This is a follow on from the previous post, and extends my disagreement with Ed Clint. I know this is slightly bad form, taking a comment thread to a post, but I think that this is very important. I am referring to the following comment:
Frankly, I do not care if they [Clint’s liberal Muslim friends] “mount a challenge” [to jihadist supremacism] or not, or why. Geopolitical religious struggle isn’t necessarily anyone’s responsibility as a result of their demographic. As Americans, I hope that they vote for leaders who will pursue a sensible foreign policy. Along with building a peaceable, tolerant community, nothing will be more effective at addressing the problem of theocracy.
The problem with this is the contradiction between the last sentence and the first. There is no way whatsoever for anyone, Muslim or kafir, to build a peaceable, tolerant community without taking on and defeating the menace of Islamic jihad. Simple passivity is just not good enough and is not going to cut it. And I disagree that it “isn’t necessarily [their] responsibility as a result of their demographic”. Actually, it very much is. In my Fatherland, we know a great deal about responsibility.
There is a saying coined by the historian Ian Kearnshaw, “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference”. There were millions of ordinary people in the Third Reich who did take part in what was happening, who just shrugged, and looked the other way, and said it wasn’t their responsibility – and you know what? That is just not good enough. The same principle applies to liberal Muslims today. The way I see it, a liberal Muslim has two choices: either renounce the religion in protest or take seriously the proposition that his religion isn’t supposed to mean that and fight those defiling it. But to simply shrug and say “Nothing to do with me, I don’t go for that, it’s not my view, why should I be put on the spot?” is not good enough. Jihadists daily commit acts that equal the SS. Neutralism is not a moral option here.
This also has implications for us kafirs. Not a week passes where some self-pitying Muslims spokesman whines about being ‘demonised’ or ‘lumped in’. My response is that they have lumped themselves in. Or more bluntly: if liberal Muslims are willing to turn away from what is done by their coreligionists to our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, in the Sudan, in East Timor why should we not turn our backs on them? All they have to deal with is contempt; our fellow kafir are murdered every day.
