the West can say they “don’t believe in stoning people” quite honestly (for them to stone people would – hopefully at least – result in arrest and prosecution for murder, clearly not a good thing for the Umma, thus they honestly want to avoid the consequences), but this “moderation” of Sharia is contingent on there being (serious) negative consequences for enforcing it. Were conditions to change such that they could stone without negative consequences then I suspect that many would happily take it up – as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Syria when orthodox Muslims came to power.
You will know this as the “Meccan” vs. “Medinan” models of action (to which your article alludes).
Consider also the recent events in Pakistan: Asia Bibi released as innocent (the supreme court judges said point-blank that the case was “concocted”), yet the Muslim mob knows it can threaten violence and murder without consequence – and it has. And it has also dictated UK foreign policy, which won’t give her asylum for fear of the Muslim mob.
Again you touch on this in your article, but I can also point to history in which we do see periods of moderate, tolerant and even (in terms of the day) enlightened Muslim rule; but each was followed by an orthodox resurgence when Islam’s supremacism came to the fore again. Thus moderate Islam seems to have little staying power in competition with orthodoxy.
Thus I question how many Muslims really are “moderates” on several grounds. I would suggest that:
1. Many moderate Muslims are really apostates or “cultural” Muslims who pay lip-service to Islam and that they (who mostly live in the west) are not representative of truly mainstream Muslim beliefs and practices.
2. Many other moderate Muslims are quietists in the sense that, at the moment, they keep their heads down. As Jacob Olidort notes: “‘Quietism,’ or abstaining from political involvement or activism, is merely a placeholder rather than a principle for most Salafi groups today.”, thus their “moderation” is due to expediency and is not a product of their beliefs.
3.I genuinely find it hard to see how a faithful Muslim a “mumin” in the language of the Koran can be anything other than supremacist given what the Koran actually says – again something you note yourself.
You write: “Perhaps, with the coercive [supremacist Muslim] element gone, the remaining Muslims will give up the endless compulsion to dominate, and a truly moderate Islam will emerge, a quietist strain of Islam whose adherents really can get along with everyone else.”
The problem here is that this, whilst a Good Thing in its own right, does not remove supremacism from Islam itself. As you yourself noted when France called for that Al-Azhar replied “not bleeding likely”. Thus whilst the Koran and Islamic canon remain as they are Islam remains the best “radicaliser” of Muslims.
Again, as you state, Jihad – here meaning sword-Jihad (violence and terror) – is actually part of the five pillars thanks to the Zakat requirements for its support.
Thus if Jihad is written throughout Islam’s canon and beliefs (as it is) I cannot see how a “moderate Islam” can evolve from that canon – at least not without the wholesale rejection of Islamic beliefs re that canon.
If that were to happen then would would be left wouldn’t be Islam – it might be a parallel to the most ‘progressive’ elements in the CofE for example (SJW with a hint of religion-but-only-if-it-doesn’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings).
Thus I suspect that “a [truly] Muslim community with the noxious weed of Islamic supremacism largely removed [would] look like” an MQP community, but that is all. It would LOOK LIKE it, but wouldn’t BE it.
To pick up on your gardening analogy: I think that all your proposal, if enacted, would do would be the equivalent of pulling the leaves off a dandelion – it might seem that the noxious weed has gone, but the root is still there and the leaves will spring up again.
All such an action would do would be to drive the Muslim community towards the Meccan model, until such time as it thought it was once again strong enough to undertake a spiritual Hijrah to Medina.
What it might do, would be to instigate a Hijrah on the model of the first Hijrah, a flight from persecution, in which the Muslim population would leave of its own accord (I won’t say “voluntarily” on the grounds that they at least would believe that their departure was coerced).
Now there’s a thought ..
A number of Muslims with their Islamic agenda to gain a conquest of of the nations of modern Europe complete control of the European countries for Islam along the establishment of Sharia law is ,indeed, very ambitious of them, in sinister sort of way . They strive to achieve this Islamic goal by different methods, as in “Either by hook or by crook” those jihad-minded Muslims will continue with their Islamic quest for the whole of Europe. Of “crook”‘ means the violent and murderous Islamic terrorism which some call the “militant jihad.” By “hook” may mean the non-violent subtle sly way of gaining Islamic control and power in Europe by what is termed as the “Stealth Jihad.”
To explain all this is a better ,more detailed and clear way is the following essay
One of the main goals of many jihad –minded Muslims is the Islamic conquest of the nations of Europe. One of the methods of achieving Muslin object by not necessary by the means of the violent and deadly “militant” jihad but by the subtle, sly, subversive and insidious way of engaging in that which is known as the stealth jihad. This type of jihad for the advancement and control of Islam in the European countries is to infiltrate into, as in gain, access to, the governmental institutions of the nations of Europe .
This is a large and great part of the grand scheme of stealth jihadist agenda to enhance and gain strong and then stronger influence and then supreme control of Islam over the whole continent of Europe. As on scholar on Islam and the Muslim zeal -filled intentions for Islam had revealed that “Of all the continents of the World, Europe is probably the number one target by Muslim strategists who are seeking world dominance…” [1] of course ,this author means “world dominance. , Not for those specific Muslim themselves but “world dominance for Islam.” Likewise, another scholar r and expert on this subject wrote exposed that “Since the stealth jihad is more advance in Europe then in the United States, the situation there is more dire….Muslims are accomplishing today what they have tried but failed to do for over a millennium : conquer Europe.” [2] Most intelligent people will well understand that “As Europe goes ,so will in time, go North America.
Further, about this Muslim scheme of the stealth jihad otherwise called the Muslim method of Islamic Gradualism to enact Sharia law in many different countries of Europe is in contrast to the way of the violent jihad or also called the militant jihad .This non-violent form of the jihad for Islam is a very sly, insidious, subtle and deceptive way of working for the advancement of Islam.
This Muslim scheme for achieving the goal of the Islamic agenda is as, many times, as subtly effective as it is demonically clever. Furthermore, this Islamic gradualism, in some ways, is very similar to the instruction printed in the book entitled THE ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu. Which reads “At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to opposes you”
In addition, those scheming stealth jihadist /Muslims who attempt to have Sharia law set up in the countries of Europe do also engage in the doctrine of the Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya which is very insidious. Taqyyia is the jihad dogma that deception is a good thing to do as long as it’s done for the advancement of Islam. Nevertheless, the God of the Bible “condemns those who devise wicked schemes…” Proverbs 12:11. [N.I.V.] Likewise, Proverbs 12:20 teaches “Deceit is in the hearts of those who plot evil.”
[1] HOW ISLAM PLAINS TO CHANGE THE WORLD by William Wagner , page 195.
[2] STEALTH JIHAD by Robert Spencer , page 270.