Former Nixon aide Robert D. Crane is a convert to Islam, and his biography -- the one he himself composed -- shows other evidence of mental bizarrerie (to see it, google "Robert D. Crane" and "Posted by Hugh" and "Jihad Watch"). He has a vested interest in protecting Islam, and protecting as well his own emotional investment in Islam, as a convert. At this point, he is unlikely to say -- it would be impossible for him to say, given his mental makeup, to say or even to allow himself a glimmer of a hint of saying or thinking anything like this: “Yes, you're right, I ‘reverted’ to something I did not understand.”
Islam is quite different from what the naïve revert may think. Those who are born into Islam and have managed to defect or escape are intellectually and morally superior people. These include Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina and Azam Kamguian and Irfan Khawaja and a great many more. In those ranks I would also place those who, largely out of filial piety, continue to call themselves "cultural Muslims" or even, in the case of Magdi Allam, "Muslims." By contrast, aren't so many "reverts," from Leopold Weiss (Mustafa As'ad) to St. John Philby to John Walker Lindh and David Hicks and Richard Reid and Yvonne Ridley, just a little, or a very great deal, off?
Above is one explanation, a more innocent one, for the behavior of this bizarre representative of Islam, Robert D. Crane. Another, more sinister explanation, is that Crane wishes to keep up a collective game of "Let's Pretend." Let's tell Muslims there is nothing wrong with Islam; let's tell Muslims that yes, they are right, the "real" Islam is swell, and there is nothing to worry about. And in so doing, of course, we are also forced to tell another audience -- ourselves, the audience of Infidels -- the same soothing untruths, soothing and dangerous. We will then, presumably, not be sufficiently alert and wary to protect ourselves from, inter alia, the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest.
After all, if, as Robert D. Crane claims, there is nothing wrong with Islam, and if his characterization of Robert Spencer is correct, if Spencer is indeed "diabolical" and prompted by the carefully-undefined "islamophobia," then we should do nothing to protect ourselves against not only or merely terrorism, but against that Money Weapon that supports the spread of Islam all over the Western and greater Infidel world. We should do nothing to hinder those well-financed carefully targeted campaigns of Da'wa, which are planned like a military campaigns. That is, of course, what they are. And of course we should do nothing about demographic conquest, the beginnings of which were made possible by Infidel negligence and naivete -- the very negligence, the very naivete, that the Cranes of this world would in sweetly sinister fashion have continued until it is too late.
Why not? For Crane, as for other converts or reverts, Islam should cover the globe, Islam should dominate, Muslims should rule.
If, however, you do not agree with the true-believing likes of Robert D. Crane (or the propaganda spun by the armies of Western hirelings, academics, journalists, ex-diplomats, who are "only" doing it for the money), then you may not be eager to participate in this collective game, a game to be played by Infidels in order that Muslims will not be offended and pushed into the camp of the "extremists." If, in other words, you agree that the work Robert Spencer has done in his meticulous presentations, devoid of rhetorical frills or furbelows, and based deliberately not on Western texts, but entirely on the texts of Islam, or on the commentaries on those texts by Muslims themselves, is valuable, then you will not take kindly to the likes of Crane attempting to persuade you that we can "do more good" with Muslims by never telling these truths to ourselves as well as to them, never bringing up the evidence of the texts (or for that matter the evidence of 1350 years of Jihad-conquest, and subsequent subjugation of non-Muslims of every kind).
No, you will not take kindly to such advice at all. You will instead regard Robert D. Crane as what he is: a transparent propagandist for Islam. Whether fully or semi-demented, is to me unclear. But it hardly matters.
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Filial piety? "Cultural Muslims"?
What does that mean? If it means Arab dress or halal food, that's fine. What about the person who goes into a mosque and listens to threats of death to the world and just shrugs, says his prayers and leaves?
Aren't the bulk of Muslims "cultural"? They might not approve of violence against those who leave the faith but they also do nothing to stop it. They don't take steps to remove the violent from their midst. They don't demand the removal of sheikhs who preach that non-Muslims must be eliminated. Their refusal to confront the extremists in their midst makes them accessories to all of the violence being conducted in the name of Islam.
Would we have accepted a "cultural Nazi" in 1946? We didn't kill all Germans but the world demanded the denazification of German society. The Japanese had to renounce the divinity of the emperor. There is nothing similar being called for anywhere in Islam.