With the Islamic atrocities committed by IS reaching fever pitch, the “Defend the Indefensible” industry is working hard to keep up. On the other hand, while such shameless “blame anything but Islam” characters such as Karen Armstrong and Reza Aslan are given regular spots on the leftist media have their say, the few in the Muslim world who have the guts to call a spade a spade have Western audiences that possibly can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But let’s not give up hope; at least do the little we can to have their voices heard. And they have a very important message for us: stop kidding yourself. If you tell yourself you are against terrorism, and yet stand for everything a terrorist does, you are not smarter than a four year old.
The most convenient reaction to 9/11, which has been echoed every time terrorists showcase Islam as the motivation behind their butchery, has been to excommunicate the terrorists – claiming that the Islamist militants aren’t Muslims at all. The same reverberations have been resonating ever since ISIS has come to the fore, with leaders of the West, Barack Obama and David Cameron dutifully lip-synching to the chorus.
This takfir, or excommunication, has been as expedient as it has been precarious, because it allows the Muslim world to rid itself of any responsibility for the action of the terrorists that it nourishes. It also allows Muslims to conjure the aforementioned victim card when the obvious influence of Islam on Islamist terrorism is even hinted at. What this also beefs up is the resolve of the moderate Muslims, a lot of whom [a la Aslan-see above] do not reside within any tangible proximity of the ‘Muslim world’, in shrouding the most important fact in all the debate surrounding Islamism: that majority of the Muslim world supports the Islamist ideology even if they don’t back the ensuing terrorism.
In a PEW survey in April last year it was found that over 80% of Muslims from the Muslim world want Sharia law in their homeland – 84% in Pakistan. Now since the interpretation of Sharia varies, one has to dig deep to find out what exactly the Muslim world seeks.
76% of Pakistanis who support Sharia believe apostates should be killed, 89% believe adulterers should be stoned to death and 87% believe hands should be chopped off for theft. While numbers vary throughout the Muslim world, the extreme viewpoints form the comfortable majorities in most cases. Not to mention the fact that PEW did not include Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan in last year’s survey.
Even so, in another PEW survey conducted in July this year strong majorities all over the Muslim world expressed their apprehension regarding Islamist terrorism – including 66% Pakistanis. Now either the Muslim world has undergone a miraculous reformation in 15 months or it’s completely oblivious of the concept of cause and effect.
Curious, isn’t it. While a solid majority of Pakistani Muslims believe that “apostates” should be put to death, they are horrified-horrified!– to find out someone may take the very next logical step and actually do it! That is the mindset I call Islam’s culture of irresponsibility. He goes on.
Whilst the majority of the Muslim world is against blowing up one’s own country, the lion’s share still support the ISIS interpretation of Islam of stoning and chopping off hands. What possible logic can then be used to claim that the likes of ISIS have “nothing to do with Islam” or the even more mindboggling claim that they aren’t even Muslims?
Instead of owning up to the Muslim community’s collective shortcomings and instigating a veritable reformation of Islam wherein the precarious commandments are shelved instead of being twisted into a self-defeating coil of apologia, the moderates continue to declare pointless takfiri fatwas on the Islamists. Apostatising the Islamist ideology would mean declaring over 80% of the Muslim world as non-Muslims.
Lol.
It’s the excommunication of terrorists by the tiny moderate fraction of the Muslim world that is directly responsible for the escalation of Islamist terrorism in the past decade. Because you don’t solve a problem that you claim isn’t yours to begin with.
You hear that, Karen Armstrong? You are part of the problem!
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Also on Debunking Christianity.
